David Strassman heading to Telethon on final tour of The Chocolate Diet

David Strassman is no stranger to hospital visits. Accompanied by the lovable Ted E. Bare, the pair have been doing play therapy in children’s hospitals wherever he tours since the 1980s. “Ted E. Bare is a fantastic character who I walk bed to bed with and I alleviate a few minutes of the child’s hospital situation just with interaction,” the California-based ventriloquist and HeartKids Australia international ambassador shared. “I’ve been doing it for so many years. The parents are all stressed and the kids are scared. A hospital situation is a very delicate one and so I’m able to bring laughs and smiles.” With Strassman’s other famous puppet, Chuck Wood, left safely behind due to his crudeness, “Dave” and the cute, cuddly and innocuous Ted E. Bare will return as invited guests to Telethon 2023 after first appearing at WA’s beloved annual children’s health charity fundraiser in 2019. “Telethon are so gracious, it’s so much fun to work with because, you know ... it’s actually for a good cause,” Strassman stated. “I did it a few years ago and it just so happened, the night of this year’s Telethon was the one night we couldn’t secure a (tour) venue, so I was free to do it.” Strassman will be touring WA, including shows in Bunbury, Mandurah, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie, Albany and Perth, with his show The Chocolate Diet, finishing the Australian dates he started in 2020 before the pandemic sent him home. “This will be my very last tour of The Chocolate Diet, and most likely my last tour,” 66-year-old Strassman says, dropping the bombshell announcement. “Yeah, I am done, except for wanting to do community outreach. I had a wonderful moment when I was invited to perform at an Alice Springs primary school… I had these children, not only just criss-cross applesauce quiet, they were enthralled and it made me realise, ‘Wow, there is life after all these adult shows, and I want to do community outreach.’ “So I will be back, but it could be at a local school near you rather that at The Regal Theatre. I don’t know. I never say never but I’ve been doing this for 40 years. I’m no spring chicken.” First coming to the attention of Australian fans in the early 1990s through TV appearances — including Hey Hey It’s Saturday — Strassman travels with a menagerie of characters including Chuck and Ted, Kevin the Alien, Grandpa Fred, Sid Beaverman and Buttons, each having built up a back story over the decades. They are more than just puppets, and have hopes, dreams, fears, foibles, neuroses, wants and needs. “They have the same parameters you find in a stage play of a character development,” Strassman said. “So when Ted E. Bare says, ‘Dave, I just want to eat some chocolates?’ It’s not that he just wants to eat chocolate. He’s overweight, but he needs the chocolates to make him feel better, and so there’s a whole back story to everything that happens in my show with all of the characters, and I really am proud of this show. I’ve written most of it and my characters go through an amazing transformation. “Chuck Wood thinks he’s possibly trans. He’s feeling he was carved out of the wrong piece of wood. This show is pro-LGBTQ+ and I’ve been vetted by the pride community because you can’t go on stage as a white cis heterosexual man and talk about those issues without making sure that you have the research and the care and the love associated with that … I don’t ever cross the line of being insulting… I’m up there having fun because I try to do what I would like if I was in the audience, watching a bloke with his hand up the bum of a puppet.” Considering himself more as a puppeteer who does ventriloquism, Strassman will be filming The Chocolate Diet at The Regal Theatre on October 28 for a TV special. The regular visitor to Australia is a world away from where he started, busking on the streets of New York and rubbing shoulders with Jerry Seinfeld, Eddie Murphy and Paul Reiser in the comedy club circuit. “All those guys are my contemporaries, although they got the better spot than I because I was just starting out,” he said. “In 1979, I moved back to California and that was the start of the comedy boom. When I started comedy, there was eight comedy clubs in the United States and by 1985 there were probably 250.” Not only does Strassman share the same cheeky sense of humour with Aussies but also the joy of a drink, admitting the credit he has received for lifting ventriloquism into the 21st century came after a boozy night with a mate. “It’s a huge passion of mine to fly remote control planes,” he said. “After a p… up one night we decided ‘Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we put some servos in the puppet’s head and make him move without me?’ “I brought Chuck to a comedy club in New York and he sacked me. I left the stage after our argument and he sat there motionless and the audience is thinking, ‘Oh, here we are witnessing a ventriloquist freaking out’ and then I enabled his motors to move his eyes, looking left and right in his head, and his mouth and he said, ‘Is he gone?’ The place just went berserk and that’s what put me on the map. It was mixing robotics with an age old, end of the pier art form.” Rated MA 15+, The Chocolate Diet WA tour starts in Bunbury on October 19 before travelling to Mandurah, Perth, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie and Albany. The Regal Theatre season is on October 24 to 29. Tour schedule and tickets at davidstrassman.com. Watch all 26 hours of Telethon, Saturday, October 21 from 7pm LIVE on Channel 7 and 7plus.