George Negus could always snare the interview, no matter how famous the person
A lifelong friend reflects on the media career of George Negus, who on Friday was recognised at the Walkley Awards for his outstanding contribution to journalism.
As a journalist George Negus could always inveigle his way in for the interview, no matter how famous the person.
George led with his forehead, followed closely by his moustache, and then his booming voice.
On TV he used a microphone like a cricket bat, always holding it way out front above a thrusting leg, like a top-class batsman. No surprise, really, because two years in a row George was in the Queensland schoolboys’ team that won the Australian championship.
I first noticed George’s ability to entice people way back in 1964 when I turned up to take a girl out for a date.
I’d been introduced to this kindergarten teacher by my mate, Davis Cup tennis player Kenny Fletcher. This was my first date since my red-headed girlfriend rang me up on May 18, 1960 – at eight minutes to three in the afternoon – to say she didn’t want to see me any more. (Don’t worry, I’m over it.)
Since then, Fletch had been urging me to get a new girlfriend and forget about the redhead, saying: “That was more than three years ago!” and, he’d add: “You’re 23 now Hughie – you’re proving hard to place!”
Fletch knew the kindergarten teacher because her parents played cards every Friday night with his parents. Her family lived in the next suburb, Dutton Park, in a home on stumps which overlooked the cemetery that ran down to the murky banks of the Brisbane River.
When I arrived, ready to go, she invited me in – as girls did in those days – to meet her parents. To my shock, in the lounge room was this handsome strongly-built bloke my age with long fair hair rather like mine, entertaining her father with stories of cricket derring-do.
His name was George Negus and he greeted me with a robust handshake. No one said what he was doing there on my date, but I could guess.
“Oh, that’s just George being George,” she said as we left. “You never know when or where he’s going to pop up.”
He was there again entertaining the fascinated parents when I turned up to take her to the 1964 Beatles concert at Brisbane’s Festival Hall.
George was very, very interested to hear I’d got free tickets because I was a journalist.
Then I gazumped him with my story about having a sit-down lunch with the West Indian cricket team during the tied Test in Brisbane. Just them and me!
“I’m going to become a journalist,” George blurted out, as if he’d held the secret for far too long.
I said: “I’ve been a cadet reporter for four years and I still don’t understand journalism – and you’re a schoolteacher! How are you going to become a journalist?”
George didn’t hesitate: “I’m going to go to Fleet Street, the home of journalism, and start there.” And he swung towards her mother and father for confirmation. He’d gazumped my gazump: but worse was to come.
Another sporting champion, John Newcombe, was staying with the Fletchers. Newk was tall, handsome, confident, and he too had asked our girl out.
Fletch nudged me: “You’d better make your move, Hughie. You haven’t kissed her yet.”
You have to picture the romantic scene:
She and I are sitting at the top of the front steps overlooking all the headstones of the massive cemetery … and I pose the big question: “Are you OK?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she sighs. “I don’t know … there’s just no nice blokes around.”
I’m shocked. Here she is, being courted by me, John Newcombe and George Negus. (And two of those three have since been officially named Australian Male Sex Symbols! I’ll let you guess which two).
The next time I saw her was in London in 1966. It was on a double date with her and her husband, George Negus. George had been unable to land a job on Fleet Street and I could see things were not going well for them.
In 1971 – after seven years overseas – I returned home and walked into The Australian’s bureau in Brisbane asking for a job, only to find George had beaten me there!
The bureau chief told me George had – after the divorce went through – come demanding a job.
“He had no experience so I knocked him back. But George pointed at a chair and said ‘who’s sitting there’?”
Nobody.
“Well, I’m going to sit there until you need someone.”
As luck would have it, there was a large student demonstration that day. George was dispatched and did such a good job that he was invited back the next day to help out again. But it didn’t mean he had a job.
Then he talked his way into an office and got hold of a government document and broke a big story. Next thing the police arrived saying that the document was “stolen”.
The bureau chief rang the editor in Sydney and mentioned that George might be arrested. “Arrested!” said the editor. “Get him out of town! Send him down here, we need reporters like him.”
As George himself told an interviewer on TV many decades later: “I conned my way into journalism.”
For the next 50 years George was always one step ahead. I knocked back a job on Four Corners while he went into television on 60 Minutes.
Years later I was on a Meet the Press TV panel with Andrew Peacock as guest. George was following Peacock for a 60 Minutes special, so he sat in. Afterwards, I pulled him aside and asked how I went on TV? George thought for a minute, and said sagely: “If I were you, Hughie, I’d keep my day job.”
After my childhood memoir became the biggest-selling nonfiction book of 1991, I was invited to appear on the same stage as George in Brisbane as a double-act. George was now famous because of his clash with Margaret Thatcher, so there was standing room only. He grabbed the microphone before I could move.
To my surprise he told the crowd how proud he was of my success and how he had always known I would do well.
A few years later, Penguin invited me to Maroochydore to talk at their annual sales conference. Also speaking that night were George and his wife, journalist Kirsty Cockburn, who were bringing out a children’s book “Trev the Truck”.
I noted the power of TV as I stood in a corner while hundreds of Penguin People gathered in the light around the magic of George who was going to speak from the stage … while I would be out on the side deck in the rain.
What to do?
But then, like Herminius in Horatius Defends the Bridge, up spake brave George Negus. “Hughie’s an old mate of mine. We’ll share the stage.”
Thank you, George, not many people would do that.
George, you may have forgotten some things, aged 79, but we remember you.
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