Final weeks offer a glimpse of Warnie’s world, and clues about tragic death
Shane Warne admitted to being “scared” of his never-ending schedule before he died, with every day of the next two years planned out.
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Shane Warne was in fine form at the Australian Open tennis men’s final.
He was courtside, a few rows back, with mate Steven Baker and son Jackson, hosting a merry sideshow to the main event.
Between sips of Jim Beam and ducking out for darts, Warne roared for Rafael Nadal.
He drew laughs for his animated displeasure with Daniil Medvedev’s short-lived comeback.
By then, Warne had decided to have a break. He was burnt out.
Cricket commentary in the UK was followed by cricket commentary here, where the Ashes summer blended into commitments to a bloated BBL tournament.
The politics of the sport, from his criticism of bowler Mitchell Starc to the unedifying exit of Warne’s mate, Justin Langer, as Australia’s coach, compounded the demands.
Warne was always busy.
At his former Brighton home (featuring a ceiling mirror above the custom-made big bed), he relied upon a whiteboard which, box by box, plotted every day for the next two calendar years.
Travel. Kids. School terms. Poker. And work – in India, Britain and Australia.
It was all there, almost every day accounted for, in a never-ending schedule that Warne would admit “scares me a bit”.
He wanted a time out, a year off, manager James Erskine has said.
Warne had other good reasons to be tired.
A well-reported bout of Covid in London in August, including a burst on a ventilator, had been followed by another brush with Covid since, albeit milder.
A “bit of a sniffle”, Warne called the second dose.
Warne was not above vanity.
A friend described his teeth as “unnaturally white”.
He liked that his eyes – one green, one blue – attracted female attention.
And he cared when a sneaky photograph was published of him at a Sydney hotel.
Headlined “Dad-Bod”, he was seen to be dragging on a cigarette and guzzling a Red Bull.
As he later said: “I get papped with my shirt off... I’ve got my big fat guts out on the balcony.”
It was early January. Warne had spent much of the past two years in hotel rooms, going from match to match in bubbles of Covid containment.
When in Melbourne, he strained against the draconian policies of the Andrews Government. Like all Victorians, he was sick of lockdowns.
He had just bought a house in Portsea, which he wanted as an Australian base (with bowling alley and jet ski garage) to complement a beachfront penthouse purchase in St Kilda.
But first, Warne wanted his overdue break.
Advised that he would be forgotten if he went off-air for a year, he settled on three months off.
As Warne said in late January: “I want to sit by the pool, get some sun, and try and get super fit and just chill.”
Warne imbibed at the tennis, and at the polo in St Kilda a week or two later.
But he was thinking ahead, to July, when he planned to have “shredded” to his fitter self.
He had just completed a 14-day liquid diet – “black and green juices” – when he landed at Koh Samui last Thursday.
He indulged vegemite on toast the following day and had a massage.
He told a tailor, who overheard a phone call with a woman, that he would hit the bars.
On his final day, Warne exchanged golf stories with close mates (Warne proudly held the honour of being the only person to have holed-in-one the maddening 16th hole at Augusta).
Then he returned to his room, to watch the Australia v Pakistan Test, and fell down as suddenly as Elvis Presley or Michael Hutchence.
His death inspired the same numbed response, though it lacks any of the scandal typically reserved for celebs who die too young.
These final days offer a glimpse of Shane’s World.
The sporting rockstar was one of the few figures who could hush a room simply by walking in.
“If he shook your hand, he would look you in the eye until they almost burnt,” his friend Sam Newman said on Sky News this week.
“He wanted you to genuinely know that you were special.”
Newman and Warne spoke last Thursday, as Warne headed to the airport to fly to Singapore, en route to Thailand.
Warne wanted a Ford Mustang, and Newman hoped he had found a suitable purchase for his friend.
I’ll send pics, he said. Don’t worry, Warne replied. We’ll look at the car together when I get back.
Former Australian captain Michael Clarke spoke to Warne a day earlier – he, too, planned to catch up with Warne and check out the new car.
Warne seemed “as happy as ever”.
“I can’t think of too many times when the great man was sad,” Clarke said.
On the Monday, Warne had chatted with another close friend, musician Ed Sheeran, about the one-year anniversary of the death of their friend, Michael Gudinski.
They agreed to each drink a glass of Penfolds 707 red wine in Gudinski’s honour.
Warne exchanged silly memes with Eddie McGuire during the week.
He contacted former keeper Adam Gilchrist last Friday, to praise Gilchrist’s TV tribute for Rod Marsh, the former wicketkeeper who had died earlier in the week.
He spoke to mates at home about an upcoming wedding in Mexico and a separate trip to Las Vegas.
After Thailand, he planned to train at Portsea, and is believed to have been eager to discuss producing a new line of wellness supplements similar to some of the products he had long used to lose weight fast.
One of Melbourne’s biggest cheerleaders, Warne had communicated with 3AW’s Neil Mitchell about plans to revitalise Melbourne post-Covid in recent weeks.
Warne was expecting to catch up with Piers Morgan.
He also had loose plans to see a former girlfriend, Emily Scott, on his return.
Then, at 52, he died of “natural causes”.
Natural causes implies a lack of shock, an almost gentle exit for the elderly at odds with a life – like Warne’s - so unfinished.
Perhaps having Covid – twice – weakened Warne’s heart, given international research has linked Covid to a heightened risk of later blood clots.
His first bout was fierce, a pounding headache, shivers and sweats.
He could breathe, he said, but used a “special ventilator” to ensure “there were no longer-lasting effects” of Covid.
KM Mandana, a cardiothoracic surgeon quoted in the Times of India, said diabetes, hypertension, smoking and obesity were the leading triggers for sudden cardiac arrest.
“Now there’s a new one – Covid,” he said.
“A Covid survivor is likely to have suffered clots in arteries, which may trigger a heart attack months after recovery. In most cases, especially those aged between 30 and 60, there’s no symptom.”
Perhaps a lifetime of smoking was partly to blame.
Warne couldn’t give up the gaspers, and he was fond of a cigar.
An ashtray lived next to that 10ft by 10ft bed.
He carried an emergency packet of smokes in his socks, in case he ran out.
Or maybe Warne died because he wanted to be thin.
If his well-known vices were to blame, perhaps too might have been Warne’s drastic approach to countering them.
Warne didn’t drink much, everyone says, two or three glasses of fine red or a few vodka mixers. He didn’t use drugs.
His diet – and his extreme shifts from junk food to almost no solid food – seems more likely to have contributed to his premature death.
Warne’s preferred cuisine tastes were unashamedly teenage.
At Romeos restaurant in Toorak, he once ordered the bolognese pasta.
The waitress paused after spooning a small mountain of parmesan cheese onto his plate.
“Keep going,” Warne told her.
Warne hosted about a dozen guests in his Brighton home almost a year to the day before his sudden death.
There was a private chef, and two waitresses, both tanned and beautiful.
Some guests presented gifts of toilet paper so that Warne could avoid the crazy Covid rushes on toilet paper.
Warne proudly showed off his underground nightclub, with a fully stocked bar, and his walk-in glass-walled cellar stacked with the finest wines.
The guests were served Henschke Hill of Grace, which depending on the year costs $400 to $1200 a bottle.
There were oysters and fine champagne, then a main meal of tender beef slices with salads and vegetables.
Yet Warne enjoyed a separate menu to his guests.
“I love Coles lasagne,” he explained to the guest next to him, as he embarked on the first of three serves.
Chris Martin, of Coldplay, addressed the paradoxes of Warne in the recent documentary, SHANE.
His friend, Martin said, would say he “didn’t give a f***”, but he “gives a f*** more than anyone else”.
Warne’s larrikin excesses suggested a lack of care.
Up close, his impeccable manners and his big-hearted friendliness hinted of a more complicated study.
He did care, as his hypersensitive responses to articles made clear.
He tried to have “offending” journalists sacked (including this one), though many media people speak of long-lasting trusts shared with Warne after wobbly moments.
For Warne, weight was a sore spot.
He once walked out of a press conference when a journalist suggested the Madame Tussaud model of Warne looked slimmer than the real thing.
Warne wasn’t the statue subject who told the sculptor that too much clay was being slapped on to his girth – that was horse trainer Bart Cummings. But he could have been.
Warne had shed weight fast before.
A decade ago, in the spotlight for his romance with Elizabeth Hurley, Warne prompted rumours with his transformation.
His tennis-watching mate, St Kilda veteran footballer Steven Baker, later took credit.
Baker said Warne, who dropped 12kg in four months, was using an organic weight loss drink called TAIslim.
“I signed him up about three or four months ago on the diet system,” Baker said in 2011.
“He loves the stuff, he’s addicted.”
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