Patti Newton reveals how she keeps Bert in her heart and plans to honour him

Five months after Bert’s death, Patti Newton has “started living” again — and will honour her late husband with a surprising, lasting tribute.

Patti Newton keeps a cherished memory of her dearly loved husband, Bert, close to her heart.

The precious piece of gold with a diamond halo was given to her by Bert more than 50 years ago as a sign of love, luck and to let her know she would always be kept safe and watched over.

She has worn the delicate gold St Christopher medal as a charm almost every day since.

Bert, the Australian TV and entertainment legend who brought joy to generations of Australians over his 70 year career, which started in radio when he was just 11-years-old, passed away in Melbourne on October 30, 2021 after a long battle with ill-health.

He was 83.

While her husband of 46 years is no longer physically with her, Patti, 77, knows he is still very much present in her life and with their children, Lauren and Matthew, and grandchildren, Sam, Eva, Lola, Monty, Perla and Alby.

He is both in her heart and near her heart.

“Bert was going overseas in the ’60s, and Graham (Kennedy) gave him this St Christopher medal and he wore it while he was away,” Patti said.

In 1971 Patti, who was performing in a group called Patti McGrath and the Movers, moved to London to further her career. She and Bert were dating and he gave her the medal as she departed.

Patti and Bert Newton had a love for the ages.

“He gave me this medal and said, ‘it kept me safe while I was away and I want you to come home safely, so I am giving it to you’,” Patti said.

“So I wore it. Even when I went on stage I couldn’t bear not to have it on so I used to pin it to my bra or inside my costume.

“Instead of going overseas for three months I went for three years and Bert eventually came over — I was on the QEII then — and asked me to marry him.

“A couple of years down the track he saw that I was wearing the medal and said, ‘I love that on you’ and he took it to the jeweller and had the diamonds put around it and my initials engraved on the back.

“It is very special. It means he is always near my heart and I wear it every day.”

For Patti, the past five months since Bert’s passing have been undeniably challenging and heartbreaking; a difficult, slow, careful and private period of adjustment to life without her one true love by her side.

“For somebody who has just lost the love of their life I think I am coping pretty well, all things considered,” Patti said.

“I do have a great deal of help because I do have the most beautiful daughter who cares for me and looks after me and I have six grandchildren that never stop loving me.

“I have the most gorgeous little (grandson) Monty, who will lean over and take my hand and say ‘I don’t want you to be lonely, Nan,’ and I couldn’t wish for anything more than that, so I am very lucky.

“I have fabulous girlfriends, they all worry about me and ring me and care for me.”

She has also discovered The Crown and Bridgerton among the streaming delights which provide bingeable, escapist enjoyment and entertainment at night.

Bert and Patti on The Don Lane Show. Picture: Channel 9

“Last week I decided it was time that I started living a life, so I went to see a couple of (theatre) shows,” Patti said.

“My life will never be the same because Bert was a big personality and he lit up a room and I always feel I am waiting for the door to open and for him to walk in or I am expecting him to come down the stairs and say, because my maiden name was McGrath, ‘Mac, has that show started yet?’.

“Lots of people lose loved ones and loss is very hard for everyone, but it is how you handle it.”

Bert, she says, is very much still with and around her.

“Every now and then I will get a funny little sign, but they are my signs,” she said.

“I’ll say, ‘I don’t know how to do this’, and then the next minute I will see a yellow butterfly flying outside, hitting against the door, and I think, ‘I can manage, I can do this’.

“While I am feeling that way and while I am carrying him on my shoulder with me I’ll always feel that he is part of my life.”

Sitting at a grand piano on stage at Hamer Hall in Melbourne with John Foreman, Patti is in her element.

The house lights bounce off her gold sequin show jacket emblazoned with Bert’s face on the back — he literally has her back — as she is joined by acclaimed singers David Hobson and Harrison Craig.

Together the richly talented quartet workshop their set list for the Aussie Pops Orchestra’s Mother’s Day Concert. There is a show to build and an audience to entertain.

Foreman is the musical director of the 60-piece orchestra and Patti will perform several numbers as a tribute to Bert as part of the concert at the Arts Centre, Melbourne on Sunday, May 8.

Patti Newton, David Hobson, John Foreman and Harrison Craig prepare for the Aussie Pops Orchestra Mother’s Day Concert at the Arts Centre on May 8. Picture: David Caird

It was the maestro Foreman who suggested she step back into the spotlight with the event.

Foreman first worked with Bert and Patti as part of their club show in the early 1980s and he went on to be the musical director of GMA, the morning TV variety show Bert hosted for Channel 10 for 14 years, from 1992 until 2005.

It was also Foreman who put together what was to be Bert’s last public performance.

Bert and Patti appeared with the likes of Rhonda Burchmore, Silvie Paladino, Casey Donovan, Lucy Durack and Denis Walter in a virtual performance of What A Wonderful World by the Aussie Pops Orchestra in aid of the Support Act organisation during the 2020 lockdown.

“John called and said we are doing a Mother’s Day Concert and asked if I would like to be involved. He said, ‘we would like to do a tribute to Bert and I think it would be fitting if you were part of it’,” Patti said.

It was the perfect opportunity for Patti as it would mean working with Foreman, who Bert adored, in Hamer Hall, a venue she has performed in alongside Bert and which held many happy memories for them as a couple, and be sharing the stage with Hobson, with whom she did Dancing With The Stars 15 years ago, and Craig, with whom she has also worked.

Even after his passing, Bert still has Patti’s back. Picture: David Caird

“Bert adored John and he always admired his professionalism,” Patti said.

“Bert was very lucky, he had a partnership with Graham (Kennedy) to start off with, then with Don (Lane) and then he had the wonderful partnership with John on GMA.

“We did the Support Act performance with John of What A Wonderful World during the lockdown. Bert was not very well at the time. We did our part at Lauren’s house and her husband Matt filmed it.

“Bert came out and said (the lyric) ‘I love you’ at just the right time. I thought it was really very moving because that was the last thing that he did publicly.”

Performing is in Patti’s DNA. The singer, actress, dancer, stage performer, radio and television presenter and Logie Award winner was a singer/dancer on In Melbourne Tonight, was part of The Graham Kennedy Show, The Don Lane Show and GMA.

She and Bert co-hosted Ford Superquiz and she has been a contestant on shows such as Dancing with the Stars and Celebrity Apprentice.

Her stage work includes roles in The Wizard of Oz, Sound of Music and Bye Bye Birdie.

However, she admits to having a few nerves about the Aussie Pops Orchestra’s Mother’s Day Concert but knows it is something Bert would have wanted her to do.

“I hope I get through it; it is all very well talking about it,” she said.

‘Bert will be looking down on me’

“I’ll be sad on the day, but I think he will be looking down thinking, ‘you need to do this, you need to keep going’.

“I feel in a way that he would want me to do things that come up, things that he would feel are right for me and that he would want me to do.”

For Foreman, his desire to have Patti as part of the concert was twofold.

Not only will it be a tribute to Bert, but it will also be “a good reminder what a great all-round performer Patti is”.

“The first time I worked with Bert and Patti was at a live music show at the Twin Towns Services Club, but the primary focus of the show was music performances, so I knew Patti as a singer before I knew of her other work,” he said.

“Bert was really a centrepiece for entertainment in Australia and a lot of that was to do with the fact that his show, Good Morning Australia, sat at the intersection of so many significant entertainment structures and in the middle of so many art forms.

Patti Newton says small signs from the universe tell her Bert is still watching over her, and keeping her safe. Picture: David Caird

“It was a show where an opera singer could perform one day and a jazz singer could perform the next, and then someone from the world of musical theatre could appear the day after that.

“You would have people like David Hobson on the show to sing and if it was still on today Harrison would be performing on it and, of course, Patti used to sing on GMA.”

Bert and Patti were the ultimate team on TV, on stage and in private.

“The one thing that Bert always did was include me,” Patti said.

“We were a team. We worked together. He kept me posted on what was happening (and) I never felt left out, so now we are going to be paying tribute to him.”

‘If you have had the best, you wouldn’t want second best’

Patti was 21 when she and Bert started dating.

“When you lose your partner, it is hard not having that team effort because I’ve had it since I was 21,” she said.

“That is a long time, a long time to always have someone to be by your side and to worry about.

“He used to say, ‘if anything ever happens to me, do you think you will ever get married again?’

“I would always say, ‘No. If you have had the best, you wouldn’t want second best’.”

Patti has shared and heard many wonderful stories about her late husband’s kindness and generosity since his passing, including how he gifted one of his Gold Logies 31 years ago to an AIDS patient in Melbourne who had just days to live.

Patti suspects it is not the only one of Bert’s Logies to have been gifted over the years.

Of his four Gold Logies she has two at home and is still unsure where the third might have ended up.

Bert and Patti on Bert’s 80th birthday. Picture: David Caird

“I put all the Logies up on a shelf in his room and I got to 17 and there were no more and I thought, ‘where are they?’.

“I think there are a whole lot of people around who have all been given Logies by Bert over the years, but no one was allowed to tell anyone because they were worried what I was going to do.

“I do have two of the Gold Logies, the others are out there somewhere.”

‘I am going to get a little tattoo’

Patti is planning a surprising lasting tribute to Bert.

“I am going to get a little tattoo that reads ‘Alb’,” she says pointing to her inner wrist.

“I used to call him Alb and he would call me Mac.

“We would always talk about it (her tattoo plan). I would say, ‘I am going to get all the grandkids’ names tattooed on my arm’ and Bert would say, ‘And mine too?’, and I would say, ‘No, that is too many’, but I thought ‘No, I will just get him’.

“So I am just going to have his name done, just for me.”

Tickets to John Foreman’s Aussie Pops Orchestra’s Mother’s Day Concert on Sunday, May 8 at 2pm and 5pm are available at www.artscentremelbourne.com.au.

Originally published as Patti Newton reveals how she keeps Bert in her heart and plans to honour him