Steve Price sits down with Sam Newman ahead of the TV legend’s 80th birthday
As Sam Newman prepares to mark his 80th birthday, the Former Footy Show star has unleashed on Melbourne’s crime crisis, as well as the AFL — and revealed he had no regrets about his often controversial media career.
Sam Newman will celebrate his 80th birthday this month on the remote Nullarbor Plain, driven from home by a crippling ankle injury that has affected his ability to walk and to get distance from the city he has labelled a “laughing stock”.
In an exclusive sit-down interview with the Herald Sun, Sam unleashes on Melbourne’s crime crisis, as well as the AFL — and revealed he had no regrets about his often controversial media career.
STEVE PRICE: Sam thanks for sitting down with us. I was at your 50th birthday, I was at your 60th birthday, is there going to be an 80th party?
SAM NEWMAN: Well, I’m hoping to make it to 80 Stevie, but there won’t be a formal function. We are functioned out. I hope to be in the middle of the Nullarbor Plain on the way home from a tour around Australia in a caravan, so I’m deliberately being out of town on the day of my birthday.
SP: Do you feel old?
SN: I don’t feel old. I’m going OK apart from an ongoing, debilitating injury I have from my football days, which has put me back physically a lot. But I don’t feel old. I don’t know what feeling old means.
SP: You’ve taken a boat up the east coast of Australia. You’re now completing a road trip to the most remote parts of our country. Why this trip?
SN: I had a fairly controversial life for a quarter of a century on a show that I was on, and received a lot of blowback for that. I thought I’d just like to have a boat, and I said to (partner) Sue Stanley, “Would you like to come up the east coast of Australia for six months to Airlie Beach and stay on the boat?” And then after that was successful I said, “Would you like to go on a caravan trip around the country that we’ve not seen a hell of a lot of because of various jobs that we’ve had over the years?” She said yes, and it’s been fantastic.
SP: You are a political animal. So that leads me to ask you, what sort of shape is Australia in? You’ve now seen more of it than a lot of people.
SN: So we have been to almost every place you’ve ever heard. You know the Lucky Starr song “I’ve Been Everywhere Man”? I could write 16 different verses to that song. The people are very laidback, they’re very nice. They don’t suffer the nonsense that goes on in the capital city that I live in, Melbourne.
I’m a proud Melburnian. I was born in Geelong, but my whole adult life really has been in Melbourne. So, I love the city, but we are a laughing stock.
If we weren’t a laughing stock over the Covid nonsense from the previous Andrews government, we certainly are now, with what is going on about law and order, protest, graffiti, litter, entitlements and benefits, First Nations treaty nonsense, spending $400m a year when you could put that into the police force and try and ramp up a city, that is absolutely disgraceful.
What group of people would sit around a table and say, “I’ll tell you how we’ll solve crime, we’ll put some machete bins around in the areas that are suspect and we’ll have people hand in their machetes”? What we need is people to resonate with the thoughts and the demands of a city. The first law of a government is providence — you look after the people who live in your city and not just go off on some tangent that is irrelevant to 98 per cent of the population.
SP: You’re going to be 80. I’m 70. We saw the best of Melbourne in the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, ’90s. Did you ever think that you would wake up every day where people are breaking into innocent people’s houses with knives and machetes, scaring parents and children and stealing their cars?
SN: (This happens) if you concentrate on irrelevant matters to 98 per cent of the population — like spending $400m on Voice to Parliament, which was overwhelmingly rejected. If you put that into developing the police force, if you put that into developing law and order, you ask the judiciary to be responsible, if you actually did something that the rank and file of people who live in this city might resonate with, you’ll probably change the government. The Opposition have just made a 35-year-old woman leader — good on her and give her a chance. But if she can get out on the hustings and drive a couple of points home and really take what’s going on by the throat, I’ll be surprised.
SP: How do you reckon she voted during the Voice referendum?
SN: That’s a good question.
SP: She voted yes.
SN: That’s my point. So the previous (Opposition) leader said he would repeal any treaty land grab. He said he would repeal that nonsense. I haven’t heard her say yet she will repeal any of the land grabs.
SP: Have you seen Indigenous poverty on your trip?
SN: We’ve been through every state and territory. I’ve been into Arnhem Land, I’ve been welcomed by people. A lot of Indigenous people live there, they tell us, because they want to get away from the colonial influence of cities. So, they claim that as their place and if you go in there, they welcome you to their country, Arnhem, Land, which is fantastic. Couldn’t be more delighted to be welcomed by Indigenous people into their land, because they claim it.
How they can claim the rest of the major cities and what’s going on in them, and they say they’ve nurtured and protected the land? What does that mean? They lived on it. We’re all nurturing and protecting it, and we all want to do it together. But there’s plenty of Aboriginal people in all these towns that are not doing a lot. They’re very happy with their lot, and we prop them up and good — honest, that’s what we should do and long may it last, but please don’t play us on all this nonsense about whose country it is.
SP: What sort of shape is the sport that you excelled in, football?
SN: I will not watch while people come out and welcome us to a football game. I will not watch the game. I have no interest in its changing rules, the passive nature of what this game has been turned into. It is insulting to have grown men marshalled and controlled the way they are. I don’t go to the football, its just become a hybrid game of aerobics.
SP: I look each week at what the crowds are when AFLW is being played. No one is going and it’s costing a fortune.
SN: If the women want to play football, it’s fantastic and good on them, but for heaven’s sake stop telling us that people are interested in it, that legends are going to be made out of it, that it is a great thing for the television. It is just sheer wokeness. If people want to play, that’s good, but they’ll just end up losing $50 million a year forever for what?
SP: You and I know several people who are suffering from dementia, who played in your era. Is the jury still out for you on whether hard head knock injuries during the 70s and 80s is contributing to some of these men coming down with early onset dementia? I mean you would have got hit in the head plenty of times.
SN: A lot, yes, and people say that will explain a lot. I got hit in the head a lot. So, a lot of people are claiming now class actions about getting hit in the head playing football. Well, I reckon most of them are exploiting the situation, looking for a payout. Maybe what they want — to be very careful — the people who are claiming to have CTE, is that people don’t look at their history about were they drinking alcohol? Were they taking drugs? Were they getting into fights and brawls at school? Some of them are true and some of them are real and some of them are genuine. I reckon you get people who round them up to do the class actions and make a quid out of it.
SP: The Footy Show started in 1994 and was axed in 2019. On it you were naked, you painted your face black, you had cream pies thrown at you and you made statements that you couldn’t possibly get away with today. You couldn’t do that show now, could you?
SN: And that’s why it’s not on,
I was predominantly in the entertainment industry, and thought, you’ll push the envelope as far as we can while people like Eddie (McGuire) and James Brayshaw and Gary Lyon and Craig Hutchison tamped down what I did. We did that show live to air. Live. There was no delay, there was no pre-recording there was no 10-second, five-second, one-second delay. Half the things I did would never have made it to air had we’d been on delay, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
One day they said, we’re getting into a bit of trouble from some of the things you’re doing, we had better tape the show. And I said “well, if you tape the show I won’t be on it” and that was a fact. It sounds arrogant and it sounds pompous and it sounds I’m up myself, but I’m not. I just never rehearsed for anything I did — possibly why I got into various controversies — but I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Every time my name comes up about the footage now, they play the same old things — me calling Caitlyn Jenner it by mistake. Or they bring Nicky Winmar’s face on. Nicky Winmar got on great with me until he was got to by the activists. But I can remember Magda Szubanski painted her face black no one ever brings that up. All I ever did was just react to things that happened live to air on the Footy Show.
SP: Did Street Talk become a bit of a chore in the end?
SN: In the end it became a job, because we had the attorneys come down from Sydney every other week and say, “now you can’t do this, you can’t do that. You can’t speak to people. You’re going to have to ask them to go on air”. And, in the end, it became just like a breakfast show vox pop — you know, “are you happy with the way the prices are in in the supermarkets?” Or “what do you think of the road rules?”. It just became pointless doing it because we had some fantastic stuff in the can, but we weren’t allowed to show it because they thought we were just making fools of people. Well, they were making fools of themselves, and they loved the opportunity to do it, and we gave them that opportunity.
SP: Tell me how bad your ankle is. I read somewhere that you were contemplating at some point that you might have to have your foot amputated. That can’t be right? Can it?
SN: My ankle is really bad now. I’ve had a great life and it is only interrupted by the fact I can hardly walk. I’ve gone all over Australia this year in a caravan. I’ve been up in a boat, up to Airlie Beach on one leg. It gives me grief. I’ve had a metal hinge put in it. I’ve had it fused, I’ve had it operated on, I’ve had it tightened, I’ve had it scraped. I said, “I can’t go on like this. We can’t keep putting injections in it.” They said, “there is one alternative — we can cut it off and give you a prosthetic foot”. Well, as I sit here, I can hardly walk. But as I say, if you think I want people to feel sorry for me, Steven, I don’t. It’s a tough existence. Plenty of people have tough existences for a whole lot of different reasons, mine is the fact that I’ve got a leg I can’t walk on.
SP: How much pain?
SN: Well, I can’t just physically, can’t put weight on it. And the surgeon has done a fantastic job on it. He cannot do anymore. He’s concerned about it, but it is just painful to walk on. When I go through the airports they say, “my word, look at all that hardware in your ankle”. There’s nothing more you can put in it. There’s nothing much more you can do about it. So, I think I’m resigned to the fact I can’t play golf anymore. I can’t go for walks with Sue.
SP: You’ve had a couple of near-death experiences in your life. That boat trip when you had to put your foot up against the porthole to stop the water coming in. How frightening was that?
SN: That was frightening, although when you panic you tend not to realise the significance of it. But we had the safety equipment ready to put on, the life jacket, and we had a dinghy or a tender, which we were ready to get into and you can send out distress signals and everything. We managed to limp into a safe haven and got up to surface, and they fixed it up. I’ve had a couple of near-death experiences, was run over by a car you know. A few other things have happened.
SP: I know I nearly died sitting on your lap.
SN: That’s right, yes. We went to the Grand Prix in Adelaide, and a very charming lass said she’d drive us home in a two-seater car with you sitting on my lap. I think she’d been inspired by the fact that she just come from the F1 practice session at the Grand Prix, and she drove us down to Glenelg at the speed that Lewis Hamilton would have been proud of. And she was talking to you or me, and as we drove towards the back of a parked truck, you grabbed the wheel, and moved past the truck by a millimetre, or else we wouldn’t be here doing this.
SP: I want to run some names past you and just get your reaction your attitude to these people, or relationship to them, or whatever.
Let’s start with Donald Trump,
SN: An absolute star.
SP: Daniel Andrews
SN: Well, I don’t know Daniel Andrews personally, but what he’s done to this state is he is so incompetent.
SP: Shane Warne
SN: Shane would have been the biggest pop star in the world if they’d played cricket in America. He was a charming pleasent boy.
SP: Ron Barassi
SN: A fantastic man who I met and played against. He broke my nose twice in two different games by back handing me. He had the most diverse and lateral mind I’ve ever heard of and you could write a book about what Ron’s philosophy was. But he was a simple man, a warrior and a great Australian.
SP: Eddie McGuire
SN: He’s the best on-air performer I’ve seen. And am I biased? Why would I say that? He’s simply the best.
SP: Rex Hunt
SN: Rex Hunt for two decades, made you and me and everyone else famous on 3AW football. He is an absolute star, a world-class fisherman who’s struggling at the minute. And I speak to him often. I’ve had my run-ins with him, but he is a man who’s lost in the wilderness of his own past and finds it hard to move on. But he is a genuine star of the media industry.
SP: Jeffrey Smart
SN: I fell for Jeffrey Smart’s art. I put the price of his art up by 50 per cent by buying his art. I keep saying to people, if you haven’t got any class yourself, see if you can buy some. So I made a world record price for one of his pieces of art 30 years ago and he flew me up to Sydney to have lunch with him and his boyfriend in a beautiful restaurant on the on the wharf and he said, “you’ve put my art up by 50 per cent around the world and I’m very grateful”. He was a genuine Australian star, just a clinical man who painted pictures that you can understand.
SP: What’s the best car you’ve ever owned?
SN: I have a 1959 convertible Cadillac, the one with the big wings on it, a left-hand drive. It is a magnificent car. Driven it to Sydney several times, it never misses a beat. It genuinely holds six people, three in the back and three across the front. But I think the best car that I’ve ever had is a bit of an extravagance — and having a lend of yourself and being a wanker — I have a Lamborghini. A V12, and if there’s any better-looking car in the world than that, I’d like to see it. But I never drive it, so just got it there as a piece of art.
SP: It’s been great to catch up with you. You don’t look anywhere near 80. You look much younger. Have a happy birthday on December 22.
Originally published as Steve Price sits down with Sam Newman ahead of the TV legend’s 80th birthday
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