‘Only a third of me isn’t Alf Stewart’: Home & Away star

Ray Meagher says the ‘flaming galah’ is not just saved for the Home & Away set as he says there is only 30 per cent difference between him and his iconic Summer Bay character Alf Stewart.

The 78-year-old can’t get enough of Alf, signing on for five more years to play him into his eighties, but he says there is little between them in real life.

Meagher says fans begging him to drawl his bogan catch phrases is just part of daily life in the streets after 36 years as the TV grouch.

“Ray and Alf look the same. He probably sounds the same. You only have to change a small percentage of a person’s persona to make that person feel like a different person,” he tells The West.

“I don’t think you’d have to change any more than 30 per cent of Ray Meagher to get Alf.”

The stalwart insists he is not as grumpy as Alf.

“Hopefully Ray doesn’t lose his temper as quickly as Alf does and he doesn’t go round calling people ‘flaming mongrels’, ‘flaming galahs’ and ‘flaming this’ and telling long-haired gits to get a haircut.”

Meagher says the iconic catch phrases were his doing all those years ago.

“Now they are in the writing. I produced a lot of things for the character many years ago and he has hung on to most those things. I like to be honest with that character and have a line through that character from day one. An audience knows what they are going to get with Alf. There are no surprises. If they see a certain situation they know he is not going to put up with that and blow his top.”

Almost four decades on fans still can’t get enough – he is nominated for most popular actor again at the Logies– a crown he has previously claimed.

As a consequence he doesn’t mind people in the street asking him to parrot his lines.

“It goes with the territory. My character has been saying those things on television and people’s lounge rooms for the last 36 years. It’s quite normal a percentage of people are going to lock on to that and ask you to say it. It’s not a matter of growing tired of it. It’s a matter of accepting that’s normal,” he said.

Explaining why he can’t walk away from Alf, Meagher is satisfied with his former acting career.

“The fact that I had a career before Home & Away is one of the biggest reasons,” he said.

“I had 20 years before it started and was able to do 30 feature films and mini-series and a lot of stage work. I know what it is like on the outside. During the course of Home & Away producers have let me out to film and more recently Priscilla Queen of the Desert which I was lucky enough to do on the West End. It’s been a good experience for me with management. The fact is I get on with over 90 per cent of people here. If you can say that about your workplace you are in a pretty good place.”

He continued: “Along the way I have been offered films. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of jobs I would have quite like to have done or wasn’t able to contractually. I don’t regret any of that. There have been other jobs where they have allowed me.”

As for signing on to be an acting octogenarian, he joked: “I thought it was 105 years more years! I am very happy here at the moment but I don’t know what old age does to you whether there is going to be a little knock on the inside of the head going ‘run, run, get out of there!’”.

He won’t say if his life off set is similar to Alf’s days on Palm Beach in New South Wales as he likes to remain and enigma.

“I have a private life I keep pretty private,” he said.

“I enjoy that but I also enjoying coming to work otherwise at this stage at life I wouldn’t still do it.’

After four decades in the game, Meagher says he wouldn’t do things any other way.

“I don’t have any regrets,” he said. “I am a very happy little camper.”