‘Jana Wendt was my idol, but I was truly obsessed with Barry Manilow’

Amanda Keller’s enjoyed a stellar 40-year career in broadcasting. From Simon Townsend’s Wonder World and Beyond 2000 to a hit radio show and now, a new TV show, Keller’s enduring popularity has only been matched by her versatility.

Fitz: Before we get to The Piano, Amanda, incidentally, I’m sure you remember the bizarre, grisly circumstances of our first meeting some 35 years ago.

AK: I’ll never forget it.

Keller: “I’ve just done the work. I’ve always felt that was the job, working hard and trying to make a good fist of it.”Credit: Hugh Stewart

Fitz: It was on the southern approaches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge circa 1989, and a troubled bloke had somehow climbed over a barricade to be hit by a truck. And well before I knew you as a media identity, you were the only one who stopped to help!

AK: It ended up as you and me cradling this man’s bleeding head as the traffic swished by. And it was only years later, when we met through the media, that we realised, “That was you!” It was indeed a strange encounter.

Fitz: Sadly, he died, but moving on to happier things! From there, you became ever more heavily involved in the media. I love the fact that as a teenager, your hero was Jana Wendt, whom Australia itself was completely obsessed with in the 1980s and much of the 1990s. Her persona, I say with great respect, was ice cool – while yours is warmth.

AK: I did think she was so cool, in the nicest sense of the word. But I didn’t ever think I could be her because I didn’t feel similar to her. But she was really important to so many of us. As we were growing up, the role models we had as working women were mostly teachers. We didn’t know women who worked, let alone women who worked in an extraordinary industry like the media. I never in a million years thought I could “be like Jana”. But I just admired that here was this beautiful woman who was travelling the world and as smart as all get-out.

Keller’s teenage hero was journalist and presenter Jana Wendt.Credit: Kylie Melinda Smith

Fitz: And did you ever have the opportunity – as I did when I met my own childhood hero, Dennis Lillee – to declare your fealty to Jana in person?

AK: Not quite. I had met her in passing, through her husband [Harley Oliver], who was working at Simon Townsend’s Wonder World, when he came in as a producer years ago, at the very tail end of me working there. I remember being incredibly starstruck and shy, but she was lovely. And, after all, it wasn’t as if she was Barry Manilow, who was the one I was truly obsessed with!

Fitz: Barry Manilow? You must have been the most uncool teenager ever! And just quietly, I think you might have been up against it to gain his affections even on the best of days.

AK: But that was part of it – because he was dorky and relatively unattractive. And I say that with great love for Barry. He was kind of … we felt he was gettable. We knew our level, and Barry was my level. You know, he lived in a New York apartment and I fantasised about sitting on a couch in front of the fire with him, having a hot chocolate. That’s as far as my fantasies went.

Fitz: OK, I’ll sign for that. Shades of The Living Room TV show. But I digress. And you’ve of course since gone on to the most extraordinarily peripatetic media career, doing lots of TV shows, while having your Gold-FM breakfast radio gig Jonesy & Amanda as your solid base for at least a couple of decades. If you can park your humility for a moment, what is it you reckon you’ve got that has allowed you to prosper for so long on so many media platforms?

Keller with her radio collaague Brendan Jones, aka Jonesy & Amanda.

AK: It is very out of my character to park the humility, but I think it’s because I’ve just done the work. I’ve always felt that was the job, working hard and trying to make a good fist of it.

Fitz: Given the phenomenal success of Jonesy & Amanda on Gold-FM – and its much more middle-of-the road nature, without ever being bland – does it seem strange to you that you and Brendan Jones weren’t the ones syndicated to Melbourne, instead of Kyle & Jackie O?

AK: No. That was their ambition, and never ours. I’m just happy turning up for work and looking out this window we have in our office in North Sydney, seeing the sun come up over the harbour city. We moved into this new building we’re in now, straight after the terrible stabbings at Bondi Junction. Just felt like from our vantage point up there, I felt like I wanted to give our city a giant hug.

Fitz: Off the top of my head, I can only remember you being associated with one controversy – and even then it was just you making some narky comments – when Channel Ten suddenly pulled the Persian rug out from under you on The Living Room after a decade’s success. You said, as I remember it, “something, something, something, those mongrels, something, something”.

AK: Yes, I don’t remember the exact quote, either, but yes, of course I remember my feelings around it. And look, it really had gone for 10 years on television, which is 100 million years in human lives – so we’d had a great run – but I do know how rare that kind of chemistry is on television. And not a day goes by someone in the street doesn’t say, “Hey, what happened to The Living Room?” So I was just so surprised at the decision, and I’m still surprised at the decision.

Fitz: And yet, in the patented Keller fashion, you bounced quickly into another gig, this one The Role of a Lifetime, which was all about parenting. I know you and Harley have raised two fine sons. But when you looked at all the experts on that show offering sage advice, did you and Harley come up to the mark or not?

AK: It’s interesting. A lot of the new parents were very intentional about the food their child eats, when it’s going to have screen time, and all of that. We just did our best, and let the kids do things they wanted to do that weren’t dangerous and hopefully praised and raised them in the right ways. And I think we’ve been really lucky with where we’ve ended up.

Fitz: And given you and Harley were both in the media and both flat out, did you have guilt, as my wife and I did, that we’re juggling a lot of balls here and we’ve got to make damn sure that none of the three balls that are children fall? Which is why I stopped breakfast radio myself, as she was doing breakfast TV.

Hosts of The Piano Harry Connick Jr, Andrea Lam and Keller.Credit: ABC

AK: Yes, and that is where Harley stepped up. I was doing breakfast radio, and Harley was the one who was doing freelance work, so he was the one therefore who said, “I’ll be the parent that takes them to school in the morning. I’ll be the parent that will field the phone calls until you get home. I’ll be the one at the bus stop.” With my friend Anita McGregor, who’s a forensic psychologist, I do a podcast called Double A Chattery....

Fitz: [Interrupting] Of course you do a podcast! You probably also do a radio show for left-handed New Yorkers, in your spare time, while also trying to sort out peace in the Middle East. But go on.

AK: [Laughing] And the podcast we did for Mother’s Day that we recorded last week was with my two sons, and I told them how guilty I felt that I couldn’t be there for the Mother’s Day breakfasts, for the drop-offs, for the many things I couldn’t do. I asked them, “Did it matter to you?” And they are such lovely boys. They said, “No, it didn’t because you always said to us, ‘If this really matters, tell me, and I will make a giant effort’.” They understood the nature of the family, how it must adapt to needs, and that’s how we tried to do it.

Fitz: Which brings us, after a run-up that would do D.K. Lillee proud, to The Piano, which starts on the ABC on Sunday night. What was the pitch when it came to you?

AK: This show is so not what the title says it is. It is just pure heart and music and beauty and tears. It’s about people playing piano in public spaces, to enrich lives. And as soon as I saw one episode [of the British series], I said, “OK, well, I’m going to have to find time in my diary for that”.

Fitz: And so it began.

AK: We selected five different locations around Australia, and people were chosen to come down and play. One woman was blind and deaf, and watching her was quite extraordinary. She had an interpreter who touched her hand as I was talking to her, an instant translator. And as she played, this person was standing at her back signalling to her what was happening. At one point the translator made what looked be like the pitter-patter of rain down her back, to tell her that people were applauding. It was just extraordinary. We had kids who had written songs in their bedrooms because they weren’t sporty and were being bullied at school, and music was their saviour. We had older people whose partners had Alzheimer’s, and music was the way the thing that still connected them. Everybody has a story, and the stories that poured out of these people, and the role that the music and the piano had played in their lives, was just wonderful.

Fitz: And you have a couple of pianists helping you?

AK: Yes. What I probably should mention is that it’s not a competition. But we have Andrea Lam, who’s Australia’s premier classical pianist, and Harry Connick Jr watching on, and they come out at the end and select the person who’s touched them the most, or made them laugh or influence them the most. And at the end, we get all the best to put on a concert in a concert hall, and it is spectacular.

Fitz: Tell me about Harry Connick Jr. Is he as nice a bloke as he seems, or does he secretly like to tie his grandchildren’s shoelaces together to watch them fall over on the grass?

AK: Absolutely he is, and most interestingly he was a child prodigy [piano player himself], and so this show was perfect for him. He’s smart, he’s warm, he loves Australia because his daughter lives here. He was a delight to work with.

Fitz: Rah. Thank you. I look forward to it, and hope never to meet you on the Sydney Harbour Bridge again.

The Piano premieres Sunday, May 4, at 7.30pm on ABC TV

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.