Jack rang me from his hotel room on the morning of one show.
‘I’ve been thinking of what might make my appearance more interesting,’ he said. I asked him what he had come up with. ‘Ever had anyone croak on your show?’ he asked.
Fingleton was a fascinating man. He was a journalist by trade, working in Canberra as a parliamentary correspondent, and he had played his cricket for Australia in Bradman’s era. Jack became friendly with many politicians and a few prime ministers, including Ben Chifley, who loved cricket and was persuaded by Jack to receive Harold Larwood as a new Australian.
The background to this situation was fascinating. The Bodyline tour threatened diplomatic relations between England and Australia. Douglas Jardine, who devised the leg theory, which caused the outcry, was an accepted member of the cricket establishment and well able to survive the storm. Larwood was a professional cricketer in a game with an amateur ethos, in the days when Gentlemen and Players had different dressing rooms, separate exits and entrances. Larwood was trade. He was hung out to dry and made the scapegoat.
Hurt and disenchanted, he left the game and hid away in a shop in Blackpool and didn’t even put his name above the door. He was found by Jack Fingleton who, although he had played against the Bodyline team and suffered many a battering from Larwood, persuaded him to emigrate to Australia. The Aussies had a clearer view of what had happened. They saw the patrician Jardine as the architect of their downfall and loathed him for what they believed were his unfair and unsporting methods. Larwood they regarded as the sword in Jardine’s hand, yet they admired him as a great fast bowler.
Jack told me the marvellous story about Larwood’s visit to the prime minister’s residence. He introduced the two men and left the room. After about ten minutes the prime minister came out. Jack asked how the meeting was progressing.
‘I think it’s OK,’ said Chifley. ‘But I have to tell you, Jack, I can’t understand a bloody word he’s saying.’ A while later Larwood appeared, looking slightly concerned. Jack asked him what was wrong.
‘He’s a nice man,’ said Harold. ‘But I wish I knew what he was talking about.’
Jack followed Larwood back into the room and for the next half hour acted, discreetly, as interpreter for two people divided, as they say, by a common language.
Jack and I first met when we worked together at
The Sunday Times
and became good friends. I hadn’t seen him again for several years until I came to Australia and was asked to speak to the National Press Club in Canberra. At question time, after my speech, Jack stood up and, pretending he had never met me, reduced the formality of the proceedings to rubble. His question, which lasted five minutes, included the observation that, although I was a Pom, I was at least a Yorkshire Pom, which wasn’t so bad, although I came from Barnsley which, as everyone knew, had the highest illegitimacy rate on the planet and, what is more, was the birthplace of the groundsman who prepared the wicket at Headingley where Fred Trueman twice bowled out the Aussies to win a Test match, which was clearly a fix, since the only way we could beat Australia was by cheating . . . and so on and so on. All this delivered out of the corner of his mouth and with twinkling eyes.
He was a funny, wise, cantankerous and loveable old man, and among the best half dozen writers about cricket there have been. He gave me two of his Australian cricket caps, two baggy greens, which I still have and treasure, unlike Keith Miller’s last Test sweater, which Keith gave to me during one drunken lunch in Sydney. It was washed by a daily help and shrank so badly it would hardly fit Frankie Dettori, never mind a physical specimen such as Miller.
Of all the athletes I have met in a lifetime of observing sport and writing about it, Keith Ross Miller is the one who fits my definition of the athletic ideal. Neville Cardus described him as ‘the Australian
in excelsis
’. John Arlott said that if he could pick one man to hit a six, take a wicket or make a catch with his life depending upon it, he would choose Keith Miller. But he was not simply a connoisseur’s cricketer. He was beloved by all who came within range of his formidable personality. Women adored him, men envied him. To walk with him around Lord’s during a Test match was to experience royalty on the move. We once set off before lunch and by the time we had completed the circuit, taking in conversations with programme sellers, bookmakers, barmen and the hundreds who saw him hit the ball on to the roof of the stand at Lord’s in the forties, it was tea time.
Keith was shaped by the country that reared him, but forever conditioned by the war. He flew fighter bombers over Germany, once making a detour from a mission to fly over the birthplace of Beethoven, his favourite composer. The only photographs in his study were of the Australian services team playing at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, the year after the war, and a picture of Guy Gibson VC, DSO, DFC, sitting in a field of red poppies.
Even heroes have their heroes.
Keith Miller was deeply affected by the Second World War. It changed him.
The way he played his cricket in the immediate postwar years was as much a celebration of surviving the war as it was the product of an impulsive nature and a lifelong desire never to be bored by either a person or a game. Keith Miller held life in a passionate embrace because he had seen the alternative.
It was famously Miller who defined the way that sport has become distorted to the point where people have forgotten that what they are watching or playing is a pastime, an entertainment, a tarradiddle. He told me how much he hated the word ‘pressure’ when applied to athletes doing their job. ‘They don’t know what pressure means,’ said Keith. ‘I’ll tell you what pressure is: it’s having a Messerschmitt up your arse at twenty thousand feet. That’s pressure.’
I interviewed one of my favourite Australians, Rolf Harris. Rolf is a neighbour of mine and throughout our years of friendship I have grown to admire not only his great talent as an all-round entertainer but also his support for various good causes I have been involved with, which he has undertaken with typical enthusiasm and no though of remuneration.
He said he wanted to talk about his father, who had died shortly before our interview. He had a video of father and son on stage during one of his Australian concerts and said he would like to show it on air. When we played the tape during the interview, he burst into tears. He was still obviously grieving and broke down at the sight of his beloved parent.
The problem facing the host on an occasion such as this is to think of a way of enabling the interview to proceed without a gruff exhortation to ‘pull yourself together man’ or some other equally insensitive instruction.
As he wept and the clip ended, the audience came face to face with a man who, a moment ago was happy and jolly, and now was distraught with sorrow. I said, ‘You said your father liked a laugh. Tell me a funny story about him’. Fortunately, it worked, and Rolf, ever the professional, found a story to guarantee the interview ended in laughter and not tears.
For three years or more I continued to work at opposite ends of our planet – six months doing
Parkinson
in the UK, six months in Oz – and because of ratings requirements suffered two winters every year. The Australian one wasn’t too bad, but it was far from a perfect arrangement. I also experienced what eminent Australian historian Manning Clark once described as ‘the tyranny of distance’. Australia is a long way from anywhere, particularly Europe, and I felt myself becoming increasingly detached from my backyard. This growing sense of disassociation was most apparent during the Falklands War. I watched developments on Australian television, which, every night, offered an hour-long assessment of how the operation was developing. I would sit and watch with an unnatural detachment, as if watching Mars fight Jupiter.
My state of mind was not helped by the fact that the longer the shows continued, the more difficult it became to provide the stars the channel demanded. Greg Coote left to work in Los Angeles, where he now heads up one of Rupert Murdoch’s production companies. There were rumours Murdoch would likely relinquish his interest in Australian television as a condition of his American citizenship. One day Ken Cowley, Rupert’s right-hand man in Sydney, suggested lunch. We dined at a quiet Italian restaurant away from the media crowd. I thought this bloke is going to sack me. I had always fancied the big pay-off, the financial poultice for bruised pride, but something – I don’t know what exactly – made me determined to fight any attempt to get rid of me. So I kept up a stream of incessant chatter about this and that, pausing only to order more wine.
At the end of the meal – both of us pleasantly sozzled and being driven back to the office – I asked Ken if his intention was to let me go. He said it was. I said he was right if he thought the weekly talk show had maybe had its day, certainly at thirty ninety-minute shows a year, so why didn’t we do some specials and fill in the rest of the contract by making documentaries. Being a good and fair man, and a pal, he agreed.
Princess Anne was one of the studio specials and the docu ment aries took me all over Australia, an all-expenses paid journey around a fascinating, awesome and beautiful country.
In Darwin we went hunting with a man whose job it was to tag baby crocodiles. We filmed at an aboriginal cattle station where they rounded up the beasts by helicopter and where I met a saintly woman, a nurse, who cared for the men with an intriguing blend of modern and folk medicine. She swore that a native paste made from pulped ants was superior to penicillin.
One day I stood on an outcrop of rock in Kakadu National Park doing a wrap to camera when the director made the casual observation it would make a more interesting shot if there was something happening in the background. As it was, all we could see was forest stretching to infinity.
We had a park ranger with us. ‘You want action?’ he asked. ‘Then get ready to roll when I fire my gun.’ Whereupon he discharged his weapon into the air and immediately the sky behind me was filled with birds of every colour, blue and yellow, white and pink. They blotted out the sun. It was amazing, so much so that I just stood, open-mouthed, and watched the feathered rainbow, quite forgetting to do my piece to camera.
While we were in the Top End, as the Aussies call the Northern Territory, I was asked to be guest of honour at an event organised by the local press club. As I was filming at the time, I asked if it would be a lunch or a dinner. They said dinner. I said that should be OK, I could do a full day’s filming and then meet them in the evening, about what time? Four o’clock, mate, they said. ‘We like to eat early.’ I said I couldn’t make it before six in the evening and they said that would be all right and they would make sure they didn’t drink all the grog before I turned up.
When I finally arrived the party was in full swing. A greeter sent out to escort me into the hall collapsed in the doorway trying to negotiate a step that wasn’t there. As I entered the room the piano player attempted to play my signature tune. In the words of the great Eric Morecambe, he did play all the right notes but not necessarily in the right order. The assembly was, quite rightly, beyond caring about hearing a boring speech but were battered into submission by the chairman, who quietened the rabble with the unforgettable exhortation: ‘Come on, ladies and gentlemen, give the Pom a fair go. After all, it’s better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.’
That moment sealed my love affair with Australia.
35
THE FAMOUS FIVE
David Frost first approached me about bidding for the morning television franchise when I was in Australia working for the ABC. Whenever David calls, it means one of two things – either lunch or a new television company. One way or another he has played an important part in my television career.
That Was the Week That Was
turned television on its head and, both technically and editorially, inspired my generation of producers and presenters. It was brilliantly cast and imaginatively directed by Ned Sherrin. The list of writers has never been equalled on any programme since and the entire enterprise found its perfect front man in David Frost.
His interview programmes in the late sixties and early seventies, particularly his confrontations with the crook Savundra and the formidable Enoch Powell, created a new genre of television; serious journalism as an entertainment event. David has the rare talent of being able to transform complicated research into simple questions. He also has the showman’s instinct for the dramatic pause or gesture and a comedian’s timing. As I grew up in television, I watched and admired him. I couldn’t quite fathom the jibes and sneers he sometimes attracted. On other hand, he has the consolation of having outlived most of his critics.
His entrepreneurial skills also set him apart. He created two television companies, he beat the American networks in the bid for the Nixon interviews, and he is the only English interviewer to become a major star on American television.
He told me that his idea for the breakfast consortium was based on the United Artists concept, where we would pack the bid with as many stars as possible. Eventually his dream became reality and he signed up the so-called ‘Famous Five’ . . . Angela Rippon, Anna Ford, Robert Kee, David and the author of this book. Our chairman was Peter Jay, formerly Ambassador to the United States, and former Economics Editor of
The Times
. Lord Richard Marsh, once head of British Rail, was also on the board.
We embarked on the ludicrous rigmarole of trying to win the franchise. This involved convincing the IBA of our credentials by speaking to and answering questions from community groups about our intentions. It seemed to me that, no matter where we travelled, we were pursued by a lobby group of cyclists whose main argument against breakfast television was based on the theory that it would make motorists late leaving the house in the morning and, in speeding to work, they would cause a serious threat to the pedal-pushers. The alternative theory was that cyclists themselves might become hooked on the box and, in trying to make up lost time on their journey to work, might crash and cause serious damage to their persons. This theme of our roads becoming flooded with kamikaze motorists and cyclists in a zombie-like trance induced by watching breakfast television was repeated again and again at our various meetings.