Panda Lisner’s TV Week Award, 1958

Model and TV presenter Panda Lisner was awarded Best Female Personality at the first TV Week Awards in 1959, and her statuette is an important part of the NFSA collection. It's a piece of television history but also shows how little the award changed in 60 years. The TV Week Awards were dubbed ‘The Logies’ in 1960 by Graham Kennedy in honour of John Logie Baird, the Scottish inventor of the television.  

Panda was best-known as a ‘barrel girl’ on In Melbourne Tonight. Once a popular and high-profile contributor to the success of competition draws and game shows, the barrel girl’s role was to draw winner’s names at random from a barrel or to spin a prize wheel. In the 21st century they have become as rare on TV as, well, barrels.