Derryn Hinch
The Age
Saturday June 5, 2004
Derryn Hinch, 3AW drive-time presenter and journalist.
Hate mail's not as creative as it used to be. In the old days at AW, when I was number one in mornings, I once received a whole pig's head in the mail, with eyes blackened and face slashed. Someone saw me throw it in the waste paper bin and said, ``What are you doing?" and I said, ``Oh, just going through my mail." And then somebody sent me some human excrement wrapped up in a piece of toilet paper, which was pretty awful. But I took it head-on and went on air and said, ``Well, I was revolted by this and repulsed by this and insulted by this. But then it dawned on me - I didn't lick the envelope."
You can have sex all your life but you can't have love all your life. I think there's a massive difference. I think there's a dichotomy between men and women. Women put sex and love in the same bed more than men do. I think men can see sex as sex and - it's a very broad brush and we're getting into some dangerous ground here - but I think you'll find more men would have sex without love and not care because it's enjoyable, it's a pastime, whereas more women would have love and sex as a combination. I think to many women, sex is seen as an extension of love. Many men fall in lust before they fall in love. There's a huge difference. And sometimes that's why relationships can fail. Because you don't jump the ditch. You don't see the difference.
A 15-year-old couldn't knock on the door of a newspaper and get a job now. You've got university graduates with far more academic cred than I would ever have in my life who can't get jobs. And that's what's changed. But sadly, you're getting perhaps a better class of journalist who can spell, but they're missing out on the journo who says, ``I know a story when I see one". You're getting people who can write a thesis but can't write a page-one lead.
I've interviewed every prime minister since Menzies, which is not bad. I've never got close to them and never wanted to. In fairness, Andrew Peacock was best man at my wedding (but) he complained - Hawke was his opposition then - ``You treat me worse on air than you treat Hawke to prove that our friendship hasn't affected you as a journalist." And there's probably a touch of truth in that.
The opposition can't do anything. It's only when you're in government that you do things. So, whether it be a Labor government or a Liberal government or whatever - that's why you're tougher on the government. Because they're the ones who are making the rules and affecting your life. Today Mark Latham can't affect your life or my life. Come the election, if he gets in the Lodge, then he will. But right now he can't and Howard can. So, you've got to hold their feet to the fire and don't be too close to them.
I have an epitaph. Somebody asked me what I wanted and I said, ``Two words: He tried." I could grab Spike Milligan's and say, ``I told you I was sick," but I just think, ``He tried." But I did. I've tried very hard. And I've changed a few laws and I'm very happy with what I've achieved.
It sounds like an affirmation off your fridge door but if you tell the truth to your best ability you don't need a good memory.
I'm an atheist. We're just ants. I was a member of the Church of England choir at age 11. But at 12 I was the first member of my family to refuse communion. At 12, I said, ``I don't believe, I'd be a hypocrite." And my dear grandmother and grandfather said you've got to take communion, that's what we do. And I said, ``Well, I'm not doing it." And that was the start. So I was an agnostic for a few years and then I became an atheist. I do believe this is it. We are ants.
Ray Martin once said to his producers - and I don't agree with this, incidentally - he said, ``Don't ever surprise me. I promise you I'll look surprised, I'll act surprised, but don't ever surprise me." In one way that sums up television. With radio you're like a boundary rider. You may have a couple of saddle bags and one's called producer and one's called management, but you can ride around and suddenly turn and go all the way out to the boundary and back. With television you are dragging a panzer division behind you.
I couldn't wait to quit school. I didn't have those teenage years, in a funny way. The time I got out of school and became a journo was just about the time the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had started and Jacki (Weaver) used to say to me, ``I feel sorry for you. You never experienced that because you became an adult so quickly. You couldn't say, wow! I love the Stones or the Beatles." I was out there being grown-up and I was an adult at 16, lying about my age.
The worst interview I ever did was Harrison Ford. He said he used to be a carpenter and he's the most wooden man I've ever met in my life. He gave nothing.
What angers me more than anything is the Australian judicial system. I think we have too many WASPs as judges: middle-aged, white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants - and some Catholics - who don't know the real world.
Derryn Hinch's autobiography The Fall and Rise of Derryn Hinch: How I Hit the Wall and Didn't Bleed is published by Hardie Grant Books, $35 (hardback).
© 2004 The Age