Son OF Sherman

Between the fall of 1962 and the end of 1963, Allan Sherman was perhaps the most popular comedian in America, and along with Bob Newhart he was one of the first to rise to fame through the medium of the long-playing record album. Sherman's gimmick was his gift for taking familiar melodies – folk songs, old standards, hits of the day – and pairing them with new lyrics that turned their original meanings upside down and threw them into a whole new (and very funny) light. Sherman's twin obsessions were Jewish-American culture and the daily outrages that were part and parcel of life in postwar America – from cut-rate clothing and extended families to crabgrass and summer camp, Sherman could point out the foibles of muddling through the Kennedy era and show what was both funny and ridiculous about them.

1943: shopkeeper's son Brian Sherman is born into a tight-knit Jewish community in a small South African mining outpost. The Holocaust is raging in Europe and the Apartheid regime is at its height. In 1976, with only $5,000 to his name, he moves to Australia with his young family to start a new life.