Anthony Callea threatened before 2004 Australian Idol grand final

Anthony Callea and his security team have spilt the beans on a threatening letter the singer received before his epic Australian Idol grand final.

Anthony Callea was threatened by the Australian Idol grand final in 2004. Picture: Ellen Smith

Beloved singer Anthony Callea performed in the grand final of Australian Idol, shadowed by security, after receiving a death threat in the days leading into the live broadcast from the Sydney Opera House.

With a rebooted Australian Idol launching on Channel 7 on Monday, the extraordinary circumstances surrounding Callea’s performance in front of millions of TV viewers watching the Idol extravaganza in 2004 was recounted this week by the security chief whose team was charged with looking after the gifted vocalist.

Callea shared the frightening experience with this writer several years ago after a “credible threat” was received at the house Callea was staying at with his fellow grand finalist, and eventual winner, Casey Donovan.

“A note was delivered to the house where we were staying and it was taken seriously by the production,” Callea said.

“I had security with me in the days leading up to the final. On the night they changed the way Casey (Donovan) and I arrived at the Opera House stairs. For a TV spectacle they wanted us to walk down the red carpet and touch fans but instead we were put in the back of a car flanked by security and we just waved as we were driven to the stairs.”

Casey Donovan and Anthony Callea at the Australian Idol red carpet in Sydney in 2004.

John Moncrieff, whose Monjon company ran security for Idol in 2004, said the threat was taken very seriously.

“They (Callea and Donovan) were living in a major home that had 10 bedrooms in (Sydney’s) Hunters Point,” Moncrieff told Sam Newman’s You Cannot Be Serious podcast.

“We received a letter at the house, and this effectively was a safe house where no one knew they were there, and this letter was cut (out of newspapers and magazines), it was a letter threatening Anthony, so that escalated everything.

“We escalated security, we escalated police, we escalated bag checks, we made sure that everything was safe.”

Callea also recalled in that 2019 Sunday Herald Sun interview the toll Idol took on him during filming.

“It was full on. I ended up in hospital on the show,” he said.

“It was in the third week. An ambulance picked me up from the home we were staying in, in Sydney. I don’t remember the ambulance collecting me because I was so stressed. They thought there could have been something seriously wrong with me like Meningococcal disease.

“They gave me two Lumbar punctures in the emergency room. Then they realised I was just very stressed. I remember the producer coming into the hospital, I think it was the morning of the show that night, and he said, ‘You are still in hospital, the rule is if you can’t perform this week we have to bring back the person from the week prior,’ and my dad, who was there, looked at me and said, ‘You can do this.’

“I went to the studio that night, I was still not well, and performed and as soon as I finished my performance I ran off stage and threw up in a bin.”