High Steaks: Ray Martin on why he won’t retire and the greatest thing he has ever done

TV veteran Ray Martin reveals how he almost died while shooting a series on death, why his good pal Sir David Attenborough inspires him, and why he’ll never retire.

It’s not every day you attend your own wake so it’s no surprise Ray Martin felt a little unwell as he listened to his great mate Gretel Killeen delivering his eulogy.

The veteran journalist and TV host was shooting one of the final scenes for Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye, his SBS series on death, and with 40 people gathered for a mock send-off he knew he couldn’t pull out.

“I was feeling fairly ordinary the night before but I went ahead with filming the next day,” he recalls.

“I was hanging on for grim death, feeling really crook, so the second I got home I went up to bed. I’m never sick so my daughter suggested we go to the doctor.”

The pair were driving past Royal North Shore Hospital when Jenna gave her dad the option of going to emergency instead.

Ray Martin talks life, death and everything in between for a High Steaks interview. Picture: Rohan Kelly

Several tests later, Martin was rushed into intensive care where he was diagnosed with a blood clot on the heart caused by a severe chest infection.

For the next five days he was sicker than he’s ever been.

“It’s the only time in my life, because I was so drugged, that I thought, ‘This could be the end’,” he recalls.

“I’m 79, I’ve never been in hospital in my life and I was thinking, ‘I can’t afford to die now’.”

With his wife Dianne and children, Jenna, 39, and Luke, 24, desperately worried, Martin is not afraid to admit he was also fearful as heart and lung specialists monitored him round-the clock.

The irony is not lost on him that in signing up to host a show on death, which includes scenes of him lying in a coffin, he almost hastened his own.

But months on from his scare last November, and with a clean bill of health, he’s been keen to move on to other work.

Martin’s new series takes a deep dive into ‘The Last Goodbye’ — but the veteran journalist hopes to defer death for as long as possible. Picture: SBS

Ahead of his 80th birthday in December, Martin is very much alive as he sits down with The Sunday Telegraph at the Greenwood Hotel near his North Sydney home.

With his healthy sweep of hair and those trustworthy brown eyes, the five-time Gold Logie winner remains Australia’s everyman, right down to his schooner of VB and plate-sized chicken schnitzel (he only manages to eat half).

We’ve caught him before he flies off to Banda Aceh for an assignment marking 20 years since the 2004 tsunami.

If his stint in hospital taught him anything it’s that there’s still more work he wants to do.

Martin discusses recent scandals in the media with Angela Mollard at the Greenwood Hotel. Picture: Rohan Kelly

As he says, his role model is 98-year-old Sir David Attenborough, with whom he formed a friendship after hosting 30 live shows with the conservationist over the years.

“David is the most wonderful man,” says Martin.

“He was 87 when I first started doing the shows with him and he’d had a couple of knees fixed and walked a bit like a cowboy.

“But he was smart and funny and loved a drink and was curious — all the good things that I hoped that I could be.”

Devoted family man Martin with wife Diane at the 1996 Logie Awards.

In any case, Martin has promised his seven-year-old grandson Arlo that he’ll still be around to celebrate his 21st birthday. He also has a two-year-old granddaughter, Harper.

“You can’t lie to your grandson, so I’ve got 14 years to go on that.”

For all his vitality, Martin is your man if you want the nitty gritty on death.

He spent months immersed in the taboo subject, speaking with undertakers, morticians, medicos and death deniers.

As he explains, we’re about to reach a period of “peak death”, with Baby Boomers, our largest demographic, nearing the end of their lives.

Yet even as he elucidates on everything from cremation temperatures, body composting, Muslim body-washing rituals and why men are more drawn to cryonics (body freezing) than women, it’s clear he’s in denial about his own ­mortality.

“There’s that Woody Allen line, ‘I’m not scared of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens’,” he says, laughing.

“I would love to be here to see my children and grandchildren grow old and I think this is going to be an exciting world in 100 years’ time.

“So it’s regret not fear, and it’s a bugger of a thing that it has to happen.”

Fellow elder statesman Sir David Attenborough is both a friend and a role model.

As television’s elder statesman, following a career which began at the ABC in 1965 and flourished at Channel 9 where he launched 60 Minutes, and hosted Midday and A Current Affair, Martin is perturbed rather than delighted by the respect he’s now afforded.

As a newsman he also slightly miffed that if he died in a car accident at 79 the report would refer to him as “elderly”.

“I think I’m 35 on a bad day. I spent my life as a journalist being the youngest kid in the room and suddenly you wake up and you’re facing 80.”

Yet he refuses to blame ageing if he stumbles and instead chastises himself for not lifting his feet.

That said, colds linger longer and he aches if he stands up after sitting down for too long. So there is some deterioration?

He laughs: “Nothing I’d acknowledge.”

While next year marks his 60th year in journalism, Martin says he’ll never retire.

There are too many questions still to ask, too many topics to explore.

His deep dive into death left him wondering, among other things, why funerals are so expensive.

“It’s a rip-off. Working-class people can’t afford to bury mum and dad, particularly if they die within a couple of years of each other,” he says.

“I’d have thought governments could win a lot of votes by reducing the cost. You don’t have to die a pauper, but you don’t have to pay $20,000 to bury mum.

“Beyond that, why do we need a coffin? Why don’t we do what the Muslims do and respectfully wrap her in a shroud?”

Martin (l to r) with George Negus (sitting), Ian Leslie and Jana Wendt on 60 minutes. Picture: Supplied

If journalism has gifted Martin a long career, it’s also bequeathed him an inquiring mind.

He says he’s never taken up the offer to be a talkback radio host because he doesn’t regard himself as a font of wisdom. Neither is he always right.

His biggest gripe with older men is their conviction in their own opinions.

“Old men don’t listen,” he says, pointing out that Sir David Attenborough is an ­exception and that he hopes that characteristic might rub off on him.

Growing up with three sisters and raised by a single mum who left their violent dad when Martin was just 11, the broadcaster says he’s comfortable with women.

“If you grow up with women — and now I’ve got a strong wife and a strong daughter, as well as a son who is strong — you become a male feminist,” he says.

“I’ve had no trouble taking orders from women all my life.”

Next year marks Martin’s 60th year in journalism, but the veteran newsman will never retire. Picture: Rohan Kelly

With the Nine Network in the headlines amid allegations of sexual harassment by a senior executive and rival Channel 7 the subject of a recent Four Corners investigation, Martin believes you’d find similar behaviour in a cross-section of Australian businesses.

“Television was, for a long, long time, a men’s club and Channel 9 was as bad (as Seven), and the sexual harassment was probably as dangerous and as common as bullying.”

He says he didn’t see such behaviour first-hand, but heard about it. A couple of colleagues, he says, had “really savage” reputations.

As he says: “I think male chauvinism has been a dominant factor in Australian lives for the last 100 years, if not longer.

“Thankfully programs like that (Four Corners) and the #MeToo movement make us aware of it and make us blokes question it when we didn’t ­before.

“In the past women felt helpless in terms of complaining, even to HR, but now they say ‘Stop, I’m not going to cop it’.”

Despite a brilliant career he says the best thing he’s ever done is become a grandparent: “I hate giving them back. I wished they lived in our house.”

And with that he drains his beer, leaps out of his chair with the vigour of the 35-year-old he believes himself to be, and heads off to take his grandson to swimming lessons.

Ray Martin: The Long Goodbye is on SBS and SBS on Demand

Originally published as High Steaks: Ray Martin on why he won’t retire and the greatest thing he has ever done