The Weekly Review

May 22, 2017

Calmer chameleon: Boy George’s new outlook on life

The teenage George O’Dowd growing up in London would not have believed that the 55-year-old artist who became Boy George is still in show business. “I was from Woolwich,” he says. “People from Woolwich didn’t become famous. I went for careers advice at school and I’d say, ‘I want to work in fashion or be a makeup artist or work with bands’ and they’d look at you like you were insane. ‘Maybe you should be a bit more realistic – factory work’.”

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The Weekly Review

February 6, 2017

The reinvention of Tim Finn

When Tim Finn turned 64 in June last year, his children learnt The Beatles’ When I’m Sixty-Four and played it to him. “It was so good,” Tim says. They’re into The Beatles? “Oh, obsessed.” His son Harper, 18, is a guitarist, and daughter Elliott, 13, is a guitarist and drummer. Elliott is obsessed with the ’60s generally, Tim says.

“She took me into her room the other night and played me A Day in the Life,” he says. “I thought I knew it intimately and backwards … The lights were flickering and I was listening to it with her and I went into this whole other place with that song. Children can do that.

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The Weekly Review

September 14 – 20, 2016

Media star Kate Langbroek on family and fame

It’s the laugh that is the signature, that chuckle that is right now ringing out across the St Kilda cafe. It seems to embody the joy Kate Langbroek gets out of a surreal thought or a bit of mischief or the innate humour of tiny stuff in our everyday lives, the comedy borne from recognition and familiarity.

We’re having coffee and Kate is sharing random thoughts – she can’t stand parents who talk endlessly about their kids, who bag Halloween as “too American” (fun-stoppers), and she says she hates cyclists when she’s driving and hates drivers when she’s cycling.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

August 24 – 30, 2016

Secrets of my success: Lisa Messenger

When did you first realise you were successful?

When things started flowing in a fairly natural form that started to mean success. I began my first business on October 22, 2001, at 31. I had 11 years of really nothing, churning along in business, over-servicing, under-charging, being everything to everyone, comfortable but not excited every day – 11 years of that slog. And finally I got to a point where a light bulb dropped and I thought, ‘This is what I want to do’.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

August 3 – 9, 2016

Olympic champions explain how winning gold changed their lives

They’re a rarefied breed. Since the first modern Olympic Games in Athens in 1896, just 267 Australians have brought home a gold medal.

For every one of them, this peak of sporting achievement was the culmination of years of sweat, sacrifice and determination – and afterwards, their lives would never be the same.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

June 15 – 21, 2016

Meet Australia’s highest-paid sportsman, Andrew Bogut

I’m standing next to Andrew Bogut in his management’s office in Port Melbourne.

Actually, as he is 2.13 metres (seven feet) tall, it feels like I’m standing under Andrew Bogut.

But his height isn’t the only eye-opening aspect of our time together.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

May 11 – 17, 2016

Judging Nigella: Up close with the domestic goddess

Let’s clear this up from the start: Nigella Lawson chafes at her image as a sex symbol. Sitting with the woman they call the Domestic Goddess in a Melbourne hotel room, I can see a flicker of annoyance on her face when I bring up the sex symbol thing.

Maybe it’s because she’s been asked about it so many times before. She’s certainly sensitive about the whole topic. Still, as artless as she might consider the description, I’m not going to avoid the issue.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

May 4 – 10, 2016

Actor, writer and mother of six Madeleine West hits the mother load

Madeleine West has given us some time today, which is no small thing, given she is an actor (famously playing Danielle McGuire in Underbelly), writer and … did I mention she has six children under the age of eight?

Did that sentence make you feel tired? Or just awed? Who has six children these days? The answer is someone who had four children and then in 2014 found herself pregnant with twins. “They were a lovely little surprise,” Madeleine says, smiling.

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The Weekly Review

September 30 – October 6, 2015

Behind The Voice with Delta Goodrem

Delta Goodrem breezes into the room wearing a glamorous black dress and black nail polish, bangles jangling, that famous cascading blonde hair framing one of Australia’s most famous faces. Any casual viewer of The Voice knows she’s telegenic, but up close this mega-wattage serves to reinforce the truism that some people are born to be in show business.

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The Weekly Review

September 23 – 29, 2015

David Gulpilil on Life, Love and the Land

At 62 (“That’s what they tell me; I was born in the bush so I got no proper birth certificate”) and with a strong measure of self-punishment behind him, David Gulpilil is in amazing shape. He takes off his shirt for our photo shoot – he’s lean, a little wiry, like the young dancer he once was, and he moves with the fluidity of the dancer that he will always be.

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The Weekly Review

September 16 – 22, 2015

Home is Where Megan Gale’s Heart is

Megan Gale is telling me about doing her own stunts in this year’s Mad Max: Fury Road, directed by George Miller. “It was close to zero, I was nude and it was day one,” Megan says. “I was up on a tower and I had to jump on to a rope. And I had to land, dig into the ground and throw on this smock that my character wears, and do it all in one take. That was really tricky, especially when you’re in front of a good 100 crew members.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

July 15 – 21, 2015

Nick & Jack Riewoldt on Maddie’s Legacy

Nick Riewoldt is reflecting on how losing his 26-year-old sister Maddie has changed him. “What’s most difficult to come to terms with is that it’s fundamentally changed you as a person to your absolute core,” he says.

“But outside everything is the same. The world goes on, but you’ll never be the same. I don’t know to what extent it’s changed me. It’s changed the way I think about what’s truly important. It really angers me that it takes something like this to make that happen.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

July 8 – 14, 2015

Catherine Andrews in The Premier League

One day when Catherine Andrews was an 18-year-old student at Monash University she walked into the common room in the college where she was living and met a young brainiac called Daniel. He was watching Sale of the Century and answering all the questions.

“In between answering all the questions he was being very, very funny,” she says. “I thought, ‘Oh, interesting’, you know? It was definitely one of those moments where I thought, ‘I’m going to sit next to you’.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

July 1 – 7, 2015

Rachel Khoo, TV’s Latest Food Star

When she was trying to sell the idea for her cooking show to production companies a few years ago, it didn’t take long for Rachel Khoo to develop a strong suspicion of those who thought playing on her sex appeal might be a marketing winner.

“I noticed when I was going around the production companies there was a tendency to push you into a very sexualised [area]. I am who I am and I didn’t want to be made into some caricature. Queen of Tarts. That says it all.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

June 24 – 30, 2015

Margaret Pomeranz on Life After David

There’s a very funny, and telling, story in Margaret Pomeranz’s new book about food and film. At the Cannes Film Festival one year, Margaret (“Quite a party girl in my youth,” she writes) realised at 3am she didn’t have the keys to her apartment and, wondering whose door to knock on, she chose David Stratton’s.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

June 17 – 23, 2015

Who Could Make Julie Bishop Feel Starstruck?

It’s Saturday morning in Melbourne and Julie Bishop is having coffee in the city. She’s just flown in from New Zealand and, even on a weekend, faces a typically busy day, but she has found an hour to give us – no easy feat in a life as packed as hers.

Amid the tourists in the lobby and the passers-by on Little Collins Street, she impeccably dressed, with an efficient, friendly and, often, endearingly mischievous air. She has the demeanor of both measured seriousness and seeming to be ready for, and then relishing, a good laugh.

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The Weekly Review

June 10 – 16, 2015

Bert Newton Unplugged at Rocky Horror Show

Bert Newton is relaxed in his dressing room at Sydney’s Lyric Theatre, where he’s playing The Narrator in The Rocky Horror Show. The royal blue velvet blazer is off, replaced by a dressing gown. The famous hairpiece is off, too. The minders and dressers have melted away, the TV cameras and photographers at the media event have gone and suddenly it’s just the two of us. And it’s very much Bert Unplugged.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

April 1 – 7, 2015

The Wright Stuff

The last time I’d seen Tyler Wright was on the evening news in late January, in terrible footage of her being crushed against the wall of a concrete pool during a surfing competition at Sydney’s Cronulla. After coming off a wave, she had been swept towards the pool but attempts to retrieve her board were thwarted when her leg rope caught around the rail of a fence.

After the battering, she emerged from the water to be comforted by her brother, Owen, also a professional surfer. She was taken to hospital having suffered major bruising and swelling, a bulged disc and suspected nerve damage in her hip.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

December 10 – 16, 2014

The Heart of Giving

Alex Waislitz is a highly successful businessman who is making it his business to give away $50 million. He wants to do it while he’s still reasonably young, and so his three children can share that experience and see the wonderful effect that that money could have on people and communities who need it.

Waislitz earlier this year pledged to put the money into projects through the Waislitz Foundation. He has said he wanted to set himself the challenge of spending the money sooner rather than later and that it’s a little sad when “wealthy people wait until very late in life before they start giving away part of their fortune”.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

December 3 – 9, 2014

The Finish Line

Cadel Evans sometimes stops his car around Barwon Heads if he spots a cyclist with a flat, and hops out to help. The local road warriors are a bit startled to see the Tour de France winner, but they’re also grateful. “There’s quite a few occasions when I’ve been stuck on the road with a problem and a little bit of help goes a long way,” Evans says. “I normally drive with a pump and a spare tube in my car in case I do see someone because, when you’re stuck on the side of the road and you can’t get home, you’ve got a problem.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

November 26 – December 2, 2014

Cold Comfort

Belle Brockhoff is brave and canny and can handle blow-back – after all, she’s had a bit of it in the past year. But anyone who can take on Vladimir Putin on the world stage is unlikely to let a few internet trolls bother them.

In August last year, a month after Russia’s anti-gays laws were introduced and just six months before she would compete as a snowboarder at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Brockhoff told the ABC’s Lateline she found the laws disrespectful and a “little bit sad”.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

November 19 – 25, 2014

Fair Cop

When Ron Iddles needed a break from his often gruelling work as a senior sergeant in the homicide squad, he knew exactly what to do: he would jump on a bus and go to Sydney or Adelaide.

Except it wasn’t a bus, it was a coach, and Iddles was the driver. “If I had three days off, I’d ring my mate who owned the company and say, ‘I think I need a trip, need to get out, switch off’.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

November 12 – 18, 2014

Legacy of Love

Connie Johnson is facing death in the way she faced her three cancer diagnoses at age 12, 22 and 33: with an inspirational courage and grace. So it’s a privilege to meet the woman who wants to leave this world a place that’s better, where fewer people die because they might be inspired to seek early intervention.

She moves slowly and talks softly in the hotel restaurant where we meet and, having read her book the day before, I know her story well – well enough for tears to fall straight onto my desk in the mid afternoon.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

October 29 – November 4, 2014

Generation Next

At six, Matilda Brown found it hard to reconcile that the man sitting next to her on the couch – her father, the actor Bryan Brown – had just been shot on the TV screen. For a little girl, the drama and reality sometimes got a bit mixed up.

“It’s the strangest thing when you’re a kid and you watch your dad get shot. I would find that really hard. And dad dies in a lot of his films. He’d be sitting right next to me but I would be terrified. He’d be saying ‘I’m right here. I’m still alive’. And I’d be crying.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

October 22 – 28, 2014

What’s The Big Idea?

Mark Carnegie had big dreams as a young man. Big, deep dreams. “I tried to be Jacques Cousteau and failed,” he says. “I was trying to do marine zoology and go off and have [Cousteau’s boat] the Calypso and that life.

“I got to week two or three in zoology at first-year university and I met this guy who’s now a professor of anatomy at one of the South Australian universities and I realised I could work 24 hours a day, seven days a week from now until I die and there is absolutely no way I am going to understand a 50th of the zoology he did. So if I’m going to find any measure of success I need to go and find something I’m better at than zoology.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 24 – 30, 2014

Special Guest

Lunch in Paris with Juliette Binoche: the commitment was in Donna Guest’s diary a few weeks ago. For a Francophile with an international retail empire styled around a French aesthetic, a work day doesn’t get much better than that.

Before the lunch, Guest spent the morning in an apartment in the Marais quarter overseeing a photo shoot with the French actress and style icon, who has signed on as the face of Blue Illusion, Guest’s women’s clothing empire. The images will be used in the retail chain’s catalogues, its windows and online.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 17 – 23, 2014

Bob Hawke Opens Up

Bob Hawke is reflecting on a favourite moment of calm in his still busy life. “I have the most beautiful spot in Sydney,” he says. “I have a beautiful natural forest going right down to the water and a boatshed where I catch fish. And I sit on my verandah smoking my cigar and I look out there doing my cryptics [crosswords] and I’m very happy.”

It’s an Arcadian image, and one to which I can attest having visited the Hawke home last year to interview his wife, Blanche d’Alpuget. The views from their house are indeed stunning. It’s a house full of art and sculptures and sunshine and a demonstrable love between its owners. It’s no wonder that today Hawke sounds like a blessed man.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 10 – 16, 2014

Bombs Before Bedtime

When working as a foreign correspondent out of Bangkok, Zoe Daniel would often arrive home from an urban riot or a flood or another disaster and then walk straight into her children’s bedroom to read them a bedtime story.

She remembers an almost weekly commute to Malaysia to interview asylum seekers in 2011. “We’d come back from interviewing these refugees about their very difficult situation … interviewing a lot of the children about how they weren’t allowed to go to a proper school, parents didn’t have a right to work, they’d sit around in Malaysia sometimes for years on end, waiting to get a formal transfer or get on a boat.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 3 – 9, 2014

George Calombaris: Heart Svelte

At his city diner The Press Club, George Calombaris sits down for lunch. Well, what’s left of him does. He has lost 22 kilograms over the past two-and-a-half years and he’s become the pin-up boy for how to lose weight and get fit with a sharp U-turn in diet and lifestyle.

The thing about being a public figure is that your figure is very public. Viewers of MasterChef over the past couple of years watched as a larger-sized Calombaris, who admits he was overweight, toned up.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

August 13 – 19, 2014

In The Eye of The Storm

Sometimes perspective is a powerful thing. On the same day in June last year that Helen Kapalos read the headline on a media website: “Helen Kapalos suffers unfortunate ‘on-screen death’ ”, she was diagnosed with an ovarian tumour. At the time she didn’t know if it was benign or malignant or whether other organs would need to be removed.

A few weeks later surgeons removed the tumour – benign, as it turned out – from her right ovary. The trauma had added poignancy given her mother Joanna had died of cancer aged 56 after benign fibroids on her uterus had turned into malignant, inoperable cancer.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

July 20 – August 5, 2014

Queen of Arts

Naomi Milgrom meets me at the reception of her Sportsgirl/Sussan group in Cremorne and immediately offers to take me on a tour. This is an unlikely privilege, not just because Milgrom is one of Australia’s wealthiest women – the sole owner of the fashion empire that spans more than 500 Sussan, Suzanne Grae and Sportsgirl stores – but also because she is famed for her reluctance to engage with the media.

From several rooms there are views of the Yarra River. There’s an “internal” garden populated by two long rows of silver birches. There are art pieces everywhere.

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The Weekly Review

June 18 – 24, 2014

The Demon Inside

There have been many false dawns at the Melbourne Football Club, as any tortured Melbourne supporter will tell you. (It’s not hard to work out who are the tortured supporters: they’re the ones who say “I barrack for Melbourne”.)

Luckily for them, the torture has only been going for most of the past 50 years – since 1964, when the Demons won their last premiership. To put that in context: JFK was shot 10 months earlier. The Beatles stormed Melbourne. Ron Barassi was 28 years old. It’s a long time ago.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

May 28 – June 3, 2014

Zest for Life

It’s Saturday morning in a city hotel in Melbourne and Lorna Jane Clarkson is telling her story with all the enthusiasm, excitement and brio you might expect if you’ve read her books or her blogs, or even met her, which is not uncommon given the priority she gives to connecting with her customers and fans. When your name is on 160 stores around the world, you’re No. 26 on Business Review Weekly magazine’s top 30 richest self-made women, with an estimated wealth of $50 million, and you’re on the cusp of opening a range of new cafés, stores and wellness centres, you have every reason to be excited about life.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

May 14 – 20, 2014

Something about Kate

If there weren’t so many other visual treats at the extraordinary historic home and garden of Kate Durham and Julian Burnside – Reg Mombassa paintings, murals, sculptures – you could spend a long time around their books on language, art, politics, writing. This is a house whose occupants clearly connect with the world of culture and ideas.

Kate Durham, 57, walks me around. Outside there are industrial-sized sculptures, little water features, a tiny wooden bridge (which Durham painted) over a tiny pond. There’s a real secret garden feel. Today she points out a tawny frogmouth sitting in the peppercorn tree.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

April 30 – May 6, 2014

Out on the Street

Peta Brady was writing a play last year about the working girls of St Kilda and the dangers they face when Tracy Connelly, a veteran of the St Kilda area and a woman Brady knew, was murdered. It was in July that Connelly’s body was found in the van in which she lived with her boyfriend. The woman described as a “shining light” in this community had suffered a violent death.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

April 23 – 29, 2014

Life Without Limits

Six weeks before he died, on September 8, 2006, Peter Brock phoned the woman who had shared his life for 28 years and from whom he had recently separated. “He called me to say, ‘Bevo, I want to tell you I’ve finally retired’,” recalls Bev Brock. “And I knew that was huge because he’d had a number of attempts.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

April 2 – 8, 2014

Ray Martin: The Next Chapter

She’s thousands of kilometres away, on a small screen, but from where I sit it’s evident this is a father-daughter relationship based on mutual respect, sense of humour and a shared passion for writing.

I’ve been allowed a glimpse of the Martin household, in Ray and Di Martin’s gracious home on Sydney’s north shore. On a computer screen in front of us is Jenna, Martin’s 29-year-old daughter, Skyping from Los Angeles (thanks to the technological prowess of Jenna’s younger brother Luke, 23, who wants to be an actor).

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

March 26 – April 1, 2014

The Life That Barry Built

With his swept-back hair, tanned face and the insouciance of a world traveller, Barry Du Bois looks as though he’s just stepped off a yacht, something he’s done a lot of in the past few years. His own yacht is in Turkey right now and he’s a bit landlocked here at Channel Ten in Sydney, but he’s ready and willing to take us on a journey, and a quite amazing one.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

March 19 – 25, 2014

Man of Many Colours

He looks ridiculously toned, but if you’d ridden from Melbourne to Perth on a bicycle you’d look fit, too. I’ve caught up with Shane Crawford at a café in South Melbourne. The question is, though, which Shane Crawford? Because, as he admits, there are several. “There’s probably five,” he says with a smile.

We all know two of them. First there’s the Hawthorn footballer and Brownlow medallist who plays the clown on Nine’s The Footy Show, a man who will happily lie down and be covered in spiders.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

March 12 – 18, 2014

Emma Alberici, The Interviewer

Emma Alberici’s parents are part of that extraordinary generation of Italians who came to Australia in the 1950s and, through sharing their culture – notably their food, their wine, their coffee and their dolce vita approach – enriched our country.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

February 26 – March 4, 2014

The Story of Adam

It’s the type of laugh that is a blessing to a performer: one that you want to laugh along with, and in this case it’s almost impossible not to. Adam Richard’s laugh arrives often, a wicked outburst, and in our time together it frequently follows a story or thought relating to something less than ideal that happened in his life.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

November 27 – December 3, 2013

A Stellar Career

The other day, Stella Young was in a supermarket and fell into a pile of carrots. Now, that’s what most of us would call bloody annoying, but Young calls it material. As a comedian she knew it was gold. “I lost my footing and fell in this pile of carrots,” she says. “It could be like, ‘Oh, my god, disabled girl falls in a pile of carrots. How appalling!’ But actually it’s incredibly hilarious.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

November 6 – 12, 2013

Back on Track

Jana Pittman does everything straight ahead. It was true for her hurdling and running career – she was twice world champion in the 400-metre hurdles – true for her new career as a bobsledder, and certainly true in the way she speaks. You are not left wondering what is in her mind, a trait that has often got her into trouble.

After all the negative press – more on that later – I ask Pittman whether there was a moment when she decided she didn’t care any more about what people thought. “I don’t think I’d say I never care, I’m too sensitive for that,” she says.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

October 2 – 8, 2013

My Three Sons

In her marvellously crowded Richmond studio – amid the easels, the paintings, the books, the multitude of mementoes – Mirka Mora is reflecting on bringing up three sons. “I’m a very proud mother,” she says, handing me a coffee. “I’m purring all the time like a big cat because all my kittens are beautiful. And they’re very nice to each other, too. They are three very powerful people in my life.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 11 – 17, 2013

Back from the Brink

Kerryn Phelps could have died in 2003 from what’s called a pulmonary embolism, an adverse effect from the hormone treatment she had started a few weeks earlier. Facing a typically frantic day and heading to the airport for a crucial meeting with then prime minister John Howard, Phelps, then 45 and in her final months as president of the Australian Medical Association, couldn’t make it across the room without losing her breath.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 4 – 10, 2013

Beyond the Pale

Nazeem Hussain is a young man at the beginning of what promises to be a strong career in comedy and he’s a great storyteller, which will help in that regard. We’ve met on a wild and woolly day in Prahran and, amid jokes about what the wind has done to his hair for a photo shoot, he tells a great story about his can-do Sri Lankan-born mother, Mumtaza, who raised Hussain and his two sisters on her own in Burwood.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

August 7 – 13, 2013

The Other Side of Effie

I am walking along George Street, Sydney, looking for Effie. Well, actually, I’m looking for the actor Mary Coustas, so without the big hair it’s going to be harder to find her in the crowd. There’s been a venue mix-up, which is why we’re tracking each other on our mobiles.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

June 19 – 25, 2013

He’s Fired ... Up

Mark Bouris hates the word “passion” with a passion. When I ask him what qualities may have sparked his success and whether he has a passion for financial services, he says, “I don’t really like that word passion, to be honest with you. I wasn’t driven to [financial services], I didn’t have a passion for it, I didn’t have a feel for it.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

June 12 – 18, 2013

Voice of Reason

It’s a great radio voice, and it’s a voice of reason and civility. We’re sitting in the Sydney sunshine in Geraldine Doogue’s back garden. Some budgies in a cage are chirping away, her 19-year-old son is dispatched to look for the family dog, who hasn’t been sighted for a while, and it’s a chance for me to grill the griller, the journalist whose warmth has exuded from television screens and radio speakers for 30 years.

She’s the reasonable voice amid lots of shouting and shrillness and I ask if that’s been a deliberate stance.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

June 5 – 11, 2013

From Bingo to Jackpots

David Wenham wanted to be an actor since he was a young boy, but in the working-class Sydney suburb where he grew up, it didn’t seem to be a dream that was going to come true. “I knew what I would have liked to do, but I didn’t actually believe it was possible,” he says.

“The generation now is infused with that sense of self-belief and confidence. I was probably at the end of that era where people had to know their place and you don’t actually move out of where you belong.”

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

May 15 – 21, 2013

Force of Nature

We’re sitting in Layne Beachley’s outdoor area, from which you can see the rolling waves of Manly, where she surfs every day. It’s a stunning Sydney day and her husband, former INXS band member Kirk Pengilly, is walking around without a shirt. It’s such a fragrant and Arcadian environment that it’s strange hearing there are flies in the ointment of Beachley’s life.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

May 1 – 7, 2013

Humphries Unplugged

Barry Humphries sits down in the café and orders cake. No coffee, just four little cupcakes arrive on a plate. It is the afternoon, after all, and he might need a sugar hit, especially when he ponders an impending work schedule that would crush others half his age (he is 79).

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

April 17 – 23, 2013

The Hat is Back

In the days and weeks after December 15, 2011, the evening he fell off a ladder at his Richmond home and sustained severe injuries, we faced the prospect of a world without Molly. And, for millions of Australians who grew up with him on their television sets, it would have been a much less-entertaining world, a world without a version of English that Molly Meldrum made his own and that we all came to love.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

March 27 – April 2, 2013

Food Philosophy

If I told Stephanie Alexander everything about the food journey of me and my kids – a true confessional – I think we’d be talking a good pass, but could use some work.

Yes, it’s never McDonald’s (well, once). Yes, it’s never KFC. Yes, we set the table and talk over dinner. Yes, at the impassioned request of an 11-year-old we sometimes eat at the coffee table in front of Modern Family. Yes, we eat fresh produce nicely cooked.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

January 10 – 16, 2013

Revealed! Mr Paparazzi

Darryn Lyons is back in his home town Geelong after 25 years in London and he’s in a philosophical mood about what he’s learnt from life, and what is really important.

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The Weekly Review

November 28 – December 4, 2012

Miss Sunrise

Samantha Armytage is coping well with fame. Maybe there’s still a bit of the country girl in her keeping it real. Still, being on television – she’s the co-presenter of Channel Seven’s Weekend Sunrise – can change things.

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The Weekly Review

December 5 – 11, 2012

Picture Perfect

Ian Darling’s magnificent obsession with Paul Kelly has resulted in a long journey towards an understanding of this great artist and, after 2½ years working on this project, Darling has made a beautiful and strangely moving film.

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The Weekly Review

November 14 – 20, 2012

In Search of Male Orders

Gareth Andrews remembers the day he knew his life had changed. His marriage of 23 years broke up in 2001 and he soon knew he was in trouble.

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The Weekly Review

October 17 – 23, 2012

Holding Court

With his quirky, self-deprecating sense of humor, love of sport and easygoing nature Michael Mori – or Dan to his friends and family – will fit very nicely into his new home, Melbourne.

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The Weekly Review

October 10 – 16, 2012

Sea Change

Mid-morning and I am at John McArdle’s stables at Mornington. Or, if you’ve been up since 3am as McArdle is every week day, it’s much later than that. But he’s still got the energy to show me the 27 horses here and tell me about the one that got away.

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The Weekly Review

October 3 – 9, 2012

All That I Am

It probably shouldn’t be surprising that a writer of Anna Funder’s calibre can experience a crisis of confidence. A blank page is, after all, a blank page, and it doesn’t matter how many awards or accolades you’ve received, which in her case is many.

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The Weekly Review

September 26 – October, 2012

Never a Dull Moment

Dux of her school in Perth, she could have been anything, and in fact turned out to be several things. She’s an actor, a television presenter (Destination Flavour, on SBS) a dancer, and a teacher of dancing, to adults and to kids after school. Oh, and she’s also a medical doctor.

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The Weekly Review

September 12 – 18, 2012

The Rake Charmer

Dangerous thing, this acting. At rehearsals in Sydney for the ABC’s new series of Rake, an actor has walked out into the darkness, miscalculated the edge of the stage, fallen off and broken his shoulder. Rehearsals stop while an ambulance is called.

Richard Roxburgh, the show’s star and co-creator, is sympathetic to his colleague and remembers his involvement in a slightly similar incident.

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The Weekly Review

August 29 – September 4, 2012

A Life of Balance

Turning 50 can provoke all sorts of responses – maybe finally getting a sports car, having a crack at that novel, racing into the gym to re-version yourself. But taking off your clothes and being photographed for the cover of one Australia’s biggest-selling magazines is not one most of us would consider.

That’s what Deborah Hutton did in January. I’m sitting having coffee with Hutton in her stylish Sydney house overlooking the ocean, so I ask her why.

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The Weekly Review

August 8 – 14, 2012

What Jacki Did Next

It’s the early hours in New York City and Jacki Weaver has, at last, retired to her hotel room. It’s been a big night. She’s just turned in another performance in the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya on Broadway. Tom Hanks and Liv Ullmann have come backstage to congratulate Weaver and the rest of the Aussie cast.

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The Weekly Review

July 18 – 24, 2012

The Gift Of Bali

The last time I saw Jason Childs, a former colleague at The Age, was when I bumped into him one night at the Sari Club in Bali. It was, as usual, packed with Australians and people from many other countries. With its big “SC” sign towering over the streets of Legian it was easy to find and a well-known meeting spot. Childs and I had a chat over a Bintang beer – a bit about life at The Age, a bit about his life in Bali – and said goodbye.

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The Weekly Review

July 11 – 17, 2012

Healing Hands

Jayashri Kulkarni first became interested in becoming a doctor when she was eight and a student at Parkdale State School.

“At school I was playing with a kid and she fell over and skinned her knee,” she says. “I took her to the basin, washed her knee and took her into the teacher, who said ‘Ooh, that’s a very good job, maybe you should become doctor when you grow up’.

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The Weekly Review

June 13 – 19, 2012

Will Ricker

Will Ricker hasn’t always lived the glamorous life. When he arrived in London in 1989, having left his job in real estate in Melbourne, he found himself working as a doorman at a nightclub.

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The Weekly Review

June 6 – 12, 2012

A Melbourne Kind of Guy

He’s very recognisable sitting in this hotel room in jeans and casual shirt, those cool specs and a bit of relaxed stubble, but Guy Pearce is unrecognisable in his new film Prometheus. Five hours of make-up every day will do that.

Listening to the utterly unpretentious Pearce with his less-than-jubilant attitude towards celebrity, it’s tempting to imagine he might have wished he had five hours’ worth of make-up on at the height of Neighbours craziness in the 1980s.

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The Weekly Review

May 30 – June 5, 2012

Bohemian Rhapsody

Standing in the living room of Wendy Whiteley’s home on Sydney’s North Shore – this room was husband Brett Whiteley’s studio until he outgrew it – it’s not hard to imagine why Brett found this such a superb place to paint from. With its views of the boats and ferries on the dazzling waters of Sydney Harbour, Whiteley called it “optical ecstasy”.

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The Weekly Review

May 16 – 22, 2012

Lost For Words? Not Likely

He’s back, and in a role unexpected by everyone except perhaps himself: game-show host. But then Andrew Denton has always enjoyed working against the tide. So much so that the resource materials he used to create his new “word game” show Randling were what he calls “old media”.

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The Weekly Review

May 9 – 15, 2012

Helen Reddy

As I sat on a little bench with Helen Reddy in the dazzling Sydney sunshine in the shared garden of her apartment, I have to admit to a degree of surprise at how detached she is from what was a stunning career in music. She is the diametric opposite of the “lovey” performer. No talk of “journeys” or “craft” or “artforms” today.

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The Weekly Review

April 18 – 24, 2012

Rare Insight

You see her working that room on SBS’ Insight, a cool, calm, collected traffic cop for ideas and comments, with that dimply smile that has the power to disarm things when they get heated, which they sometimes do.

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The Weekly Review

March 7 – 13, 2012

Keller Instinct

Amanda Keller turned 50 on Saturday, February 25. She’s not unhappy about it, especially since her current TV gig is based around being a baby boomer on Channel Ten’s Talkin’ ’Bout Your Generation.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

February 8 – 14, 2012

Brett Kirk

Brett Kirk’s “office” takes your breath away. It’s an open-air cafe of sorts at a sea bath near Coogee in Sydney. Kirk comes here most mornings after meditation and dropping his children at dancing and other activities.

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The Weekly Review

December 7 – 13, 2011

Bonjour Vietnam

Luke Nguyen’s earliest experiences with food weren’t all great. As a kid helping out in his parents’ restaurant in Cabramatta, western Sydney, it was hard for him to understand that he was learning a craft that would become his life.

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The Weekly Review

October 26 – November 1, 2011

Grilling Webber

So, when did international sports superstars get so charming? Aren’t formula one drivers, with all that money and attention, meant to be self-absorbed? I’m in the local library with my daughter when the phone rings. It’s an unscheduled call from Mark Webber. He apologises for hassles that scrambled our plans to meet up in person. “When does it suit you to chat tonight?” he asks. “You tell me a good time.” I tell him a good time. “Great, I’ll call you then.”

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The Weekly Review

October 11 – 18, 2011

Black Caviar

Jill Taylor’s early involvement in owning one of the greatest horses Australia has produced can best be described as half-hearted. Her enthusiasm has sky-rocketed since, but four years ago the only black caviar she’d heard of came in little bottles.

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The Weekly Review

September 21 – 27, 2011

Jeff Welcomes A Clean Slate

He’s a force of nature and not to be argued with. Which is why I didn’t when Jeff Kennett strongly suggested I visit the reading room at the State Library before writing this article.

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The Weekly Review

August 6 – 11, 2011

Easy Rider

You can see it a long way off. Talent, that is. Being average at a few sports has over the years given me the opportunity to know my place. My limitations were imposed on me by the shining talents doing stuff I couldn’t. It was the best type of reality check. It is interesting and instructive to be just good enough at something – in my case surfing, football and tennis – to see up close what you’re not and will never be.

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The Weekly Review

July 13 – 19, 2011

Mellowed Yellow

It crippled him physically and emotionally and, even today, almost five years after it forced him to quit the Wiggles, you can hear the pain in Greg Page’s voice.

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The Weekly Review

June 6 – 12, 2011

The StetsonÂ’s Back

Who can forget those bloodshot eyes and that evil smirk from under that massive Stetson? (Clive James said the band around his hat resembled a bunch of crushed budgerigars.) Or that ruthless, nasal delivery, and the clipped, arrogant put-downs (“That Cliff Barnes. Just keeps gettin’ dumber and dumber every day.”)? J.R. Ewing was one of television’s greatest and most believable villains, which explains why in 1980 more than 41 million US households tuned in to see who had shot him.

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The Weekly Review

June 29 – July 5, 2011

Just Another Brick In The ...

There was a slightly awkward moment when Nathan Sawaya, who has chosen to devote his professional life to the Lego brick, asked me if, as a child, I played with Lego. Well, I said, actually, no. Never. Not once. Or Meccano – remember the little metal bits you screwed to other metal bits? Or model planes. I once painted the body of a model plane without managing to put the thing together with the glue provided, which was sort of like crossing the finishing line without running the race.

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The Weekly Review

June 1 – 7, 2011

The Innovator

There are many aspects of Ben Shewry’s cooking that set him apart and have the world taking notice of his little restaurant, Attica, in Ripponlea. But one that his many fans might not know about is his willingness to poison himself in the name of fresh, exciting and different ingredients.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

April 13 – 19, 2011

Fox On The Run

Even sex symbols get head colds. So today, in a Sydney café, Tony Jones is admirably energetic considering he was a bit cactus the day before and had to cancel. Things are looking up today: being confronted with talk about being a favourite among female viewers of Lateline and now Q&A doesn’t seem to send him into a decline.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

March 30 – April 5, 2011

The Power Of Two

Sam Stynes has struggled, as so many of us do, to live in the moment. As in, stop making plans for next week or next year, just live right now. She read Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now, which she says helped. And she does regular meditation sessions. It’s been a slow journey, but she thinks she has found some sort of calm amid the upheaval of dealing with her husband Jim’s illness.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

February 2 – 8, 2011

The Paris Review

There’s a lot to be said for the artistic life, as Paris Wells tells it. One big benefit is that pain can be turned into art, or at least used productively. One sweltering Melbourne evening – “one of those ridiculously hot Melbourne nights where everything breaks down,” she says – Wells was the star turn at a taping for RocKwiz, SBS’s music quiz show filmed at St Kilda’s Esplanade Hotel.

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The Weekly Review

November 10 – 16, 2010

Hot In The Kitchen

Sometimes you meet someone and they seem to have it all together – they’re smart, not poncy but self-deprecating and charming, successful and with a good value system, using their position as much as they can for good instead of evil. And deep down inside you wonder where the dark side is, or whether they put it on for the media, or what their real game is.

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au

The Weekly Review

September 15 – 21, 2010

Universal Appeal

Meeting Miss Universe Australia and second runner-up in Miss Universe in an Albert Park café on a gloomy Saturday morning holds interest on several levels. Maybe the first is to see how an extremely beautiful young woman will change the dynamic in the room when she’s among the rest of us perhaps less stunning individuals with our newspapers, first-thing-in-the-morning hair and kids wrestling each other on the banquettes amid the half-spilled babyccinos.

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The Weekly Review

August 25 – 31, 2010

What Ian Did Next

It’s 7am on a Saturday, and a group of youths who seem to have lost their money and their dignity are rampaging around just outside Gordon Ramsay’s Maze restaurant in the new Crown Metropol hotel, howling like fools and looking like hell. The no-fuss Ramsay himself would have sorted these guys out quick smart, but this morning it’s left to security to usher them onto Whiteman Street and home to nurse their hangovers.

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The Weekly Review

July 21 – 27, 2010

Meet Radha Rani Amber Indigo Anunda

It’s disarming and mildly reassuring when a reputation is not lived up to, when someone acts against type, or at least the type that’s been imposed on them. The talk before I met her – and there are several references to it online, too - was that Radha Mitchell won’t discuss her childhood, that she’s fiercely private, quite a serious young insect, and that interviews are always confined to the film she’s promoting. The portrait is of someone who’d rather people didn’t know much about her at all.

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The Weekly Review

May 19 – 25, 2010

Head On into Fame

After his story is told, and I’ve taken a few deep breaths and fought back my amazement and shock, all I can do is look at Paul Capsis and see a man who is brave and resilient and a survivor. And think: how can someone who went through what he did be so positive about life, so ready to forgive his tormentors and so bristling with energy and determination?

Read the entire article at www.theweeklyreview.com.au