Book review – “Between the Lines: My Story Uncut” by Jason Donovan

Jason Donovan has always been considered something of a joke, from his first Neighbours success. There was the mullet, skateboard and Charlene, then copying Kylie’s singing success. But he was a professional, hard worker and he kept making good decisions – small parts in prestige projects that didn’t depend on him, like Heroes, West End success in Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat. It started to go pear-shaped when Donovan successfully sued The Face for claiming he was a closet homosexual – this was a turning point the real turning point was the fact Donovan took off two years after that and developed a drug habit. (Like Damien Martyn’s second innings failure against South Africa in 93-94 was blamed for sending him into the wilderness whereas the real reason was the fact he then struck a major loss of form.)

He turned down Priscilla Queen of the Desert (as did Paul Mercurio and Tony Curtis – the one time in a million when turning down an Australian feature was a bad career decision), couldn’t figure out what to do musically, came across as a try hard by admitting his drug use. But he did keep professional and eventually turned it around with consistently strong work and he’s still at the table.

It’s an interesting journey but not much of a book. Mum and Dad had a vicious split but Jason doesn’t know why, the rise to fame was quite easy (he even knocked back a chance to be on Neighbours when it was on channel seven), antics on Neighbours were tame (a bit of pot, first having sex with Kylie at the Sydney Travelodge), Kylie Minogue is a well adjusted lovely person, so is Erica Baxter. There’s a lack of decent anecdotes or humour and he’s not much of a writer. He’s good on analysing his loneliness and drug addiction but not so good at observing the world around him. He barely mentions his work on Rough Diamonds and MDA, and doesn’t even mention Horseplay, but devotes several pages to his wife, manager Richard and various best mates.

In some of the interviews I’ve seen with Donovan in the past few years he has this manic, mad glimpse in his eye – a little more of this might have made his memoir a more interesting. You get the feeling that punches have been pulled – perhaps with far too much of an eye on the impact a truly honest, fun book could have on his career.