‘You’ll be lucky to sell 300 copies’: How the Wiggles are still wiggling, 35 years on

October 18, 2026 — 4:00am

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Anthony Field is the last original band member of The Wiggles still playing. On the eve of the band’s latest tour he gave me a rare interview.

Fitz: Anthony, you can imagine my astonishment late last Saturday night in Auckland, after the Wallabies defeat in the Bledisloe – don’t get me started – to enter an ice-cream parlour and run into you, the Blue Wiggle, still out there, still on the road, all these years on! Are you equally astonished to still be there 35 years later, the Paul McCartney of the world of children’s songs?

AF: [Laughing.] I absolutely love it, mate. I was amazed to see you there, and that is the great thing about touring. You get to meet people from all walks of life, and so many celebrities have children. We had Shaquille O’Neal come up on stage with us in America, and on this tour of NZ just had the famous [former] All Black captain Richie McCaw get up and play bagpipes with us.

Fitz: Wonderful! I do hope as a former student of St Joseph’s College, you clipped McCaw and told him to “Get back on side, you cheating mongrel!”

Fitz: But you were also telling me on Saturday night how you started your adult life as a soldier, and even served in Germany.

AF: I’ve still got mates from the infantry days who are like brothers to me. But when I left the army, I needed to work out the next step. As my sister was going to do early childhood education, and I saw there were no fees, I did a mature-age test to get into Macquarie Uni doing that course, and became an early childhood teacher purely by accident, while playing with my brother’s band, The Cockroaches.

Fitz: Which leads to the celebrated moment of synthesis! You were telling me that back in 1991 you and three fellow childhood education student mates wrote a few kids’ songs, using some of the principles of children engagement you’d learnt, put them to a rock beat …........

© Brisbane Times