Big V Interview: Former politician Bob Cheek reveals plans for his next adventure
From sports reporting to politics to founding a multimillion-dollar empire, Bob Cheek has enjoyed a varied career. But he says it’s not over yet.
Victoria
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When former politician Bob Cheek heard that Victorian MPs wanted larger taxpayer handouts if they lost their jobs, he was incensed.
In 2002, when Cheek was Liberal leader in Tasmania, he lost his seat at a state election – the first party leader to do so in almost a century.
At that time he was approaching 60 years of age but didn’t qualify for a generous pollie pension scheme that would have gifted him a salary for life.
While admitting he “sulked for a year” about the election result, the former top-level footballer and journalist decided to shun the jobs-for-the-boys lifestyle many ex-MPs covet.
“Instead of whining and looking for charity I got off my backside and started a chain of 40 gyms, which I sold eight years later for more than $50m,” he said.
“My point is that if these people are so incompetent they can’t get a job after politics, they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.”
The self-deprecating former ruckman, who moved to Melbourne as his business grew last decade and now lives in the bayside suburb of Hampton, described his relatively brief foray into politics as like a “shooting star” that crashed and burned.
He entered the political game filled with energy and ideas, but within a couple of years sported a black eye after being king hit by a colleague, and repeatedly clashed with party leaders.
When he seized the Liberal leadership in 2001, he held it for just a year before crash-landing completely.
“That was a blow, but when you look back now, it was the best thing that ever happened to me,” he said.
“I’m a bit of a fatalist in that regard; when one door closes, another one opens.”
Cheek has opened a lot of doors in his life and has few regrets – with the exception of turning down a contract with Fitzroy in the VFL in the 1960s.
Where the sky seems higher
Born in Launceston, Cheek grew up on an idyllic farm in Evandale, next to the South Esk River.
The family home was built in 1826 and had original convict quarters, stables and a blacksmith shop.
Still a regular visitor to his home state today, Cheek describes his trips to the Apple Isle as “good for the soul”.
“The air in Tassie is so clean and pure, I get off the plane and the sky seems higher,” he said.
As a youngster, Cheek “got up to a lot of mischief”.
He remembers hanging out with kids who would sneak up on young lovebirds in their parked cars, shining a torch on any “romance” occurring.
As a school boarder from the age of nine, he remembers being forced to take cold showers at 5:30am and getting a “rap around the genitals” if he emerged before 30 seconds had elapsed.
A bright student with a rebellious nature, his obsession with sport contributed to him failing Year 10.
Forced to consider a career as a teenager, he got a job as a cadet journalist after writing a letter to the editor.
In 1961 he landed his dream reporting task for the Launceston Examiner – to cover the Australian Test team’s Ashes tune-up in Tasmania.
Cheek said he interviewed captain Richie Benaud, before witnessing the rare sight of the spin legend getting hit for a mammoth six during the exhibition match.
“They couldn’t find the ball, so I sort of went over to help them look,” he said.
“I actually spotted it but I thought I’ll pretend I didn’t, so we went on ‘looking’.
“About 10 minutes later I put it in my pocket, thinking ‘this is the ball Richie held and bowled’. I took it back to the Mercury and they wanted me to do a story. I’ve still got the ball today.”
As a talented VFL footy player in the 60s, Cheek trained with the Lions in 1966 and was offered a contract that guaranteed five senior games.
He also fielded offers from Essendon, Carlton and Footscray.
Family life saw him turn down the deals to stay in Tasmania, however, and he married Stephanie Spencer the following year, who he had met at a country dance night in 1963 in a moment that was “love at first sight”.
Later that decade he played against the big guns of the VFL when representing Tassie during state carnivals, and described being treated like a “javelin” by Carlton legend John Nicholls.
Meanwhile, Bob and Steph took over a newsagency on Tasmania’s northwest coast, and started a business career that would ebb and flow for decades.
A purveyor of fine ferrets
As a young man Cheek was, he said, a “useless” farmer.
He was dispatched instead to stockyards, to auctioneer the sale of Poddy calves, broken down sheepdogs, ferrets and Muscovy ducks.
Ferrets became a trademark – his first book after being dumped from parliament was titled Cheeky: Confessions of a Ferret Salesman.
“I used to have to get them out of the cage and they’d be hanging off your finger,” he said.
“When I got into politics, and later on, I always called myself a former ferret salesman.
“I used to say ‘they were mean, vicious, deceitful, smelly creatures, which was an ideal training for politics’.”
Before a political career called, Cheek mixed sport and business by introducing indoor cricket to Tasmania.
Later, he remodelled a failed gym on Hobart’s waterfront, seeing an opportunity after the previous owners went broke.
That gym became the driver for a political tilt, after the Liberal Party backed a publicly-funded competitor nearby.
Encouraged by senior party members to put his outrage into action, he ran on a business-friendly platform in 1996 under the banner “it takes Cheek”.
It was a tumultuous time in Tasmania; during his first year in parliament a crazed gunman massacred 36 people and destroyed the lives of hundreds more at Port Arthur.
Cheek said he rushed into politics to do “what I wanted to do regardless of what the party thought” which was a “nightmare” for then-leader Tony Rundle.
He doesn’t keep in touch with former colleagues now, and scorched political earth when he left parliament by outlining MP rorts aimed at procuring taxpayer-funded alcohol, home TVs, and junkets.
“Ordinary people are not bad people but they get behind those sandstone walls of Old Parliament House, and they’ve suddenly got people running around calling them sir or madam, people treating them like royalty, and it all goes to their head,” he said.
“They lose touch with the people.”
During his six-year career, Cheek’s outspoken nature made him internal enemies, including former Tasmanian VFL teammate and party leader, Ray Groom.
From black eyes to election fires
Despite spending six years in Tasmania’s corridors of power, Bob Cheek is typically self-deprecating about his legacy.
“The thing people remember me for is being king hit … and for losing my seat (as leader),” he said.
He laughs uneasily, clearly still irritated by the result, 21 years on.
Cheek eventually said there were things he did during political life of which he was proud, and that he was glad he gave that career a crack.
He described the “king hit”, when he was attacked by Groom in the party room after speaking his mind on previous Liberal policies, as “totally out of character”.
In his memoir he says Groom asked him to pretend he had slipped and fallen on a doorknob, while leader Tony Rundle wanted him to fabricate a story for journalists.
Cheek towed the party line by refusing to confirm what really happened, but managed to get a signed confession from Groom that he had been struck from the “rear right side”.
He recalled years later bumping into an old staff member in Hobart Airport, which is so small you “could swing a cat”, and having them awkwardly call over Groom to say hello.
The pair gruffly shook hands, but it was a second-hand encounter more than a decade later that made him laugh out loud.
Cheek’s grandson goes to school in Melbourne but had spent a term in Tasmania, where he became friends with none other than Groom’s grandson.
When Groom was asked about the incident by his grandson, he apparently said: “I’m not discussing it now, and I’m not discussing it ever”.
Back when it occurred Cheek’s black eye faded, but internal tensions did not within the Liberal Party.
In 2001 the numbers fell his way, and he took over the leadership. The short stint at the top ended when Tasmanians decided to give the Liberals a belting in 2002, favouring Labor and the Greens.
“It was a blow to my ego, and you’ve got to have an ego to go into politics,” he said.
“I took it really personally in a small place like Tasmania.”
He was 59 years-old, unemployed, and without a parliamentary pension.
Encouraged by his wife to disappear for a while and “come back the man I married”, he hired a beach hut in Thailand and pondered his next move.
Getting back on the bike
As a boy in Evandale prone to a temper tantrum, Cheek remembers his dad pulling him aside for some gentle advice.
“Don’t get off your bike, son, keep pedalling,” he said.
After burning out in the political world, Cheek remembered the lesson and got back on his metaphorical bike in his 60s, as he tried to salvage his ageing Salamanca gym.
Later, after a trip to the US in 2008, he noticed a trend towards 24-hour gyms and became inspired to bring the concept to Hobart.
This was not an easy feat, Cheek said.
“People thought they were going to be a headquarters for drug dealers, and there were going to be rapes and murders,” he said.
It took a year to wrangle permits and insurance, but shortly before his 65th birthday, Bob Cheek opened the first Zap gym.
After a lot of work, and guts, he built an empire of 40 gyms, 17 of which were in Tasmania and 23 in Melbourne.
“It was luck and timing. You know, I actually got in on the ground floor and rode the wave,” he said.
In 2017 he sold the business for $50 million, and has written a book about his success called Dumbbells to Diamonds: 33 Workouts to Mega Wealth.
Since then he has spent more time travelling, including following the Australian cricket team with mate and former national coach, Darren Lehmann.
His current adventure is a 2800km cycling and camping tour around Madagascar.
At the age of 79, Cheek regularly hits the home gym for resistance training – the “magic pill for life” – and is not ready to wind down.
“If the right thing comes up again, I’ll get back into business, I don’t intend to just sit around and retire,” he said.
He’s also counting down the years until Tasmania joins the AFL, which he has cheered for since 1975 and had included in the Liberal Party’s 2002 state election pitch.
“I was 31 years old when I wrote my first column (on Tasmania needing a VFL team) and I’ll be 84 when I go to the first game – hopefully I’ll make it,” he said with a chuckle.
“Put in a lift to the members, will you, please?”
Q&A WITH BOB CHEEK
First job/pay
Cadet reporter with the Launceston Examiner in 1961. Earned about five pounds ($10) a week.
If you weren’t doing this job, what would you be doing?
Just what I’m doing now … living the dream … following sport around the world and riding my bike in different countries.
Five people you’d invite to a dinner party (dead or alive)
Richie Benaud (moderator), Steve Smith, David Warner, Cameron Bancroft, and Darren Lehmann to find out what really happened during the infamous Sandpapergate Test in Cape Town.
Book everyone should read
Don’t ask an author! Can’t separate my two books, Cheeky: Confessions of a Ferret Salesman; and Diamonds to Dumbbells. Apart from those, Shoe Dog, about how Nike was founded.
If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?
Champagne Beach on the Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo. I’m a beach bum at heart and the sugar-white sand, sun and crystal clear water is good for the soul. Plus helping the amazing local Ni-Van population.
First concert/dream concert (dead or alive)
The Seekers at the Albert Hall in Launceston; The Beatles performing at the height of their fame in London during the Swinging Sixties.
Inspirational living person
JK Rowling. Created Harry Potter as a single mum, persevered through a dozen publisher rejections, and now stands up for women’s rights despite relentless social media pressure where most others would cave in to save their reputation (and book sales).
What advice would you give your 18-year-old self?
Believe in yourself even when others don’t; have a red-hot go; take risks; never give up; don’t have any regrets when you’re old.
First, current and dream car
1954 Morris Minor; BMW X3; would prefer an expensive road bike.
One thing people didn’t know about YOU
I’m an Olympic Games tragic. When I can’t sleep at night I recite all the host cities since 1896 and all Australia’s
gold medallists. Better than counting sheep!
Best/worst birthday present
Best: New boat for my 60th birthday.
Worst: Kuala Lumpur-based son surprised me with all-day Thai cooking course in sweltering, airless tin shed.
And I hate cooking! (Sorry, Marc.)
Biggest career regret
That I didn’t play in the VFL in the sixties when I had multiple offers; although having represented Tassie is cool now we have our own team!
This year i’m most looking forward to …
Cycling 2800km around Madagascar followed by the Ashes cricket series in England.
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