{"id":875469,"date":"2026-08-29T06:08:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T06:08:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/875469\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T06:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T06:08:10","slug":"taylor-swift-is-not-losing-any-sleep-over-me-don-spencer-on-play-school-fame-and-his-65-year-music-career-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/875469\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Taylor Swift is not losing any sleep over me!\u2019: Don Spencer on Play School, fame and his 65-year music career | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the late 1960s, when television was an exciting and reliably star-making medium, there was one show everyone wanted to be on: Play School. The ABC staple<\/a> aired twice a day every weekday, making it a huge platform for any presenter. So when Don Spencer was offered a spot on the children\u2019s program in 1968, everything changed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t go anywhere without being recognised,\u201d the now 89-year-old recalls. \u201cI couldn\u2019t walk into a shop. I couldn\u2019t get on to an airplane. I went to a rugby union [game] and half the crowd turned around and sang one of my songs to me. It\u2019s ridiculous. But it just kept going, so I just kept going with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s something of an understatement. Spencer logged 30 years of service with Play School in Australia, and 17 on the English version that aired concurrently, becoming as much a part of the fabric of the show as Big Ted and the Rocket Clock. It was such a dream gig that Spencer never considered it a job at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cHonestly, it was a beautiful show to work on. We all got along great,\u201d he says. \u201cI pity the actors who play murderers in films because people must think they are like that. But people always come up to me and go, \u2018oh, Play School! I likey\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n

It may be what he\u2019s best known for, but Play School was just one chapter of Spencer\u2019s career. He had an early stint as a mainstream pop singer, rubbing shoulders with the Beatles at Abbey Road<\/a> (\u201cthey\u2019re good guys\u201d) and touring with the Rolling Stones. He hosted a radio show on the BBC, where he entertained guests such as Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep. He tried his hand at acting, appearing on shows including Sons and Daughters and A Country Practice.<\/p>\n

\u2018Suddenly I was a pop singer\u2019: photos of Don Spencer throughout his career in his hallway in Sydney\u2019s Darlinghurst. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

And long before the Wiggles ever started juggling hot potatoes, Spencer released 16 albums of children\u2019s songs, earning an Order of Australia in 2007 for his contributions. The biggest of them was Feathers, Fur or Fins, which turned 40 this year and remains burrowed in the subconscious of generations of Australians thanks to tunes like Bob the Kelpie and Please Don\u2019t Call Me a Koala Bear (\u201ccos I\u2019m not a bear at all\u201d, as the chorus unforgettably goes).<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where the 40 years has gone,\u201d Spencer says, who is as sharp as ever, full of anecdotes about the media landscape of the 60s and happy to wax lyrical about the powers of children\u2019s music (\u201cMusic is magic!\u201d he says).<\/p>\n

We\u2019re sitting in his Darlinghurst apartment, looking out at the panoramic view of Sydney Harbour, a vista he says he never gets sick of. It\u2019s a long way from where he started. Spencer says he felt inspired to make children\u2019s music because of his \u201cvery challenging\u201d childhood in 1940s Tamworth. He grew up witnessing domestic violence and frequently ran away from home, but always found solace in music. \u201cI always thought there\u2019d be other kids out there that music could help,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u2018Taylor Swift is not losing any sleep over me, but I am still writing my little songs.\u2019 Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Spencer left Australia in 1957, working his way around the world doing odd jobs before landing in the UK and recording demos of a few songs he\u2019d written on the road \u2013 one of which is 1963\u2019s Fireball XL5, which to his surprise reached 32 in the UK charts. \u201cThen suddenly I was a pop singer,\u201d he says. Many doors opened but Spencer always contended with a degree of impostor syndrome (\u201cSomebody would say there\u2019s an eight-bar intro, but the only bar I knew was where I got a drink. That\u2019s how little I knew about music.\u201d) He regards the brilliant career that followed as accidental \u2013 albeit one he\u2019s \u201cstill accidentally carrying on in my 65th year\u201d.<\/p>\n

Decorating his walls are memories of exactly where that career took him: everything from a signed photo of Doris Day (\u201cshe was my heroine and I got to meet her\u201d) to a snap of David Bowie with his daughter, singer-songwriter Danielle Spencer (formerly married to Russell Crowe). There is also a newspaper cutting of a group of BBC Radio presenters; Spencer is huddled next to Cilla Black, Tony Bennett and \u2013 awkwardly \u2013 Rolf Harris. (\u201cTo be honest I quite got on with Rolf; I had no idea about the terrible things he did,\u201d he says). There are pictures of him and former Play School colleague Benita Collings on set; family photos of his kids and grandkids. Often, at night, he\u2019ll look over the photos with a glass of wine and \u201clet them take me away\u201d, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to name drop too much but I was lucky enough to meet people I never in my life dreamt I\u2019d meet, as a kid living in Tamworth,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Spencer responds to messages from fans weekly, sent from Kempsey to Kentucky. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

After establishing his career in the UK, Spencer married and moved back to Australia to raise his children. That was when he was offered the spot on Play School. The trick to doing that job well, he feels, was simple: pretend you\u2019re speaking to just one kid, and don\u2019t condescend.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy voice doesn\u2019t change. I never do this bloody talking down to kids business, you know \u2013 \u2018Hello, darling\u2019,\u201d he says, affecting a cutesy voice with the roll of an eye.<\/p>\n

Spencer recorded Feathers, Fur or Fins in 1985 because he wanted to rectify the fact that there were virtually no children\u2019s songs about Australia, even on Play School. The ABC issued an anniversary rerelease of the album this month, with each song reimagined by a different contemporary artist, including the Whitlams\u2019 Tim Freedman and the ex-Wiggle Emma (Memma) Watkins, who covers Sh-Sh-Sugar Glider.<\/p>\n

Watkins grew up dancing to Spencer\u2019s music at preschool and now appreciates his work in a different light. \u201cSongwriting in the children\u2019s space is sometimes not taken that seriously, but it really takes a lot of depth and research and understanding to know when a song is right for a preschooler,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd Don always had that knack, which is why his music is so beloved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Given he is only months away from his 90th birthday, you could be mistaken for thinking that Spencer is retired, or that he regards this Feathers, Fur or Fins reissue as his last release.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve still got a recording contract\u201d he says. \u201cTaylor Swift is not losing any sleep over me, but I am still writing my little songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Don Spencer says he is \u2018still accidentally carrying on in my 65th year\u2019. Photograph: Blake Sharp-Wiggins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

And he still responds to his fans. He gets messages weekly, from fans in Kempsey to Kentucky, who grew up listening to his music and want to say thanks. Spencer diligently answers every single one, often sending back videos of himself singing happy birthday on request.<\/p>\n

Spencer says it has been \u201can honour\u201d to be part of so many childhoods, but that he would like his legacy to be the Australian Children\u2019s Music Foundation, the charity he founded in 2002, which provides music programs and free instruments to disadvantaged schools and youth justice centres. Music, he feels, inspires creativity and imagination; offering children joy and hope. \u201cAnd if you don\u2019t have hope, you have no future,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019ve contributed to that, that\u2019s better than anything else I\u2019ve ever done.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the late 1960s, when television was an exciting and reliably star-making medium, there was one show everyone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875470,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[49,48,75,341],"class_list":["post-875469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=875469"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875469\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}