Dear Chris Smith, this is where you went wrong

Much has been written in recent times about 2GB radio presenter Chris Smith losing his afternoon radio shift and the media — and the men writing the yarns — have been overwhelmingly sympathetic towards Smith. Maybe they should take a closer look, writes Annette Sharp.

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It’s simple boys: If you want to hold down a job in media — or anywhere for that matter — don’t get your penis out at work and flap it about to impress the lovely ladies. Chances are you’ll blot your professional record (and maybe other things) for all time.

Much has been written and said in recent times about 2GB radio presenter Chris Smith losing his afternoon radio shift and the media — and the men writing the yarns — have been overwhelmingly sympathetic towards Smith.

Chris Smith leaving 2GB on Wednesday. Picture: Monique Harmer

Yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, which now finds itself in the same media stable as 2GB so under increasing pressure to tow the company line, noted that Smith has been “so ill … he was vomiting from the ‘immense pressure’ he felt” after being told he was going to lose his afternoon slot to nights presenter Steve Price.

“It was violent nausea which meant that he could not go on air, having bottled his emotions since being informed of management’s plans...” gossip scribe Andrew Hornery quoted a friend of Smith’s saying, noting Smith’s key concern is “the impact a move to night-time … would have on his three-year-old twin boys … and impede court-ordered school pick-ups with his older children from his previous marriage ...” — a marriage that ended, lest we forget, after Smith went into “crazy extended drinking mode” (his words) at 2GB’s 2009 office Christmas party and was taken off air by his bosses for behaving lecherously and inappropriately towards four female staffers.

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In its coverage then — in contrast to now — the Herald dubbed Smith “Little Lord Fondle-roy”.

Not to worry. With major shareholder John Singleton running the show, Smith was soon back on air while women everywhere — including this one — watched stunned and outraged as another man prone to creepy behaviour was resurrected by … now don’t get ahead of me … a man with six marriages to his name, a love of drink and who quipped of the incident: “It sounds like every Christmas party I've been to.”

Smith, then 45, cried to this very newspaper while cataloguing the booze and medication he’d consumed putting him in such unruly, pestering, groping shape.

That night he had downed champagne and red wine while loaded on “the wrong antidepressants”.

Smith pictured with wife Susie Burrell this week. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

At this point I’d like to bring the four women he harassed at that Christmas party to the table to remind readers of the inappropriate things, including attempted kissing, Smith subjected them to that day but it seems — and here I stress — no one can remember their names because that’s the way this always goes in the media. Another case of a man abusing his power and lauding it over his young female subordinates rising and being promoted repeatedly while the women who courageously out such serial bad behaviour are slam-dunked out of the business.

Girls, wherever you are, this column is for you.

Maddeningly this wasn’t even the first time Smith had disgraced himself with female colleagues — and this is where the events of last week get interesting.

Back in the 1990s when Smith was chief-of-staff at Nine’s A Current Affair — a decade before the general public would be informed by Smith that he is bipolar — when he was merely regarded by some who worked with him as an arrogant self-important arsehole — he exposed himself to several women at a company farewell.

The farewell was held in Nine’s Level 3 boardroom — about two doors away from what was, during that decade, the office of a young up-and-coming company lawyer named Hugh Marks.

Pre HR, the legal department was never troubled with the matter and Smith was heavily sanctioned, fined, lost his company car and put on notice. Two months later he was gone.

Smith and Burrell.

Some 20 years on Marks is now Nine’s CEO and while he may nor have been exposed to Smith’s scandalous flashing and obscene suggestions that day, there can be no doubt of him being aware of it.

All of us who worked at Nine during that decade were told of it. Not in whispers, mind, but in repulsed open hallway discussions. It’s an event now burnt into the collective memory of ex-Niners and those of us who recall Smith’s haughty megastar attitude a decade earlier still, when he was a Nine star reporter romancing then WIN Wollongong reporter Tara Brown, who soon signed to Nine.

Smith’s marriage to first wife Ali did end after that 2GB Christmas party. Smith moved on with Susie Burrell, a dietitian he employed to sit alongside him at 2GB and now the mother of his toddler twin sons.

While no one is suggesting Smith has been up to his old tricks lately, if you were to ask me based on his past behaviour, the move to nights is more than he — and men like him — deserve.

Take it Chris, drop the legal action and be grateful.

I know a thousand women who’d give anything for such an opportunity.