Angela Mollard: Why even rich and powerful need friends who pass the pub test
Does Donald Trump have proper friends? How about Albo? What everyone needs is a good mate who has your back when your instincts are blunted by power, fame or exhaustion, writes Angela Mollard.
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Who is Donald Trump’s closest friend?
Keen to know, I typed the question into Google.
The presidential hopeful, according to Town and Country magazine, likes “large crowds” and “time with his adoring fans” but generally he’s a man who prefers privacy. “Once the party’s over,” they opine, “he goes back to his own bed.”
His own bed? Who are they kidding? As America goes to the polls, Trump has been convicted of illegally influencing an election by paying hush money to a porn actress and 26 women have accused him of sexual assault. It does tend to knock the warm milk and slippers observation firmly on the head.
I’m curious about Trump’s friends because, like so many of the rich and powerful, he doesn’t seem to have any. Not proper friends. Not people who will tell you when you’re being a dick or your judgement is skewed or your ego is so inflated you need to get a grip.
What about Anthony Albanese? Who are his best mates, well, other than Alan Joyce obviously? He must have them.
An only child like him, growing up in council housing with his single mum, must’ve befriended kids in the neighbourhood.
Is he sounding them out for advice now? Are they dropping into Kirribilli House for a beer and a chin wag? Surely, it’s your mates who you consult when you’re thinking of buying a clifftop mansion or soliciting for a Qantas upgrade because they’re the only ones who’ll give wise advice.
Never mind the pub test – although if you were genuinely friendless buying a quick round for some randoms would give you a better reading of public sentiment than your high-paid flunkies.
What you need is “the friend test”, the good mate who not only acts as a sounding board but has your back when your instincts are so blunted by power, fame or exhaustion that you’re about to fall down an integrity hole you might never recover from.
It’s not just politicians who need loyal mates but celebrities whose stratospheric rise often means their real chums fall by the wayside to be replaced by enablers with vested interests.
I bet there’s an old friend of Amy Winehouse and Matthew Perry and, more recently, Liam Payne wishing they’d stayed close. At the very least they might have reminded them of how precious they were before fame’s excesses killed them.
Being a nobody might not bring wealth or stardom but if we’ve taken time to cultivate them, our friendships are more valuable than anything else.
All the key decisions in my life have been workshopped with friends and my career has been saved multiple times by running a conundrum past my dearest friend of 30 years, also a journalist.
We know each other’s blind spots and have caught each other even before we were aware we were about to fall.
Radio host Jackie O, aka Jackie Henderson, has been open in her new memoir about her drug addiction and the role her best friend Gemma O’Neill played in saving her life. But it’s her reflections on some of her radio segments with co-host Kyle Sandilands that leave you asking: “Where were her mates, or even sensible colleagues, when she was grappling with professional issues?”
She writes that she’s “still ashamed” by some on-air exchanges. Some were “unforgivable”. As she candidly describes, she would be on air thinking “This is f***ed up” but being in “entertainment mode” meant, as she describes, “you end up with this distorted and split perspective, where you can lose sight of reality itself”. Fair enough.
So did she, particularly after the controversial 2009 interview where she and Sandilands hooked up a 14-year-old girl to a lie-detector test and had her mother ask about her sex life, raise her misgivings with a trusted friend?
I ask because all these years later the show is still guilty of poor judgement.
Even bosses admit the show is “overly sexualised” which is why it’s lost advertisers.
Henderson is a dynamo. And a talent. But where were her mates when she was wrestling with her moral compass?
Not the ones who love champagne and a freebie, and not the agents who are getting a cut – but the solid people, the ones not too scared to venture: “Are you sure this is what you want to be doing hon?”
Like Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson, who might’ve been saved had they had genuine friends concerned with their wellbeing, Trump might’ve made himself just a little more likeable if he’d had real friends on the stage at Madison Square Garden this week.
Friends, as well as being a judicious handbrake, also are a measure of your likability. As one of Trump’s former lieutenants once observed: “He doesn’t really have a lot of friends ... all he does is work and play golf.”
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Originally published as Angela Mollard: Why even rich and powerful need friends who pass the pub test
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