In his own words, he tells about his journey.

MY FAMILY

I WAS born John Knight in Brisbane in 1927, the youngest of three boys. My dad, Arthur, was a son of free settlers from the wool industry in Lancashire, England.

Captivated by the religious US-style ``tent missions’’ of the time, he and some of his pals ``converted to Christianity’’. Dad was eventually ordained into the ministry and sent to India as a ``missionary’’.

As World War I raged, he developed active tuberculosis, rampant throughout India and untreatable. He survived, just, convinced God had spared him so he could ``serve humanity’’ — which he did until he passed away, aged 86.

My mum, Myrtle, was born in Bathurst and died a few months shy of her 100th. Her grandparents (she, a housemaid, stole some food to survive; he, a farmer, charged with sedition for anti-government comments) were transported to Australia from Newgate jail in London in 1817 and 1821. They met and married in jail in Australia.

They eventually bought a farm in Bathurst, where Granny and later Mum were born. Mum moved to Sydney to work as a legal secretary where she met Dad, married and produced Ron (1921), Lyn (1926) and me (1927). I was an unfortunate error fuelled by lust and poverty - the ``pill’’ was still 30 years away.

GROWING UP

OUR family moved to Sydney when I was six months old and I attended North Sydney Boys High School at the height of the Great Depression in 1929. As a student, I kept chooks and sold eggs, veggies and ``coconut ice’’ (I made it in Mum’s kitchen).

I wanted to be a writer. I received 5 shillings (50c) for my first story, published by the Sunday Sun when I was eight. As a student, I wrote for a daily newspaper and magazine and sold a weekly Q&A column, *Mr Answerman, published in Hobart, Brisbane and even South Africa.

Mum said I was going to go to university to become a doctor. It was non-negotiable. I entered the University of Sydney school of medicine on two scholarships.

After graduating in 1953, I was sent to work as a government medical officer and GP in Tottenham, central-west NSW. I was joined by my long-time ``girlfriend’’ Noreen Weslake, a trained nurse whose parents had migrated from England as 10-pound Poms. We were married in 1955.

We saved our money and paid pound stg. 6500 for a bungalow at Eastwood in Sydney in 1955. I set up practice and saw three patients on day one. One is still alive.

DEVELOPING IDEAS

WITH the encouragement of our neighbour Geoff Waite, a returned WWII veteran operating a real estate agency, I mortgaged our house and ploughed everything into land developments. I earned more from a single block of land we bought, cleared and re-sold than my wage in my first two years of doctoring. We moved on to larger blocks and subdivisions, then erected cottages and three-storey home units.

A doctor friend told me ``corner shops are a good bet’’ so I embarked on the ``corner shop project’’. The aim was to build 30 shops by the time I was 33. I built 35 by age 32.

I built and developed non-stop from 1955 to 2011, starting with my first house at age 27 and finishing my ``last’’ project, a 10-storey, $10-million development in Parramatta, in 2011. I built commercial high-rises in Crows Nest/St Leonards - the enormous profit from the sale of one enabled Medi-Aid to buy two blocks of 30 home units near my home/surgery.

The units were rented to Medi-Aid’s target clients - elderly people doing it tough with no means, no home and no money. They paid $75 a week. Some of them are still there.

Other projects over the years have included a printing company, exporting cymbidium orchids to the US and the Albert and Meyer, Funeral Home, built at Thornleigh with Ken Meyer in 1968. There was no Albert - the name was added to get top placing in the Yellow Pages. It was spectacularly successful. The first client was the Hornsby councillor who had objected to the proposal. Cross JK at your peril.

THE MEDIA MEDIC

ALL the while, I continued to write. I started a lose-weight column in the relatively new Woman’s Day magazine in 1968. The mag would ``dream up’’ a tantalising diet name and mock up a layout (beautiful beaches, slim girls in bikinis). You could lose 1-5kg in a fortnight on any one diet - fluid loss from the altered food intake, not fat loss.

Two to three weeks later, snouts were back in the trough seeking the next ``Dr Wright Wonder Diet’’. Nutritionist Rosemarie Stanton objected loudly, saying the diets could endanger health. My reply? If you weigh 90-120kg, you could starve for a year and still keep talking. The diets were basically the same. Eat a bit less each day, chop out sugar and starches, fat and salt. I’m still writing identical diets.

The diets led to a phone call from the producers of a new TV show, The Mike Walsh Show, inviting me for a ``one-off’’ interview. The guest appearance turned into three seven-minute spots a week. I think we covered the first baby birth on TV, definitely the first caersarean section and heaps of revolutionary (now routine) procedures. From pre-recorded to live, black and white to colour, and Ray Martin to Kerri-Anne Kennerley, I was the only original cast member to stay with the show until it folded in 1999.

I was still writing my books. They now total 26 titles, translated into 10 languages and tapes/discs for the blind, rewritten and reprinted 28 times in the past 40 years, as well as more than 100 `mini-books’. Noreen fed me coffee and sandwiches as I pumped the books out at our farm near Armidale. The five-volume title Family Medical Care is still updated and translated around the world.

Print and TV work also led to radio - from a two-hour talkback show to a syndicated, daily ``health capsule’’ on more than 80 stations.

I wrote (simultaneously!) under a variety of names and pseudonyms for 14 magazines, papers, radio and TV. The exposure created professional jealousy on the part of some doctors. They eventually came to realise I was driving patients into their surgeries so everybody won.

MEDI-AID

THESE projects paved the way for and funded the Medi-Aid Foundation. Dad had drummed into me his belief that older people receive a raw deal. Look after the elderly when you get older, he told us - advice I took to heart.

Established in 1971, Medi-Aid owns more than 250 retirement village and rental units in Sydney and more than 160 on the Gold Coast. It buys prime units and rents them at low cost to seniors on Struggle Street.

Our flagship is retirement village extraordinaire Vimiera Village in Sydney. Built in six stages on 6 acres, it took 15 years from start to finish and boasts 150 units, a private park, indoor spa and pool, libraries, recreation rooms, ``Village Centre’’ and commercial kitchens.

The final stage was opened in 2003 by then Prime Minister John Howard, who was quoted the next day: ``My treasurer Peter Costello is most grateful Medi-Aid did not seek one dollar from the Government.’’

Our first foray into the Gold Coast came in 1999 when I went to check on a block of land I had owned in Leonard Ave for 40 years. I built a duplex to house two older people.

The foundation kept building and raising funds from commercial activities to carry out its altruistic deeds. Sadly, it had to sell several commercial buildings to pay back taxes to retain its charitable status after a morale-draining dispute with the Australian Tax Office.

Medi-Aid came to the ATO’s attention after it lost $58 million invested by my former friend and neighbour, US-based conman Derek Turner. After examining our books, ATO officials ruled Medi-Aid’s commercial activities were ``not commensurate with its benevolent purpose’’. Our sin? Making money, doing commercial things so we could do good work. What was OK when we started was no longer permitted according to ATO rules.

It was painful, on top of having all that money stolen, but we’ve paid our dues and come through it all.

Turner was sentenced to 20 years’ jail in the US, his sentence reduced on appeal to 87 months. In August 2011, he walked out a free man. Incredibly, he phoned me from the Bahamas to ``touch base’’. My blood nearly froze. Unperturbed, he phoned again a few weeks later to ask me to give him a good character reference so he could get a visa to return to Australia. I declined.

TRAGEDY

IN January last year, I was diagnosed with cancer of the base of my tongue which had spread to my neck. My lovely wife Noreen, mother of our four children, was by my side as I underwent high doses of radiotherapy and weekly chemo.

Noreen spent two hours every day dressing my skin lesions. After many months, the burns healed and the pain subsided - only to be replaced by a different pain. On May 30, after spending a happy day chatting in the sunshine with Noreen, she went to bed and sadly failed to wake up the next morning. We buried her on June 4, with a ``life celebration’’ attended by 500 loving friends and relatives. In November last year, I also lost my brother Lyn and his wife, Audrey.

Of course, life moves on. I tell my many friends to make the most of every day, for nobody knows when the ``tap on the shoulder’’ will arrive.

This year is already looking up. There will be cause for celebration when Medi-Aid’s residents meet at the Marriott Resort on Monday for our first breakfast for the year.

The foundation has been shopping again on the Coast. In January and February, we bought another 10 units in Surfers Paradise.

Medi-Aid made a modest profit from its commercial activities that enable it to function and float. The purchases mean we will be able to accomodate another 10 to 20 new seniors - people with no home who are honestly doing it tough.

Medi-Aid is now completely debt-free and owns more than 160 properties on the Coast - a total I hope to take to 200 in my lifetime.

DOCTOR IN THE HOUSE

- Australia s best-known “media medic”, Dr James Wright was born John Franklin Knight in Brisbane in 1927.

- Fondly known as “The Merry Medic” because of the no-frills, often cheeky way he dispenses medical advice and health tips in language anybody can understand.

- Medical advice/stories have been published or broadcast both in Australia and overseas every day for more than 40 years.

- Household name thanks to his health Q&As in newspapers and magazines and on radio and TV; his weight-loss diets for Woman s Day and appearances on The Mike Walsh Show through to Midday, during the show s various incarnations and hosts over 25 years.

- Pioneered “cutting-edge” filming of surgical procedures including caesareans, gastric banding, heart operations, hair transplants, breast implants, laparoscopic surgery and the advent of CT imaging - all common today but unheard of at the time.

- In 1973, Dr Wright, his late wife, Noreen (a registered nurse), and his brother established the Medi-Aid Centre Foundation to provide accommodation for elderly people, with an emphasis on those with financial, health, disability or other issues.

- The foundation s $275 million real estate portfolio includes investments in retirement villages, residential units and office blocks. Dr Wright has never received a financial benefit from the foundation s activities.

- His many health books have been translated, revised, rewritten and adapted to braille and DVD around the world and are constantly being updated. All royalties from the books benefit Medi-Aid.

- Awarded the Order of Australia (AM) for his media outreach and the work of the foundation in 1988.

- In 2003 he was one of three finalists in the Australian of the Year Awards.

- “Dr Wright on US-based conman Derek Turner, who was sentenced to 20 years in jail after medi-Aid loast $58million: Incredibly, he phoned me from the Bahamas to “touch base”. My blood nearly froze. Unperturbed, he phoned again a few weeks later for a good character reference so he could get a visa to return to Australia. I declined.”