Chapter 37: Broadcasting, kids and a pop star
Another random selection of events from the early 1970s
From a family letter dated September 23 1972:
BROADCASTING
I have been appointed backup correspondent in London for NZBC, the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. I did a test run for them a few weeks back and was notified last Monday that I'd been accepted. NZBC already has a correspondent here but he is away for up to two months in a year so they want someone to stand in for him. It will be another useful string to have.
There's been a big inquest at the BBC over a serious case of food poisoning in the canteen. At least 25 people became violently ill after eating contaminated steak and mushroom pie. The bosses are pretty worried because the situation could have been much worse had a more popular dish been contaminated. Apart from the danger that someone could have become seriously ill or died, it could have crippled the BBC's operations. I rarely eat in the canteen because I don't like the food much. I either take sandwiches or eat in the staff club.
Still on the BBC, it's been interesting to speculate on the effect the corporation is having on the Uganda situation. President Amin who, as you have probably guessed, is a nut case, glories in all the publicity he gets on the BBC. He is telling everyone in Kampala that he's a big man because the BBC leads its news bulletins with him. But he kicks up a fuss about anything he doesn't like. So far four of our men have been tossed out of Uganda. John Osman, who took his journalist wife, Virginia “Ginny” Waite, to Uganda with him, told us that they were lucky to get out alive. We're now left with only one correspondent in Kampala and he's naturally got to keep his wits about him.
At the same time as looking after the safety of our correspondents we've got to maintain balanced accurate stories that don’t put them in danger. We do our best. Accuracy is our chief aim because so many people treat everything we say as gospel and such blind faith can sometimes have serious consequences. It wouldn't be very difficult for us to cause panic if for example we reported that Kampala was about to be bombed or otherwise attacked.
On the lighter side of being at the BBC, we sometimes have interesting and amusing problems with the translation of English bulletins into other languages. For instance “the stained-glass windows of Coventry Cathedral” became “the dirty windows of Coventry Cathedral” in an Asian language bulletin. The language that causes us much trouble is Somali which is a spoken language, not a written one. The Somali news readers translate the bulletins from English as they read them on air. After the world chess championship was finalised Bobby Fisher's victory was the main story in our bulletins. But chess is not played in the Somali Republic and the language limitations of Somali made it impossible for the story to be translated so it had to be dropped.
From a letter dated October 7 1972:
CENTRAL HEATING GRIEF
Work on the maisonette progresses slowly. The damned central heating still isn't working properly. Last week I stripped all the tiles off the bathroom wall and bought a new bathroom suite. We are now awaiting the builder to turn up. We hope he doesn't take too long because the toilet cistern is out of action and we have to flush the pan with buckets of water.
I recently fitted a full-length mirror in the main bedroom -- much to Harley's delight. It has given him hours of bemused entertainment as he tries to figure out who all the extra people in the house are and where the little boy keeps disappearing to.
From a letter dated November 5 1972:
BABY NEWS
Well, the main news is another little Richardson is on the way. The ETA is June next year. We had a pretty scary time at the start. The week after Rosemary's period was due, she came out in spots for a couple of days. It looked very much like German measles and Rosemary’s doctor said she would recommend termination if this was so. However, blood tests proved negative. We've got to contact the doctor again tomorrow. But everything looks promising.
Meantime, our Number One Son is going through an assertive stage. He has been known to stage sit down strikes in the middle of the street and to scream his head off if he doesn't get his own way. Today we decided to stop the rot. At the end of Round Four this evening, the score was four-love in our favour. I estimate Round Five will take place tomorrow morning.
From a letter dated November 19 1972:
We’ve all had colds. Rosemary is still feeling pretty seedy, but is hoping her morning sickness, which seems to last most of the day, will end before too long. She gets tired rather easily and tries to get a nap each day during Harley’s afternoon rest. She has booked into Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital for this next baby. It is not far away from the Hammersmith Hospital where Harley was born, but it’s bigger. Rosemary has already made a preliminary visit and is most impressed with the facilities and the attitude of the staff.
SHOWBIZ
Last night we went to our friends Alma and Nat Kipner’s for dinner. And among those there was the Australian singer Judy Cannon. She will be remembered in Australia from the old TV shows “Six O’Clock Rock”, “Sing Sing Sing” and “Bandstand”. She tells us that it's nine years since she left Australia. She's a very attractive girl in a showbiz way, but is pretty rough and ready and didn't impress us favourably. Besides, she kept on calling Harley Harvey. That said, I kept in touch and did stories on her for TV Week, wearing my Bruce Conway hat. Here’s one of them:
Not long after I wrote another story about Judy with the latest developments:
Judy died in Ballarat, Victoria in August last year aged 84:
From a letter dated November 30 1972:
BBC ABC & BOWEL EVENT
During Australian summertime, we feed the BBC World Service programme “World Roundup” live into the ABC's third network at 6:10 AM your time. As you know, I've produced the programme fairly often. I got a thrill the other day to discover that the ABC transmission is fed back to us to help us “cue in” “World Roundup”. This means that if I can get everything organised in time, I can listen to your 6:00 AM news.
Harley is almost potty trained at last. But it has its drawbacks. Like the recent incident when he picked up the potty after a sizeable bowel movement and proudly displayed the contents to a couple of builders here at the time.
From the letter of December 28 1972:
MONEY
Rosemary’s Auntie Lill Crosbie is visiting us from Australia. On Christmas Eve, we took her to a carol service at St Paul's Cathedral. She enjoyed seeing the cathedral, but the service itself was terrible. The congregation was, for all intents and purposes, ignored throughout. Not even invited to join in with the carols. The only time any attention was paid to us was during the time normally allotted to the sermon. I say normally allotted because on this occasion the unidentified robed gentleman who entered the pulpit devoted the time entirely to a grubby appeal for money. “Let's see your big coins,” he said. “We don't want the small ones.” Being somewhat sceptical about organised religion, Rosemary and I thought it might have just been a misinterpretation on our part, but no, Auntie Lill was most annoyed about the whole service and she considered the way the speaker went on was very undignified
And on the subject of undignified appeals for money, all the trades people -- from the rubbish men to the newspaper boys -- put their hands out for a Christmas tip. Our newspaper boy rang our front door bell at 6am for his collection. Fortunately, I was awake and dressing for work - otherwise his reception might have been a little less than Christmassy. If the rubbish men don't get tipped suitably for Christmas, you can be in trouble. They suddenly develop a terrible habit of spilling rubbish all over your yard. This year we had a carol singer call on us. Rosemary nearly fell over when she opened the front door and this little girl, without warning, burst into a reedy and off-tune rendition of a carol. Harley, however, was most impressed — no doubt because his musical appreciation is still quite uncritical and unsophisticated. So Rosemary gave the kid two bob.
Harley has been very good over the last few weeks after a period during which he was an absolute monster. “No” was the only word he seemed to know. And sit-down strikes became the order (or disorder) of the day. We had a terrible fright one night. We were having our bath when we heard a crash followed by screams. Rosemary, dripping wet, raced into his room to find that somehow he'd fallen out of his cot. Heaven only knows how he did it, but he was extremely lucky to escape with nothing worse than a severe shaking and a bruise or two.
DISAPPEARING NEWS
I was talking to my friend Graeme Turpie last night while filing a story for Radio 3DB and he tells me that 3BO Bendigo has sacked the editor, Dave Horsfall, and his sidekick, Ron Matthews, and is closing down the newsroom. Apparently the new 3BO manager doesn't consider local news is worth bothering about. Graeme tells me there's an almighty row brewing between the station and the Australian Journalists’ Association over many unpleasant aspects of the affair. Already, 3BO is being threatened with a total boycott by all news services, among them 3DB and the Bendigo Advertiser. This could leave the station without any news at all.
From a letter dated January 13 1973:
PARIS VISIT
Rosemary and Auntie Lill had a good but rather hectic three-day trip to Paris. [Cost £23 each for travel and accommodation.] They stayed in an hotel just below the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. Rosemary managed to handle the language problem quite well and was very pleased with the way things had gone. They had one funny experience in a restaurant. Rosemary went to the toilet and on leaving to return to her table was confronted by a woman who put out her hand for a tip. Rosemary grudgingly gave her 10 centimes and got a dirty look in return. As she resumed her meal, the woman kept looking at her with a pained expression. And finally went up to the waiter and obviously complained about the tip. The next things Rosemary knew was this woman came at her table and demanded an increased tip. To get rid of her, Rosemary gave her a franc. This cheered the toilet woman up no end and announced that for this money, Auntie Lill could go to the toilet for free.
BABY BEHAVIOUR
Harley was very good while Rosemary was away. He gave me no trouble at all. He seemed to enjoy having the workmen and their tools to play with. As for the workmen, they were very tolerant about the whole thing.
Yesterday Harley put on one of his abominable performances while Rosemary was shopping in the West End and when he knew he had her over a barrel. He point-blank refused to walk anywhere or to sit in the pusher. Every time she put him in the pusher he just stiffened his body and slid out onto the footpath. He insisted on being carried everywhere and lay down on the footpath, refusing to move until she did so. By the time Rosemary got the little devil home, she felt that strangulation was too good for him.
He slept an unbroken 14 hours last night, and Rosemary reports that he's now back to his usual cheerful and comparatively-willing self. So far, he is making little effort to speak. His conversation is limited at present to “no”, “oh dear” and “I don't know”, and occasionally, “little bugger”.
POP MUSIC
By sheer chance, I got a scoop a few weeks back on the sacking in the middle of a gig in London of the famous Australian pop group, Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs. [Too loud, I think.] I sold it to the “Sydney Daily Mirror” which used it an an inside page lead story.
From a letter of February 13 1973:
COMEDY FILM
We've been given press tickets to the British premiere of the film “The Adventures of Barry McKenzie”. As you probably heard, it's a very vulgar film, but being rather vulgar people, we enjoyed it very much. We had a great laugh. During my time as 3AW correspondent here I got to know the film director Bruce Beresford who showed us the script. At the time, we quite frankly didn't know how it could be transferred to film. And didn't know how he and Barry Humphries [the writer] got away with it. I think the film will go down well here because the comic strip which the film was based on has a large following in “Private Eye” magazine. I understand the film was banned in Australia until quite recently. Barry Crocker, who plays Barry McKenzie, was at the premiere and afterwards I grabbed an interview with him for 3DB.
The film was poorly rated, but Bruce Beresford went on to direct more than 10 admired films, not least “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Breaker Morant”. Bruce did show an interest in turning my book “God’s Triangle” into a film, but this was scuppered by one of the producers who held the option at that time.
From a letter dated February 24 1973:
SACKING SCANDAL
Following the dismissal of 3BO News Editor, David Horsfall: The latest development is that the conman announcer who engineered the whole operation with the approval of the boss, an old friend from Adelaide, has been arrested for embezzlement, among other things. It isn't all that long since he was released from prison for impersonating a policeman. The trouble is, irreparable damage has been done to the 3BO Newsroom and to the standing of 3BO. Dave Horsfall is back at work after sick leave, but he's due to finish soon. As he gets a sizeable sum in severance pay, getting another job isn't terribly urgent.
Dave Horsfall went on to greater things as a prominent and very popular feature writer on the “Bendigo Advertiser”. He also maintained his researches and writings about the history of Bendigo’s large Chinese community which dates back to the gold rush in the city in the second half of the 1800s. He died on June 7 1998 from a heart attack at his home while working on his beloved Imperial typewriter. He was arguably one of the best known and widely admired journalists in Bendigo and district. He was survived by wife Isobel (who died in 2008) and his three daughter Jeanne, Rozlind and Susan.
After Dave Horsfall was forced out of 3BO, new owners gave it a new name, TripleMMM. It became a pop station with little interest in news. It carried some local items, but these weren’t provided by the wonderful newsroom headed by Dave Horsfall.
The consequence is that Bendigo, with a population of around 130,000, no longer has a radio news service that can be proud of its contribution to the welfare and betterment of the city. Local democracy is also undermined. Back in my time, 3BO attended all the city council meetings, reporting on important developments that otherwise never see the light of day. Nowadays, there is much that goes unscrutinised.
From a letter of March 12 1973:
PREGNANGY UPDATE
Rosemary is getting quite large and the baby continues to be very active. She’s finding it difficult to get comfortable at night and consequently isn’t sleeping very well. By the end of the day she is exhausted.
Earlier chapters can be found HERE