Annette Sharp: Leigh Sales’ marriage anguish had clues on Twitter

EIGHTEEN months after opening up about “the worst year of my life, easily”, ABC presenter Leigh Sales’ marriage is over.

Leigh Sales and Phil Willis at a Walsh Bay theatre event.

EIGHTEEN months after opening up about “the worst year of my life, easily”, ABC presenter Leigh Sales’ marriage is over.

The 7.30 presenter and her husband Phil Willis separated at Christmas, the pair’s once-charmed union ending in the stressful festive crush after 20 years and two young sons together.

The split comes on the heels of her colleague Emma Alberici separating from her husband, former 60 Minutes sound recordist Jason McCauley last year. Mother-of-three Alberici is now on long service leave from the ABC but due to return to the helm of Lateline in May.

Sales, 43, has previously recounted the brush with death that forced her to take stock after she suffered a uterine rupture in 2014 that resulted in a “massive haemorrhage” during premature labour with youngest son James, now three.

ABC presenter Emma Alberici and husband Jason McCauley separated.

James ended up in neonatal intensive care, Sales, in “complete physical agony”, in a high dependency unit. It was days later before she could hold her newborn son and she later recounted being traumatised by the experience.

The year that followed she has since described as “the worst year of my life”. It didn’t help that her new baby was stricken with viral meningitis at five weeks.

“For me to be thrown into a circumstance where I had absolutely no control and was then at the other end of it incapable of looking after myself, incapable of looking after my three-year-old and after a newborn baby — it was very, very confronting and hard for me to take,” she said.

Willis, an affable maths teacher at Sydney’s prestigious boys school Newington College and animator, stepped up as primary carer.

Six months after James’s birth, Sales returned to her high-profile job at the ABC and to criticism that she was too soft in her September 2015 interview with Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Political biographer Niki Savva later wrote Turnbull regarded Sales as “one of the most beautiful women on television”.

Tweets from Phil Willis, husband of Leigh Sales.

Sales tackled the professional criticism while shopping for a new bigger home — stress piling upon stress as she and Willis sold their Glebe townhouse and bought a larger home nearby for more than $2.6 million.

One year later, Sales’ marriage was over. It’s unclear who remains in the new home. Sales and ABC publicists were not returning calls on Friday.

On his Twitter account, Willis, a prolific Tweeter, in part documented the decline of his marriage along with witty and wry observations about Donald Trump (not a fan), music (loves composer John Williams, The Smiths, The Cure, Green Day), movies (Fight Club), Lego adventures and raising the couple’s two young sons — Daniel, now 5, and James, 3.

On May 1, 2016, Willis recounted preparations in the lead-up to Mother’s Day: “Me: What shall we get Mum for Mother’s Day? 4 year old: Chocolate, flowers, wine and a book with chapters. Me: Nailed it.”

In June, Willis revealed his plans for the couple’s 20th anniversary:

“1 Buy case of 1999 St Henri

2 Drink 1 each year

3 Open last 1 on 20th anniversary @leighsales”.

Tweets from Phil Willis, husband of Leigh Sales.

On August 6, just four months before they split, Willis was celebrating a marital milestone: “Away for the first weekend without kids. We’ve left them in good hands.” The comment was accompanied by a photograph of Donald Trump juggling two babies, one of them screaming.

In September, proud dad Willis posted a shot of his boys at Luna Park. October found the eager politico preoccupied with the American election.

By November 10, he was faithfully retweeting and promoting his wife: “Absolutely unmissable #abc730 tonight — two former Prime Ministers, Paul Keating and John Howard, speak to us exclusively re Donald Trump.” Later that month he joined her at the Opera House for a Crowded House concert after Sales interviewed band members.

But by Christmas the tone of his Tweets had changed as Sales posted a sad photo of a simple pleasure — a bowl of vanilla ice cream, a small bottle of Bundaberg rum and a can of Milo — on a kitchen counter on Christmas Eve.

“Merry Christmas Qld style,” she posted, later perhaps having second thoughts and deleting it.

Willis meanwhile posted successive photographs of comedian Robin Williams — shaven and tidy in one, looking filthy and haggard in another: “Me at the start of 2016 vs. me at the end of 2016 …”

Tweets from Phil Willis, husband of Leigh Sales.

US election fatigue had clearly set in for the school teacher. His Tweets sounded disillusioned: “I used to laugh at doomsday preppers. Until now.”

On December 27 he posted a photograph of a meatless BBQ: “So Mum and Dad, imagine your life is a BBQ. Well this was 2016 for me …”

Sales has disappeared from Willis’s Twitter stream in 2017 (followers 1600), replaced by a revived interest in Twin Peaks, the making of mixed tape cassettes, a search for missing pizza, gaming and his sons.

Sales hasn’t referenced her husband on her Twitter account (followers 299,000) for a while.

Sales and Alberici’s marital breakdowns serve as a reminder that success is in the eye of the beholder.

Sales and Willis are co-parenting their young sons however it appears Sales has sole custody of
the couple’s friend, ABC political commentator Annabel Crabb.