Succeed or fail, Denton still knows the ropes

Andrew Denton is ‘back in the public square’ after a six-year absence and is feeling ‘a bit weird to be honest’.

Andrew Denton with Kerry Stokes.

Andrew Denton is “back in the public square” after a six-year absence and is feeling “a bit weird to be honest”. Add to that “good” and “not afraid”.

“Having done this many times in different ways and having had both success and failure, I’m familiar with two ways this can go.

“It could go well, it could go modestly, or it can go badly and I’ve experienced all of those things now. So I’m not afraid of any of that. I know what my preference is but I’m ready for any outcome.”

Tomorrow at 9pm the broadcaster will front Interview, hosting a program for the first time in six years and interviewing people for the first time in 10.

Denton has been described as “the most unlikely star since Graham Kennedy”. His eponymous late-night program for Seven ran from 1995 to 1996, while his TV high point, Enough Rope, became part of the cultural conversation when it ran on the ABC from 2003 to 2008. The less said about the ABC comedy game show Randling, which he hosted in 2012, the better. After that Denton disappeared from our screens, sold his TV production business, and travelled the world.

But he maintained friendships with people in the industry including Seven chairman Kerry Stokes. What happened at their first meeting is instructive. It was 1995, Mr Stokes had just taken over Seven and Denton invited the mogul, then more of an unknown quantity, on to his late-night talk show. The star instantly charmed his new boss into agreeing to take part in a long-running program gag — being handcuffed to his newly acquired network talent. Something clicked and Mr Stokes stayed for a drink after the show.

In exclusive comments to The Australian, Mr Stokes recalled how the first time he spoke to Denton, the presenter invited him to appear on his show.

“Ever since Andrew hand­cuffed me to the set on his previous Seven show — the day I took over the network — I have held him to a promise that if he ever wanted to return to television he would talk to us first,” Mr Stokes said.

“We worked hard to get him back on television and Seven, as he is the best and most credible interviewer in Australia, and I expect the rest of Australia will share my enthusiasm.”

The incident is memorably recounted by journalist Andrew Rule in his brilliant biography of Mr Stokes, The Boy From Nowhere: A Great Australian Journey.

So when pitching to the network last year, the broadcaster went straight to the top. “Obviously I know both Kerry (Stokes) and Tim (Worner, Seven West Media chief executive) and I didn’t want to muck about and I didn’t want to waste their time.”

The recent meeting, held at breakfast-time in Mr Stokes’s Sydney office in the harbourside suburb of Pyrmont, went well.

Legacy Media (the company Denton set up with collaborators Jon Casimir and Peter Thompson) had its deal points prepared, which the host said was “more about support and understanding for what we’re doing rather than ‘I want a stretch limo’ ”.

“I said ‘please go away and think about it’. They came back later that afternoon and we had a draft contract by that evening.”

The philosophy of the program is thus: “Putting something a bit quieter and a bit more empathetic into a very volatile kind of a space where reality shows are very much about people being voted off or voted down or made to have sex with each other.”

It runs for one hour at 9pm on Tuesdays, after My Kitchen Rules, the formerly top rating reality program that came under pressure from Married at First Sight and will now compete with The Voice.

“There’s very few one-on-one conversations left on television now,” Denton said. “There’s always other conversations going on around it. It’s kind of an old-fashioned experiment. It may not fit in this day and age — we’re all going to find out. But it’s worth trying.”

But something “old-fashioned” might suit free-to-air television’s older demographic. Interview will be competing against the global might of streaming services with their multi-million-dollar drama budgets for series such as The Crown that adults tend to watch in that timeslot after the reality shows that dominate the early evening schedules are over and the children are in bed.

The first guests locked in on Friday were Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Commonwealth Games swimmers Cate and Bronte Campbell. On Thursday Denton flew to the Gold Coast to interview the Campbells, “who turned out to be a wonderful surprise”. “And in 30 years of interviewing Australian sportspeople I’ve rarely come across two like the Campbells. You see the two girls who are so close and have an entirely different approach to doing the same job. It’s fascinating.”

Denton is keen to retain “some kind of topical edge” with the interviews. Executive producer Jon Casimir says recording a special interview on Monday night and editing through the night for a Tuesday broadcast is entirely possible. It occurs with other topical programs including Gruen and Have You Been Paying Attention.

“Few things beat a good conversation on television and that can be in any format. It is part of the reason reality television actually works for all the aspersions people cast on it. You actually get unfiltered conversations. That can be very compelling,” Denton said.

Next month Denton will turn 58. Wife Jennifer Byrne is well known to TV audiences; son Connor, a personal trainer, works outside the industry. Denton has put last year’s triple bypass heart operation, which forced him to pull out of the campaign to legalise assisted dying in Victoria, behind him.

“Everything that happened out of the heart operation has been positive. I feel good and I feel incredibly grateful, win lose or draw on the show. I’m still in a great place because I feel really grateful to be alive. I can live without the Logies, Stephen, that’s what I am saying.”