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Logies 2017: Molly Meldrum and Kerri-Anne Kennerley deliver stop-and-watch performances

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The Logies – long an institution in need of an injection of reasons to pay attention to it – did it again on Sunday night.

For the third year in a row, Australian television's annual communal backslap delivered a memorable bundle of stop-and-watch moments that you'll be hearing about all day Monday. Those moments, of course, encased in enough padding to make viewers feel safe leaving the room to bang their heads against a wall for 10 minutes while waiting for the next good bit. 

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But it was those good bits that mattered.

There were, for example, at least five "f---"s and a one-off "tits" from Molly Meldrum in a show-closing dialogue that Plato himself would have edited for length and comprehension but may have struggled to match for slack-jawed entertainment value. Earlier, we had Kerri-Anne Kennerley interrupting her own Hall of Fame acceptance speech to ask for a glass of wine, an example Molly blessedly didn't emulate because we might still be watching if he had. 

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Both Molly and KAK are television royalty and can do whatever they want (just try and stop them.). Samuel Johnson, the Gold Logie winner, is another TV fish entirely, but it was he who completed the evening's trio of memorable moments, one of them in bewildered concert with Meldrum, the icon he had played to stunning effect in Seven's 2016 mini-series tracing the Countdown legend's remarkable life.

As with the two Gold Logie winners preceding him, Carrie Bickmore in 2015 and Waleed Aly in 2016, Johnson came to the stage with a story beyond his own, and a story far more interesting than the fact he had his hands on the little gold statuette. 

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Indeed, if you look at the Logie gong itself you can imagine it as a statement – hold it upside down and it's a two-fingered salute, turn it right way up and it's a fat middle finger.  And in their own ways, Johnson and his two predecessors have offered an up-yours of sorts to Logies tradition.

Bickmore used her Gold Logie win to raise awareness about the brain cancer that had claimed the life of her husband; she didn't mention television at all. And last year, Aly's triumph bumped up against a Logie tradition that made the 47-year gallery of past winners look whiter than a polar bear convention.

Johnson's story, told in acceptance of his first award of the night, for Most Popular Actor, brought a tear to his eye, and ours – his sister Connie is dying of cancer. 

"She's going out blazing with an attempted world record for the longest line of coins, absurdly," Johnson said. 

"She's putting together a row of coins in the shape of a love heart, hopefully the biggest love heart this country has ever seen, made of five cent pieces from cancer families all around the country, with the entire proceeds going directly to scientists and researchers …  it is being laid in 12 days."

He dedicated the award to his sister, and asked for donations to her cause at www.loveyoursister.org. 

"I love you, Connie, I love you," Johnson said.

Eyes welled, too, for the incomparable Kennerley, remarkably winning her first Logie of any description after a career that goes back to the 1970s. It was long overdue, and given the deep emotion attached to her recent personal travails after her husband John's near fatal-accident last year, it was delivered with perfect timing. 

As was KAK"s speech. It included a deft gag on being graceful in triumph:  "I'm not going to use this beautiful salubrious occasion as a cause célèbre or to lampoon or roast anyone … I have a book out at the end of the year for that."

And a riff on just how long she's been at it: "I seriously am so very, very honoured to receive this and I'm even more excited not to get it posthumously. Not that there haven't been a few people who have tried to bury me before this." 

But it was her husband - in the audience, her partner for the night as is their long tradition - that she wanted to salute.

"I have only worked in TV, I don't know anything about brains," she said, in paying tribute to his doctors. "I can honestly say I would give away 50 years of this career and all those incredible experiences and anything else I could think of just to have you standing right here by my side holding my hand. I promise you one thing, though, darling, we haven't finished yet."

When it comes to KAK, often dubbed the industry's ultimate survivor, of this we can be sure. She has been around a long time, as she noted with another gag. 

"F-f-f-f," she mock-stammered.

"Entering my 50th year. I have said it! The 50th year.That was really hard."

And then there was Molly, who did not struggle at all with his F words. 

After Johnson's surprise Gold Logie win, Molly appeared on stage carrying a shopping bag. And after Johnson abandoned his own speech and threw to the man he'd played on film, it was a battle between Meldrum and whoever nearby was game to wind him up.

Eventually, attention was drawn to the bag in his hand, and he produced from it … a cowboy hat. 

"I know it's very hard to play an old drama queen like myself, and you did a great job. So on behalf of the drama queen of Australia, I would like to crown you also with my gold hat."

This final Molly gesture made complete and moving sense, even if little else that preceded it did. In that context, as a close to the 49th of these ceremonies, it was a perfect Logies moment. 

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