‘Bizarre sexual life’: Don Burke’s most skin-crawling clip yet

A SUGGESTIVE scene from Don Burke’s popular gardening show makes for uncomfortable viewing after this week’s allegations.

IT’S the most skin-crawling Don Burke footage yet to re-emerge — a tongue-in-cheek clip about manual pollination that makes for queasy viewing after the allegations against the star.

The former Channel 9 gardening guru has denied allegations of sexual harassment and bullying, saying he has been targeted because he is a perfectionist. But as evidence of his previous crude comments continues to emerge, one suggestive Burke’s Backyard segment is particularly hard to watch.

The archive footage opens with the presenter introducing a flowering plant called the philodendron to the camera.

“It really does have a very curious and bizarre sexual life,” the popular gardener says. “It comes from Central America. Over there, its sexual activities are actually aided by a night-flying moth, but here in Australia, these rather weird organs have to be manipulated in rather a different way.”

Seductive, twanging music kicks in and the video cuts to the hand of gardener Kay Petrie, from Royston Petrie Seeds, pollinating a philodendron by massaging the phallic plant.

Burke, now 70, has denied all the allegations of sexual harassment and bullying.

Burke in the suggestive clip from Burke's Backyard.

“It’s not until late on one particular night in the year that each flower becomes heavily perfumed and sexually receptive,” Burke explains. “Kay, what are you actually doing?”

As Kay explains how the plant works, Burke touches it and remarks: “That’s quite warm!”

He then points to the shaft, asking: “And this top bit here is what?”

Later, he comments as he watches her work: “It looks as if it’s not an unpleasant thing to do.”

The suggestive clip was a source of much hilarity at the time, and was aired on several comedy talk shows. But in the light of this week’s allegations and Burke’s heavily criticised appearance on A Current Affair last night, it doesn’t seem so funny.

Nine has said it could find no records of complaints or payouts to any women in relation to Burke’s behaviour and emphasised that Burke’s Backyard was a production of the star’s own company, CTC Productions.

This was the case from 1991, four years after the show launched, when Burke’s company took over production, although some of the allegations relate to earlier periods.

In his ACA interview, Burke said he had much to be sorry for — including a series of affairs — and conceded he was not easy to work with on his long-running program Burke’s Backyard.

But the 70-year-old denied the allegations made by more than 50 people who worked with him in the 1980s and 1990s.

The gardening show star blamed the “Twittersphere” for stirring up a “witch hunt”, and at one point offered the developmental disorder Asperger’s as an excuse for bad behaviour, despite acknowledging that he had not been formally diagnosed with the syndrome.

In an interview on The Today Show this morning, ACA host Tracy Grimshaw said she was surprised by the “level of denial” Burke displayed.

“I thought that he would be more accountable when I sat down with him. I didn’t expect the level of denial that we got. So he was prepared to say, ‘Look, I terrified people. I was a tough boss, I was a bear with a sore head. Maybe I bullied people.’ He drew the line at the language that he was accused of using. He just couldn’t countenance any admission that he had done that,” she told Today co-host Deborah Knight this morning.

Burke has reportedly called in a defamation lawyer after a joint ABC/Fairfax investigation reported on allegations that Burke was a “psychotic bully”, a “misogynist” and a “sexual predator” who sexually harassed and bullied a number of female employees.

The latest allegations in an ABC/Fairfax investigation come from Olympian Susie O’Neill, who accused the presenter of making a revolting comment to her when he visited her home in the lead-up to the Sydney 2000 Games. TV journalist Amanda Pepe also alleged he tried to force himself on her in a hotel room.

Bridget Ninness, a former producer on Burke’s Backyard, said “He was a vile, vile human being ... He was lewd and he was crude,” and his constant talk of sex was “designed to confront you and to demean you.”

Burke “absolutely” disputes all the allegations.

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