For fans of Keith Scott, we’ve included 10 stories about him in a series we’re running: Fun, Fact, Frivolous or Fanciful – this one is about…Keith Scott!
- Not only was Keith the licensed voice of all the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes cartoon gang from 1990, he was also the voice of – yes – Dexter the Robot on the naughty weekend game show PERFECT MATCH (1983-88)!! So by this admission he obviously is a person who feels no shame.2. When Paul Hogan did his famous “shrimp on the barbie” TV spots in the 1980s, it’s because Keith had done Hoges’s voice for the ad agency pitch. Hogan ended up making millions from that gig. For his efforts that won the account, Keith got $60 and a $25 character loading!
3. Keith has been performing stand-up comedy impressions at least once a week from way back in 1974 until now….yet he is still mostly known as an anonymous voice. This means that by now, he is – pound for pound – the funniest total unknown in the country.
4. In 1997 he was flown to the US of A to narrate the Walt Disney feature movie GEORGE OF THE JUNGLE. This was the pinnacle – Disney not only put him up at a swish Hollywood hotel, but for two days he was driven to a voice-over job in a stretch limo!
5. In 1978 CBS Records enjoyed a bumper year with sales of vinyl LPS by Johnny Cash and Willie Nelson going astronomically high. Dennis Handlin, the head honcho, did a telephone hook-up national conference with each State company rep, and he got Keith to pretend to be Johnny and Willie calling from America to thank them all for their sales efforts. It fooled every one of them and when “Johnny” announced he was doing a tour of Oz in ’79, they were fawning all over him shamelessly. It was almost impossible for Keith to refrain from laughing and ruining the illusion, but somehow the stunt worked.
6. It is by now radio legend, but Keith began doing HOW GREEN WAS MY CACTUS in mid-1986. Since then he’s impersonated every Prime Minister and World Leader who’s come and gone. Now he laments that the people he is currently mimicking – such as Turnbull and Shorten – are younger than him!
7. In the long ago days of 1972, Keith was employed by William Hanna, the head of the giant Hanna-Barbera cartoon outfit which had set up a local wing. He got the gig when he brought in some letters he had received from Hanna’s own famous voice artist Daws Butler (Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound). When he was retrenched from the H-B office Hanna gave him a letter of recommendation, and his name was such a credible one that it got Keith an instant agent, and his voice-over career began.
8. In 1999 Keith was employed by Robert DeNiro’s Tribeca Films and Universal Studio to do the voice of one of his childhood influences: Bullwinkle J. Moose. He had to travel with the movie unit and do the voices offscreen, because the new CGI animation wouldn’t be married to the live photography for another year.
9. In 2009 Keith was hired by Baz Luhrmann to be the voices of several old World War Two newsreel voices (Oz, Brit and Yank styles) for the movie AUSTRALIA…of the ten he recorded just two ended up in the movie.
10. Finally, you may wonder why all the above facts are about show business. This is because Keith is one of those sad people with zero ability at sport (a result of his being totally uncoordinated at early school football). He remains hopeless at sport, and to this day has to wear a mouthguard when playing Monopoly.
