Tony Birch

I got very high marks in my honours.

I got scholarship to my PhD.

And I'm not trying to blow my own trumpet here, but I won the Chancellor's Medal for the best PhD in the Arts Faculty at Melbourne University, I think, in 2003.

So I did everything to say, well, I'm not only entitled to be here, I'm here because I'm very good.

And to be accepted at that level has always been difficult.

At the same time, there are aspects of the cultural currency of a place like Melbourne University that have never interested me anyway.

So that my friendship groups, I have some good friendships from university, really good friendships.

Yeah, I met some great people at university.

I wouldn't want to...

I'd want to make sure I said that.

But my strongest friendships, one of my strongest friends is I've been friends with since I was 10 years of age and we lived on the housing commission estate together so that there are aspects of growing up where people want you to feel shame and they know all the signals, you know, correcting your pronunciation, for instance.

is something I love in people because, you know, it's not the pronunciation of someone's words, it's the intent of their words that matter.

So things like that, I never understood those things, Richard, until I went to university.

The notion that someone would correct your pronunciation when you're growing up was ludicrous because we all spoke in odd ways, but we all knew what we were saying.

Yeah, it's interesting that Christos Toulkos is a good friend of mine and we've spoken about these issues.

And by the way, he went to the same high school as I did, Richmond High School.

So Richmond High School has put out two geniuses.

You know, it's amazing.

I think it is because of his age.

I think there are two things.