Tim Blair: Lisa Wilkinson’s new book filled with ‘make-believe’

The TV host’s wayward new autobiography It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This is part of a global woe-is-me movement featuring the wealthy, privileged and secure, writes Tim Blair.

‘All the world’s a stage,” according to some bloke called William Shakespeare.

Maybe that’s why so many of us behave as actors, leading ridiculous make-believe lives full of fake and exaggerated drama.

But more about Lisa Wilkinson later. First, consider Australia’s Covid over-reaction.

Various state premiers and tyrannical chief health officers have been bad enough, yet their excesses have easily been matched by members of the public who delight in their own repression.

For these types, no restrictions are too limiting and no lockdowns long enough.

Father Rod Bower, the leftist Anglican who enjoyed brief fame some years ago thanks to a sequence of moralistic church signs, posted outside his Gosford Jesus shack following NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s relaxation of Covid rules:

“#LetitripDom will kill us all.”

Father Rod Bower of Gosford Anglican Church. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

A friend theorises that Australia’s Covid paranoia is driven by people who otherwise don’t have much going on in their lives and like pretending ours is a time of great distress and danger.

Sounds about right. The same might apply to our climate change panic community.

My own theory: the reason climate activists are so opposed to nuclear energy is because a nuclear-powered Australia, with a global climate emissions contribution of just 0.4 per cent or so, would leave them with nothing to cry about.

They’d lose their cause. Then again, they’re cranky enough now when our global contribution is barely more than one per cent, so maybe emissions alarmism is an eternal ­industry.

Imagine having so little to complain about that the arrival of tradies to install a heater is a major stress event.

A man walks on steps covered in rainbow colours. Picture: AFP

That’s the story of Peter Fray-Witzer, a student at Oberlin College in the US whose cosy life in a “safe space” dormitory known as “the home of the Women and Trans Collective” was thrown into turmoil by terrible tradie news.

On October 7, Fray-Witzer and other students received an email telling them “contractors will be entering rooms” the next day to install new ­radiators.

In an article for his college newspaper, Fray-Witzer wrote that he was “very averse to people entering my personal space”.

“This anxiety was compounded by the fact that the crew would be strangers,” Fray-Witzer added, “and they were more than likely to be cisgender men.”

Cisgender is a woke term describing men and women who were born male or female and identify as male or female. As the late comedian Norm MacDonald put it: “It’s a way of marginalising a normal person.”

It might take a while before an acceptable trans tradie turns up to save Peter from the looming American winter, so let’s move on to Lisa Wilkinson, a tragic victim of Australia’s gender pay gap. And so much more.

Wilkinson says her co-host suggested a “Friends-style” deal together – then went off on his own. Picture: Renee Nowytarger.

In her new autobiography, Wilkinson complains that Today co-presenter Karl Stefanovic gave just two days’ notice that he wouldn’t attend her indulgent 2017 wedding vow renewal party.

Not only that, but she also says she was upset by Stefanovic’s belated vow congratulations during what turned out to be her final Today appearance:

“I took a deep breath, my eyes momentarily widening at what I had just heard, turned to the camera, and said … ‘Yeah, I did Karl, but why would anybody care about that when it’s news time? Sylvia, good morning …’

“And with that, no further words needed to be spoken.

“Karl knew I had cut him dead, something I had never done on or off air before.”

Video emerged last week of that final Today show. It showed a completely different and entirely friendly exchange between the co-hosts.

It Wasn't Meant To Be Like This is out November 3.

The title of Wilkinson’s work – It Wasn’t Meant To Be Like This – might be more properly expressed by someone being dragged away from their family by Xi Jinping’s organ farmers than by wealthy Lisa.

But I’m possibly in the wrong demographic to judge her torment. Let’s hear from one of Lisa’s friends, fellow Sydney leftist millionaire feminist Mia Freedman.

“I can’t remember how I found out that Lisa Wilkinson was leaving the Today show,” Freedman wrote last week in 2230-word piece for Mamamia. “But I remember it came as a shock. Not just to me, as it turns out.

“To Australia.”

Sure it did. Ten words later:

“It was an ordinary Monday night in October 2017 and I was already in my pyjamas. I was doing some work when a news alert came up. Lisa had abruptly left the Today show after 10 years.”

Lisa Wilkinson and Karl Stefanovic on the Today set in May 2017. Picture: Renee Nowytarger

So Mia does in fact remember how she found out, right down to the clothes she was wearing at the time. What is it with these gals and their crazy memories?

Next, Mia recalls the scene at Wilkinson’s house on the evening of her Today departure:

“I searched Lisa’s face for a read on how she was. In shock, mostly. And definitely rattled. But calm.”

Shocked, Rattled and Calm was a big hit for Little Richard in 1956.

“More than anyone I have ever met, Lisa has always had an uncanny ability to put herself in the shoes of the audience.

“The reader, the viewer, the listener. She gets people. She knows how they receive information.”

Via print and screen, mostly.

And lately they’ve received the ­information that certain of Wilkinson’s Today recollections don’t match events as they were recorded.

Shakespeare’s “world’s a stage” speech ends with these lines:

“Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion …”

We’ve moved that final scene several steps forward. Second childishness is now in the first act.