Hey Hey It’s Saturday star reveals his TV royalty family mingled with Melbourne’s underworld – and says a killer may have hid a murder weapon in his famous father’s car
- Hey Hey It’s Saturday star Marty Fields is the son of Maurie Fields and Val Jellay
- Fields has revealed his childhood was amid the union bloodshed in 1970s-80s
- He says his actor parents associated with Putty Nose Nicholls and Pat Shannon
- Union bosses Shannon and Nicholls were later found dead presumed murdered
- He said his family had lots of guns and may have had housed the murder weapon
Hey Hey It’s Saturday star Marty Fields (pictured) has revealed his family rubbed shoulders with notorious figures from Melbourne’s underworld
Hey Hey It’s Saturday star Marty Fields has revealed his family rubbed shoulders with notorious figures from Melbourne’s underworld.
The comedian, who is the son of actors Maurie Fields and Val Jellay, has disclosed he grew up immersed in the city’s deadly union wars of the 1970s and early 1980s.
He said his parents held close relationships with union leaders Putty Nose Nicholls and Pat Shannon and that his family owned many guns.
‘Tough guys liked dad and were worried people were after him so they gave him a gun,’ he told Andrew Rule’s Life and Crimes podcast on Saturday.
‘I took a gun when I was 12 and I gave it to mum who gave it dad.’
Fields, who grew up playing piano in pubs across the city, said the Council Club in South Melbourne was a hot spot for interaction between union members.
He said one night in 1981, Putty – the Secretary of the Victorian Branch of the Painters and Dockers Union – went into the pub and said he was going to travel Albury. Putty was later found in his car dead in his car.
Although his dead was ruled a suicide, there was heavy speculation that Putty was murdered.
Shannon, Putty’s predecessor, was gunned down in 1973 inside the Druids Hotel bar in South Melbourne.
Shannon’s killer Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley and the murder weapon disappeared soon after the act.
Fields said the gun may have spent time in the back of his father’s car.
‘Dad’s Gold Premier Holden… was the home base for quite a few things that were floating around Melbourne, and people used to throw things in dad’s boot, sometimes without him even knowing,’ he said.
The Federal Ship Painters and Dockers Union, which existed between 1900 and 1993, was was alleged to have criminal connections during the 1960s and 70s.
The Costigan Commission, an inquiry into the activities of the Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union, was opened in the 1980s following allegations of violence, tax evasion, drug trafficking and organised crime.
A total of 15 murders have been attributed to members of the union.
The comedian, who is the son of actors Maurie Fields and Val Jellay (both pictured), has disclosed he grew up immersed in the city’s deadly union wars of the 1970s and early 1980s