Happy Days For Bad Girls Of Taste

Sydney Morning Herald

Sunday May 2, 1993

SHELLEY DEMPSEY

MEET Sheree and Miranda, two single scrubbers who spend their time chasing blokes called Stace and Donk, wearing mini-skirts, boob tubes and white high heels, driving their Toranas and Geminis and sipping on Creme de Menthe between sucks on Alpine cigarettes.

You get the idea.

They might not seem like the type of girls you'd take home to mother, but nevertheless, they're going places. They reckon there's going to be a video clip, maybe a book and a stage show at Christmas. Then maybe the world.

Sheree (Jean Kittson) and Miranda (Wendy Harmer) are making a comeback on radio after starting life some years ago on the ABC-TV comedy hour The Big Gig, then fading away for a while.

The "very goodtime girls" have now turned up on 2DAY-FM in Sydney, where they have daily chats. (They are also heard in Adelaide, Brisbane and Melbourne on all Austereo-owned stations.)

Strangely enough, they are always heard on the 2DAY-FM breakfast show, where Harmer earns her daily bread. Somehow the private conversations between Sheree and Miranda are put to air by someone pressing the wrong button in the studio.

You see, Miranda is a switch operator at 2DAY-FM and Sheree, who works in a nail salon, rings her. Next week, they'll be having a conversation that goes something like this ...

M: Hi Sheree, how's it going?

S: Well, I was just wondering ...

M: Yeah.

S: I was wondering if I need a Wonderbra.

M: What for?

S: Well, Kylie Minogue wears one, and Demi Moore wears one and I want one to make me, you know, to make me look bigger up top.

M: Sheree, Kylie Minogue and Demi Moore need all the help they can get. If you were any bigger up top, your dates would come equipped with grappling hooks and ropes."

Wendy Harmer says the girls have changed a bit over the years. "Gone are the taffeta dresses; now they're more rock and roll," Harmer said.

"They're into leopard-skin leggings, that sort of thing. They're caught in a fashion cul-de-sac."

Bad taste they might have, but they're not bad girls, Harmer says. "They wouldn't go out with bikies or anything. They're quite conformist, really. They want husbands and babies and they're trying really hard to get them."

Harmer says that Miranda is the more philosophical one but Sheree has an IQ"not far above plant level".

They talk about lots of things. The environment, anorexia, cosmetic surgery, that sort of thing. "Sheree was scared that her biological clock was ticking away; then she found she was sleeping on the alarm," says Harmer.

One day they were reading Vogue Magazine and they discovered bad news, that skinny was in and breasts were out. Sheree contemplated losing weight by taking up bulimia and/or smoking, or trying cosmetic surgery. After discussing this with Miranda, they both decided against all these things. What they did decide was to stop reading Vogue Magazine.

Harmer said: "We're planning a stage show at Christmas in a pub with a male stripper. We'll call it Sheree and Miranda's girls' night out."

Asked if she was dating anyone, as Sheree and Miranda always are, Harmer replied: "Viewers love the soap opera of me being single. But I'm quietly doing alright."