Gossip Queen: Bert Newton says 80 is his very lucky number

TV LEGEND Bert Newton has reflected on his “lucky” life and career at a get-together at Crown to celebrate his milestone birthday as he prepares to turn 80 on Sunday.

TV LEGEND Bert Newton has reflected on his “lucky” life and career as he turns 80.

Newton, who celebrates the milestone tomorrow, had an early get-together at Crown on Saturday, being showered with gifts and cutting cake with grandchildren Sam, 10, Eva, 9, Lola, 6, and Monty, 2, wife Patti, daughter Lauren and her husband Matt Welsh, and with his son Matthew calling in from New York.

“I think that there would be a few friends of mine from times gone by that would doubt that I was going to make 80,” Newton said.

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Bert Newton celebrates his 80th birthday with his wife Patti. Picture: David Caird

“They say that life begins at 40. If that is the case I have had 40 pretty good years up until 80. It is a good feeling and it is particularly nice to be able to share it with the grandkids.

“I am so thrilled that I am here with them. One realises that at 80 years of age there is not too much chance of being at their 21st or whatever, but the important thing is they are with us to celebrate.

“It is wonderful to celebrate the milestone with the people I love.”

And soon there will be another grandchild, with Lauren expecting her fifth child in December.

TV presenter Graham Kennedy with Bert Newton at the Logie Awards in 1969.

“I am thrilled for her because she is the most wonderful mother and Patti and I adore the kids and we can’t wait for No.5 to arrive,” he said.

“When Lauren told me it, was the best birthday present I could have had.”

Newton gives thanks for his extraordinary career and for being “lucky to be lucky”.

“I was very lucky because I was able to have three wishes granted. I always loved radio and theatre and then eventually television, and I was able to work in all three and work with wonderful people who were so good at what they did,” he said.

Rosemary Margan and Bert Newton host the Logies in the early ’60s.

“When I was a young boy in single figures and then very early double figures, the only thing I wanted to do was be a radio announcer and I wanted particularly to be on one station, 3XY, and that is where I started as an 11-year-old in a children’s program called Peter’s Pals. My early ambition, which was precisely that, happened very quickly and then all of a sudden other things happened.

Bert Newton and boxer Muhammad Ali at the 1979 TV Week Logies Awards.

“I was an on-air announcer when I just turned 16 and then television came along and I had not really thought about that because it was a bit of a mystery to everyone what television was going to be. I got an offer to go into it and then during the years of television I had the opportunity to do theatre shows — and if you don’t see in a situation like that that luck has played a part, you have not been paying attention.”

Newton said he had three pieces of advice for people keen to forge a career in entertainment.

Bert Newton and wife Patti at the 1979 Logie Awards.

“They need a modicum of talent, they need someone with some sort of power — be it a producer, a station executive or a sponsor, to believe in them — and then they need luck. They need just that piece of luck that when it happens you take advantage of it. But you also recognise that you are pretty lucky to be lucky,” he said.

After a series of health battles in recent years, including a quadruple heart bypass in 2012, he is grateful for his health.

“My ongoing enemy is pneumonia,” he said.

Bert Newton on the set of Good Morning Australia in 2001.

“For some reason I am susceptible to pneumonia and I did have suspected pneumonia in the week leading up to the Logies.

“My attitude is, if turning 80 and the major problem you have healthwise is you have to be very careful of the enemy, in my case pneumonia, I am pretty lucky.”

Newton made headlines this month when his Logies speech sparked an outcry on social media, with concern voiced about his joking reference to his great mates Graham Kennedy and Don Lane “mentoring” people in their dressing rooms.

Bert Newton with nurses Karlie Cooper, Janah Sweet and Melissa Santaera at the Epworth Hospital after having heart surgery.

He quickly explained he meant nothing untoward with what was intended as a lighthearted quip, but was still taken to task by some entertainment industry colleagues.

“I come from an era of show business where the blame is shared just as the highlights are shared and friendly fire was always a no-no, but that is today,” he said.

“Someone has mentioned several times that I am ‘yesterday’s person’. Well, I am not really yesterday’s person, I am today’s person who remembers very well yesterday.”

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