A year on, knees-up celebrates TV king David Leckie

Nick Fordham, Denis Handlin and Peter Overton at the Royal Sydney Golf Club on Friday. Picture: John Feder

Friday marked almost one year to the day that Australia’s renowned television boss, David Leckie, was laid to rest on July 23, 2021, in a ­funeral that was cruelly limited to no more than 10 people on account of the pandemic.

Friends and associates had been forced to watch the service on a live-stream, with the muted farewell hardly fitting for a man of Leckie’s achievements in commercial television. Equally, there was little opportunity to share in the fun of outrageous anecdotes he’d amassed over a career of ruthless deal making.

But the injustices of 2021 were finally corrected on Friday at Royal Sydney Golf Club, in Sydney’s Rose Bay, where about 500 people, including some of the most instantly recognisable faces in television, politics and corporate Australia, gathered for a final time in Leckie’s honour.

Held as a wake, the early arrivals for the 3pm start time included Seven Group boss Ryan Stokes and wife Claire (both of whom stood in for Kerry Stokes), Rex Airlines deputy chairman John Sharpe, former Nine Entertainment chief executive Hugh Marks, former foreign minister Julie Bishop and former AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou, who flew up from Melbourne.

Peter Overton with Denis Handlin and Nick Fordham. Picture: John Feder

Television’s leading personalities were naturally on hand to pay their respects, and who could possibly have missed Seven’s Mark Ferguson and Nine’s Peter Overton? Seven presenter Sam Armitage stood out in a black leather bucket hat, with Kerri-Anne Kennerley – who just happens to be attempting to join the golf club’s esteemed membership, a nugget of news brought to you by Margin Call last month – sighted along the pruned hedges in the driveway. She was followed thereafter by the swaggering presence of Eddie McGuire, former News Corp Australia boss John Hartigan and former New York Post editor Col Allan.

Amid the infrequent bursts of rain our periscopes sighted one man emerging with far less of a swagger and more of a shuffle: the apparently uncancelled Denis Handlin, seen shaking many hands in a rare public outing. The ex-boss of Sony Music was stood down in October amid allegations of a toxic workplace environment that emerged on his watch.

He appeared with McGuire, Overton and celebrity manager Nick Fordham, while British-born Australian actor Tony Llewellyn-Jones did a terrible job of trying to conceal his face with a very small umbrella.

Ryan Stokes Picture: John Feder

With Leckie’s urn nearby, a show reel and speeches were provided by Skye Leckie, her two sons, Harry and Ben, by former Labor senator Graham Richardson, and by former seven boss Peter Meakin, who retold amusing sketches pilfered from members of the audience, and whose voice began to catch towards the end of his speech.

“Peter (Meakin) stole everyone’s best lines to give a splendid memorial, and Skye and the boys showed what a great family dynamic they had, which is his true legacy,” said Bruce McWilliam, Seven’s commercial director. “It was a fitting tribute to a very great man who was a cornerstone of our industry and took two networks to the top.”

Also in attendance was former TV presenter and political aspirant Kellie Sloane, Deb Thomas, and Hamish McLennan, chairman of REA Group and Magellan Financial Group.

It was from about 6pm that attendees began to disperse, with rumours of further refreshments to be had at Woollahra’s Centennial Hotel. And while many declined to speak on the record, the consensus was that Leckie himself would have sneered at the idea of a farewell.

“It was a great testament of who he was,” said an attendee. “He would have hated it because he would have said, ‘You’re all f..kwits and you’re all freeloaders’, but that was him.”

Samantha Armytage Picture: John Feder

Former Nine CEO Hugh Marks Picture: John Feder

Former AFL boss Andrew Demetriou Picture: John Feder

Adam Connolly, Kellie Sloane and Deborah Thomas. Picture: John Feder

Blake’s health move

Latitude Financial’s Ahmed Fahour is well known for staying umbilically linked to the executives who have followed him from appointments at NAB, Australia Post and now to Latitude, the non-bank lender that he helms as chief executive.

We suspect the most thoroughly attached to Fahour has been Chris Blake, until recently Latitude’s executive general manager for corporate services, who has struck out on his own for the first time since they began working as an ensemble at NAB in 2006.

Margin Call has learned Blake has been appointed group CEO at hospitals and aged-care outfit St Vincent’s Health Australia, with the role having been announced to stakeholders this week by SVHA chair Paul McClintock.

Blake’s background is in the fields of consulting and corporate services, so we’re unsure how he’ll fare without a pedigree in the notoriously factionalised health sector.

That said, we understand he was considered the most suitable appointment to patch up St Vincent’s deteriorating balance sheets, owing in part to a perceived lack of charisma and the benefits that usually confers: a ruthlessness for making swift, unpleasant decisions.

In the cone of silence

We couldn’t help notice that activist and prolific tweeter Sally Rugg deleted her account this week – a move roughly akin to cutting off an arm. And it happened at about the same time as her employment as a chief of staff to independent MP Monique Ryan was announced.

Spurred by curiosity, our extensive fossicking through archived posts didn’t reveal anything substantially controversial about her tweets; we turned up a few pointless arguments with fellow denizens of the platform and some views about the need for more electorate staff which, frankly, snugly align with those of her new boss.

Is it possible that Rugg was directed to get off Twitter by Ryan? A test of loyalty and sacrifice?

That wouldn’t strike us so far-fetched given that the MP had wanted to impose confidentiality agreements on some of her new hires.