Veteran TV reporter Mike Willesee dies at 76
Australia’s legendary veteran TV reporter Mike Willesee has passed away after losing his battle with throat cancer.
Australia’s legendary veteran TV reporter Mike Willesee has passed away after losing his battle with throat cancer.
The 76-year-old was known for his uncompromising interview style and willingness to push the envelope.
Willesee started his 50-year television career with the ABC before high profile periods with the Nine and Seven networks.
The Australian Media Hall of Fame states Willesee was “the pre-eminent television interviewer for more than 20 years.”
“Mike Willesee can rightly claim to have created nightly commercial television current affairs in Australia,” their profile on him reads.
The Seven Network has issued a statement today, saying: “We are deeply saddened to hear Veteran Australian television reporter, Mike Willesee, has lost his battle with throat cancer at the age of 76. The Perth-born journalist was known for his masterful interviewing skills. Willesee dominated Australian television current affairs for 50 years setting an industry standard that few were able to match. His final major TV investigation was for Seven’s flagship news and public affairs programme Sunday Night. Our thoughts are with his family.”
Nine CEO Hugh Marks sent an email to staff today, saying: “His death has robbed us all of a trailblazing pioneer of journalism, the likes of whom we’ll likely never see again. Our deepest condolences go to the whole Willesee clan at this time, including Allison Langdon and her husband, Mike Willesee Jnr.”
He went on, saying: “The word legend is somewhat too readily conferred in modern times, but it describes Mike to a tee. He all but invented current affairs television in Australia at the ABC in the 1960s. Then later at Seven and Nine he moulded the medium into an art form of which for decades he remained the prime and most skilful exponent.
“His particular skills as an interviewer are unarguably the stuff of legend. Most famously the ‘Willesee pause‘ where Mike deliberately allowed many seconds of silence to pass before his next question. He knew the power of silence, or a slight quizzical tilt of the head, would usually cause a hapless interviewee to fall into the mistake of speaking to fill the dead air. “This ‘gotcha’ technique came to represent Michael Willesee at his brilliant best.
“When others spoke too much, he said only what was necessary - the short, sharp question which everyone was thinking, but no-one dared ask. He had a mind as sharp as a steel trap and a sense of humour as cheeky as his smile.
“But across the craft he always shone like a beacon.
“So many aspiring - and practising - journalists have learned so much from Mike. And everyone who practises journalism in Australia is in his debt.
“Mike was a modest and humble man. A big friendly bear of a man who worked hard, and back in the day, played even harder. But he was always a gentle man. Generous and caring of others, his presence would always light up the room.
“Michael Willesee will be sadly missed but fondly remembered by all of us at Nine and across the media generally. Especially those who were fortunate enough to come into his orbit and to regard him as a friend.”
Fellow TV veteran journalist Jana Wendt was among many high profile reporters who paid tribute to him today.
She told News Corp: “Mike set the standard for the rest of us in broadcast interviewing to follow. He was a master of the craft. The celebrated Willesee pause drove many interviewees into calamitous admissions. His relaxed style coddled others into believing the killer question would never come. It always did, of course, with headline-making results. I doubt there’ll ever be anyone else with Mike’s charm and killer instinct.”
SEE MORE TRIBUTES BELOW.
Willesee was inducted into the Logie Awards Hall of Fame in 2002, and had received the Logie Award for Best TV Interviewer in 1977.
His famous ‘birthday cake’ interview with former Opposition Leader John Hewson on the GST was widely credited with changing the course of the 1993 federal election when Hewson was unable to answer if the common confectionary would be taxed or not.
He was also one of the first Australian correspondents to cover the Vietnam War, and his interview with Muhammad Ali in 1975 was also one of his greatest moments on camera.
And what a scoop it was: a week out from one of the late boxing champion’s most famous bouts — the 1975 ‘Thrilla In Manila’ — Channel 7’s star reporter had hustled his way into getting a brief sit-down with Ali; beating out a media throng of 1000 journalists in the process.
Promised a few minutes access by Ali’s trainer Angelo Dundee, Willesee’s time would finally come at 4am, with the sporting superstar holding court for three illuminating hours, lounging across his hotel couch in only a bathrobe.
As exhausted as Willesee was just to get there, Ali would make him work even harder for every answer — but the results make for a fascinating special to air this week on Sunday Night.
“When I introduced myself he ignored me. I introduced myself again and he ignored me. I’d been so angry all night with all the bullshit from some of his management so I started setting up the cameras and thought to myself ‘if he doesn’t want to talk to me I don’t care,’” Willesee recalled to News Corp.
“He was laying down and there was a big mirror behind him so I said ‘okay, we’ll use it as the third camera. This camera doesn’t need to stay on me, turn it onto the mirror [for a wide shot capturing interviewer and his subject.] He looked at me, looked at the camera, then the mirror and said to me, ‘you’ve got imagination.’”
Breaking the ice between them, Ali then asked Willesee how old he was, “and I told him I was the same age as him and he said, ‘I knew it, I knew it.’ For some strange reason he got a big kick out of that...guessing it and knowing it and we became friends. He did a lot for me during the week.”
Willesee also got to experience what it was like to be on the receiving end of an Ali punch, albeit a mock blow.
“He actually threw two punches at me. They didn’t connect, thank God but I wasn’t scared for the very good reason I never saw them coming,” Willesee recalls, “they were that fast. He had his fist on my mouth before I knew it...his precision was amazing. He just threw this punch and I never saw it coming. I can’t believe a man that big could throw a punch so quickly you just wouldn’t see it coming, wouldn’t think there was any movement. He was that good.”
EARLY LIFE AND CAREER
Born June 29, 1942, in Perth, he rose to prominence in 1967 as the presenter of the ABC’s This Day Tonight current affairs show.
Controversy dogged his early years, with Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt attacking his - and the ABCs - impartiality as his father, Don Willesee, had been a Labor Senator.
Willesee went on to host the ABC’s Four Corners until 1971, when he moved to the Nine Network to establish A Current Affair.
In 1975 he hosted the Australian incarnation of This Is Your Life, and presented the current-affairs review Willesee at Seven.
His long career was not without controversy. In 1993, he was widely criticised for interviewing two young children by phone. They were being held hostage at the time.
He also appeared on A Current Affair, clearly drunk, while filling in for Jana Wendt. He later claimed he was under the influence of medication.
A SWANS LOVER
In 1988, Willesee joind a group of investors including John Gerahty and Basil Sellers in taking over the struggling AFL club Sydney Swans. A long-term Swans ‘ambassador’, he was inducted to the Sydney Swans Heritage List in 2015.
STRONG FAITH IN GOD
Since the late 1990s Willesee has been pursuing his faith, making documentaries on subjects such as stigmata (wounds mimicking those of Jesus Christ’s crucifixion) in Signs from God.
HIS BIG TV INTERVIEWS
He returned to mainstream television briefly in 2012 for the Seven Network’s Sunday Night.
His other exclusives for the network included a 2013 sit down with James Packer in which the former media scion cried over the death of father, Kerry; as well as a 2012 interview with then Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in which she addressed a looming leadership challenge by the man she deposed for the top job, Kevin Rudd.
One of Willesee’s biggest stories was the life of “Little Aussie Battler” Quentin Kenihan - an Adelaide personality born with osteogenesis imperfecta. He became well known through his childhood interviews with Willesee, who continued to follow his life until he died last year.
A series of profiles made by Willesee on the disabled actor, beginning when he was aged just seven, was eventuall released in a combined form. Titled Quentin, it became the highest-rating documentary in Australian TV history.
In one of his last high profile reports, Willesee became the story when he went to Bali to interview and help celebrate the release of convicted drug smugggler Schapelle Corby from Kerobokan jail.
The convicted drug smuggler’s mother Rosleigh allowed Seven cameras exclusive access to film her reaction as she watched from Brisbane as Schapelle was bundled out of jail and into Bali’s parole office.
His final major TV investigation, Blood Of Christ, aired in April, 2017 for Seven’s Sunday Night - a 20-year-old passion project by the deeply religious Willesee, who travelled to Bolivia and used forensic techology to test a statue of the son of God, which appeared to weep tears and blood.
MIKE TURNS PALEO TO SAVE HIS HEALTH
During 2015, Willesee knew he had to change his ways. Then he met “paleo Pete” Evans.
he told News Corp how a year of dangerously ill health prompted him to accept a challenge from the My Kitchen Rules judge to turn “lab rat’’ in a 10-week food experiment, which specialists claim has helped bring him back from the brink of a stroke, heart attack or worse.
Struggling to recover from two painful back operations in March and April, it took a “low and lethargic” Willesee three weeks to drag himself off his couch to see a doctor.
But within minutes of the GP visit he would find himself in the back of an ambulance, being rushed to hospital.
“I shuffled in and the doctor asked me why I was so out of breath. I just thought it was nothing,” Willesee told News Corp.
It was a very serious something, with tests confirming a pulmonary embolism (lung clot) while blood results indicated he was at grave and immediate risk of stroke.
“I was the guy who always thought salad and vegetables were on your plate to make it look pretty,” Willesee said.
“I’d go to lunches and see a woman order a bowl of salad and think ‘the poor thing can’t eat properly because she’s worried about how she looks.’ Now I’d have no problem ordering the same,” he said.
As a lifestyle coach, Willesee said Evans was not the overzealous food Nazi he’d read about.
“While he follows the paleo way very strictly, he doesn’t teach it strictly.
“For example, I asked him why I couldn’t have dairy, and he said ‘you can. I’m not telling you there’s anything you can’t have, I’m just advising you on how to choose good food over bad food’, and that made perfect sense to me.”
HIS THROAT CANCER BATTLE
In 2017, Willesee revealed his struggle with throat cancer during a two-part profile by the ABC’s Australian Story.
During the special, veteran TV news boss Peter Meakin told viewers that Willesee was unique.
“He carved out a niche in television, which no one had occupied before. He brought tough standards to it. He produced a top rating program. And he’s a one off.”
Meakin went on to add: “He can cut through the bullshit, he has a wonderful detection meter. And I think his father gave him an appreciation of the practice of politics without necessarily an affection for the execution of it.”
HIS PRIVATE LIFE AND BOOK
In his private life, Willesee has been married and divorced three times, which he admitted had been a source of great regret.
He is the father of six children, who he counts as his greatest achievements.
In that same year he published his autobiography - Memoirs - which told of his life in, and behind, the news.
Willesee is survived by his brothers Don Jr, TV presenter Terry, sister Colleen, daughters Amy, Lucy, Katie, Jo and sons Mike Jr and Rok.
He is the father-in-law of Channel 9’s Today Show and 60 Minutes presenter and reporter Allison Langdon and journalist and writer Mark Whittaker.
HIGH PROFILE TRIBUTES
Journalists and politicans from across Australia began to post their tributes to him on social media after the story broke.
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