John McKellar

John Alan McKellar (13 August 1930 – 6 September 2010) was an Australian writer, primarily of comedy revues or musical theatre. His most critically acclaimed and popularly attended work was A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down which premiered at Sydney's Phillip Street Theatre on 18 September 1965 and ran for more than 250 performances. He was the resident writer at that theatre in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s he provided the slogan, "The drink you have when you're not having a drink" to advertise Claytons non-alcoholic beverages. Most of his humour involved social satire where typical self-mockery was developed into an art form. Some of his works provided vernacular phrases used in Australian English including "is Australia really necessary", "A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down", and "But I wouldn't want to live there".

Biography McKellar was born on 13 August 1930 in Orange to Rupert McKellar, a commercial traveller, and Winifred née Lehman. He grew up with his sister Margaret and brother Clive in Waverley. It was produced by William Orr, who subsequently established the Phillip Street Theatre which show-cased works by McKellar. The title provided a vernacular phrase in Australian English. The cast included John Ewart, Ruth Cracknell and Reg Livermore. McKellar's play popularised the phrase, "A Cup of Tea, a Bex and a Good Lie Down", which "quickly became a common Australian saying". The play is McKellar's most critically acclaimed and popularly attended work. In January 1982 it was performed at the McCarter Theater in Princeton. The New York Times reviewer Mel Gussow found it "an intimate vest-pocket musical ... smallness leads to some novel double-teaming". Overall Gussow was disappointed as "the approach demands a much keener sense of style and of comedy than is demonstrated ... n a very basic level, Keystone is just not funny enough". In December 2006, he wrote Attack of the Granny Boomers, which was performed at the Parade Theatre, Kensington. McKellar died on 6 September 2010, aged 80 years. Most of his humour involved social satire where typical self-mockery was developed into an art form.