How ‘Pack’ surrounded himself with besties like Gyngell (and drove his girlfriends mad)

ONE of Packer’s early loves, Kate Fischer once lamented that while dating Packer she almost never had him to herself.

THERE was a time when James Packer and David Gyngell — to the great frustration and annoyance of more than a couple of former girlfriends — were utterly inseparable.

One of Packer’s early loves, Kate Fischer — his fiancee from 1996 to 1998 — once lamented that while dating Packer she almost never had him to herself.

“Pack”, as his besties called him, was eternally surrounded by his man pack — his “yes” men, his enablers, a quorum of chums who made him feel good about himself and in return enjoyed the benefits associated with his status as heir to a fortune.

He was never without his mates, she told this writer.

A SOUVENIR SHINER THAT NO ONE SEES

DAVID GYNGELL TAKES THE BLAME

JAMES PACKER FLIES OUT STILL HURTING

EXCLUSIVE GALLERY: PACKER V GYNGELL

James Packer with fiancee Kate Fischer in 1998.

FROM MONDAY: HOW WE BROKE THE STORY

GALLERY: PACKER AND GYNGELL THROUGH THE YEARS

FROM BLOOD BROTHERS TO BONDI FIGHT CLUB

MCKINNON KEEPING MUM ON DAD-TO-BE DAVID

A BRUTAL DAVID AND GOLIATH BATTLE

PACKER INVESTORS WILL ASK QUESTIONS AFTER THIS

SYDNEY AND ITS BILLION-DOLLAR BIFFO BUST-UPS

WHO IS ERICA PACKER RUMOURED TO BE DATING?

Fischer would be invited to Packer’s bachelor pad, a few minutes along the Bondi strip from where he and Gyngell came to blows on Sunday, only to find it full of bachelors.

She would find herself relegated to a corner of a lounge already crowded with Packer’s posse — David “Gyng” Gyngell and Chris “Cockie” Hancock, Matthew “Ched” Csedei and others.

“He was never alone,” this writer recalls Fischer saying, still incredulous years later.

“They had a kind of co-dependency thing happening. They shared everything. There was very little private time for he and I to be alone. He wasn’t really comfortable without his pack.”

Packer, then 30, was having the time of his life and by his side, for most of it, was “Gyng”, his No.1. The two men shared much in common — a similar sense of humour, a love for rugby league and spectator sport, beautiful girlfriends — but, unlike Packer, the unconventional Gyngell was forging his own path — one not of his father Bruce Gyngell’s making.

Cranbrook School dropout David, more rebellious than James, was trying to make it doing something he loved — running surfshops.

A year older than James, Gyngell was groomed virtually from birth to be Packer’s trusted best friend and confidante. This role was about legacy.

The relationship between Packer and Gyngell is an echo of a former relationship — the one their fathers, Kerry Packer and Bruce Gyngell, fostered over a lifetime with Kerry’s father Frank’s encouragement.

James Packer and girlfriend Jodhi Meares in 1999.

In the 1950s Frank Packer was preparing to launch the nation’s first television station, TCN-9, when radio all-rounder 27-year-old Bruce Gyngell was employed as frontman for the new TV operation.

Bruce Gyngell was everything Frank Packer was not — university educated at New York’s Columbia, handsome, suave and polished with perfect rounded vowels.

Frank admired Bruce greatly and he was soon invited home to tea, where he met and befriended Packer’s heirs, Clyde and Kerry, then 21 and 19.

Bruce became Frank’s faithful and indispensable lieutenant and ambassador.

Some were heard to say Frank treated Bruce with more kindness than he did either of his own sons.

Years later when Kerry Packer ascended the throne following Frank’s death in 1974, Bruce, by then working in British TV, became invaluable to Kerry as a mentor. They remained friends and collaborators until Bruce’s death in 2000.

Just as Bruce’s friendship with Frank breached a generational gap, so too would Kerry Packer’s with Bruce’s son, David, who has described Kerry as a “second father”. Gyngell could do little wrong in Kerry’s eyes.

Like Kerry, David had struggled at school. The young Gyngell’s relationship with his own father had faced its own challenges and Kerry Packer saw in David, a dyslexic like himself, something of the robust larrikin he fancied he was. David found a great ally in Kerry, who showed him the kind of affection he hadn’t always expressed to his son.

Kerry Packer and son James in 2004.

It came as no surprise when Kerry and James gave David his chance to prove himself in the family television business in 1999.

Fifteen years later, Gyngell has risen to the top at Nine Entertainment, his friendship with James surviving what must have been their first great test — James’ decision in 2006 to sell the business his grandfather had pioneered with Gyngell’s father.

As Packer plotted his own course for the first time in his life, away from media and into expanded casino interests, Gyngell found an edge in the corporate world he hadn’t known he possessed. The “friends” that had, by association with the Packers and their huge wealth, always been there for him, no longer were. He was flying without a wingman for the first time and he liked it. He was also harder for it.

David Gyngell, Jodhi Meares and James Packer

By the time his little “brother” James invested in the Ten Network in 2010, the relationship between the two men had shifted. They’d started to grow apart.

Media executives maintain Gyngell has made no secret of his unhappiness with Packer over his Ten investment. For the first time, the men’s unspoken rivalry was out in the open.

In Gyngell’s mind, Packer had betrayed the very code that defined them and was in their DNA — Channel 9.

The private jocular goading that had been a constant in their relationship — who could bowl the better ball, pick up the more stunning girl, strike the better deal, be the better media executive — had started to sour.

As Packer made new friends, Hollywood friends, the divide increased.

By the time Packer’s marriage to Erica, mother of his three children, was ending in July, the friendship was in strife. The Nine news car parked out front of Packer’s home on Sunday was merely a poignant reminder of all that had transpired between three generations — and no longer was.