We Asked Ray Meagher About Living In A Total Death Trap AKA ‘Summer Bay’

Ray Meagher might play one of Australia’s most-loved TV characters in Alf Stewart, but it can’t be easy being a character who has lived through non-stop brushes with death since moving to Summer Bay, a genuine death trap.

On Home and Away Alf has had a fairly hard time, what with the heart attacks, the dying wives and the jail time. The poor bloke can’t even walk past an innocent sinkhole in peace.

We chatted with Ray, who is currently working with Optus as alter-ego ‘Ray Coptus’ to promote the release of their Prepaid Epic Plans.

Ray reckons even by comparison to the other characters, Alf has had a ridiculous number of near death experiences — and we have to agree.

“There’s been a few people who’ve had a pretty rough trot in Summer Bay. Look, you know it hasn’t been all beer and skittles for Alf Stewart.

“He was jailed, unfairly, and he did time inside before they eventually realised he was innocent and he had to fight his way to get out of bloody jail,” Ray told us.

“He’s had 450 heart attacks and he’s only just survived them – [Summer Bay] it’s a difficult place to live.”

Other than poor Alfie, Ray joked that series troublemaker Darryl Braxton from the notorious River Boys has also had a shitty time while living in Summer Bay.

“Then there’s other people, like poor old Brax. He’s just trying to make an honest living out of dealing drugs and belting people up and things like that and he got into a bit of strife too. So, it’s not easy to make a quid in the Bay.”

Damnit, Ray is a total badass. We also asked Ray is he would like to see Alf ever become the Summer Bay Stalker and he said it was unlikely.

“Look, I think that would be quite amusing however I doubt that the storyliners would agree with me,” Ray replied.

We think it would be a perfect a twist.

The funniest part of our entire chat with Ray was that he had no clue what a meme was, so we briefly explained it to him. Without understanding that he had become a meme himself, he did tell us that at least 50 percent of people who see him on the street call him Alf.

We had to ask him his fave Alf line, and he hit us back with the classic: “Stone the flamin’ crows, do you expect me to answer that?”

Classic Alf. What a champ.