Sacked Showbiz: Newman reveals details of when he was ‘destitute’
Sam Newman has revealed the details of when he was so ‘destitute’ he sat at home in the dark unable to pay his electricity bills. And how an idea from Playboy got him back on his feet.
Entertainment
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Sam Newman has laid bare the extraordinary details of the time he was “stone motherless broke” and “destitute”, sitting in the dark unable to pay his bills.
Newman said an idea to write a column for the Herald Sun after reading Playboy magazine helped him back on his feet, while his friends organised a fundraiser for him.
He lost everything after the bank took his house.
“I remember sitting in my house with the power turned off because I couldn’t pay the bill,’’ he said.
“I remember sitting in the dark thinking, ‘how am I going?’
“I happened to read a magazine in Playboy and you would think I would be looking at the pictures, but I read an interview that they did with Cher and it was really a full-on interview.
“I thought, wow. It was a question and answer thing. I rang my friend up, Dermott Brereton, and I said would you do this with me, and I took it to the Sun (and editor) Colin Duck.”
Newman said he was paid a few hundred dollars for the article.
He said he could have gone down a dark path but was resilient.
“I’m usually pretty good at working things out myself,” he said.
“I don’t make too many decisions which I regret. Although I’ve been stone motherless broke because I made a bad decision to back someone in a business at the bank, I became not bankrupt but destitute.
“I’m not embarrassed to say this but my close friends organised a benefit for me to get me back on my feet. People say can you come to this function and we’ll raise some money, and to my everlasting gratitude to all those people who donated to it, it’s important to pay them back or really know who they are. It’s one of those things I feel embarrassed about, but that’s what friends do for you, and that got me back on my feet.”
Newman, who played 300 games for Geelong, drew on the strength he used during his footy career.
“You either get on with it or you don’t,” he said. “I thought, well, I’m destitute and you can either have that attitude, you can look up and say there are the stars, I’ll see if I can join them one day — all those dreadful cliches.”
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