Plucka Duck is a character on the popular Australian television program Hey Hey It's Saturday . The character "presented" a segment on the show, along with Daryl Somers, which was a self-titled segment of Plucka Duck. Plucka was on the show until the show ended in 1999. In 2009, Plucka returned to the show when it returned to the screens as "Reunion Specials". In 2010, the show returned as a series, with Plucka appearing in every episode.
Hey Hey It's Saturday was a long-running variety television program on Australian television. It initially ran for 27 years on the Nine Network from 9 October 1971 to 20 November 1999. Its host throughout its entire run was Daryl Somers, who later also became executive producer of the program. The original producer, Gavin Disney, left the program in the 1980s and Somers then jointly formed his own production company, Somers Carroll Productions, with comedy writer and on-screen partner Ernie Carroll, the performer of Somers' pink ostrich puppet sidekick Ossie Ostrich.
Daryl Paul Somers, OAM is an Australian television personality and musician, and a triple Gold Logie award-winner. He rose to national fame as the host and executive producer of the long-running comedy-variety program Hey Hey It's Saturday and continued his television celebrity and status as host of the live-performance program Dancing with the Stars. In 2018, Somers was honoured by Australia Post by having his portrait featured on a series of postage stamps.
According to an interview given by John Blackman in 2009, Plucka was originally played by Mark McGahan, but was replaced by "Sim" for the reunion specials. [1] "Sim" appears to refer to Simon Lefebvre. [2]
John Blackman is an Australian radio and television presenter, voice-artist and comedy writer and author. He is most widely known for his voice-over work for the long-running Nine Network comedy variety show Hey Hey It's Saturday from 1971 until 1999 and then returning for the reunion specials in 2009 and brief relaunch in 2010.
Also, Plucka Duck had its own show, Plucka's Place . This show aired in 1997, with Livinia Nixon and Daniel Kowalski as co-hosts. The show lasted one season.
Livinia Helen Nixon is an Australian television presenter and actress.
Daniel Steven Kowalski is an Australian former middle- and long-distance swimmer specialising in freestyle events. He competed in the Olympic Games in 200-, 400- and 1,500-metre individual freestyle events and in the 4 × 200-metre freestyle relay. At the 1996 Summer Olympics, he was the first man in 92 years to earn medals in all of the 200-, 400- and 1500-metre freestyle events. Kowalski, alongside Livinia Nixon, hosted the short-lived TV show Plucka's Place in 1997. Kowalski is perhaps best known for being perpetual runner-up to fellow Australians Kieren Perkins and Grant Hackett, who were, respectively, the world's best 1500-metre freestyle competitors during the earlier and later parts of Kowalski's career, particularly when compared to Kowalski. He was an Australian Institute of Sport scholarship holder.
In 2005, Plucka appeared with Daryl Somers at Carols by Candlelight.
Carols by Candlelight is an annual Australian Christmas tradition that originated in southeastern Australia in the 19th century and was popularised in Melbourne in 1938. The tradition has since spread around the world. It involves people gathering, usually outdoors in a park, to sing carols by candlelight, featuring live performances by both national and international celebrities accompanied by a symphony orchestra. Today, the largest such event is held annually at the Domain in Sydney on the Saturday before Christmas.
In 2008, Plucka made a long-awaited return to television. Plucka (along with Dickie Knee and Daryl Somers) did a skit at the Logies.
In early 2016, Plucka Duck appeared in an ad campaign for KFC riding a skateboard down a mountainous road in New Zealand. [3]
KFC, also known as Kentucky Fried Chicken, is an American fast food restaurant chain headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, that specializes in fried chicken. It is the world's second-largest restaurant chain after McDonald's, with 22,621 locations globally in 136 countries as of December 2018. The chain is a subsidiary of Yum! Brands, a restaurant company that also owns the Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and WingStreet chains.
New Zealand is a sovereign island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. The country has two main landmasses—the North Island, and the South Island —and around 600 smaller islands. It has a total land area of 268,000 square kilometres (103,500 sq mi). New Zealand is about 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) east of Australia across the Tasman Sea and 1,000 kilometres (600 mi) south of the Pacific island areas of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga. Because of its remoteness, it was one of the last lands to be settled by humans. During its long period of isolation, New Zealand developed a distinct biodiversity of animal, fungal, and plant life. The country's varied topography and its sharp mountain peaks, such as the Southern Alps, owe much to the tectonic uplift of land and volcanic eruptions. New Zealand's capital city is Wellington, and its most populous city is Auckland.
