George Negus, broadcaster

Author, bemused sex symbol, Australia's best-known foreign correspondent and host of SBS's Dateline since 2005

Author, bemused sex symbol, Australia's best-known foreign correspondent and host of SBS's Dateline since 2005, he has lost his faith but not his passion

Everything swung on the death of my father when I was four. I often wonder how different my life may have been had he not died. He was 26 and quite a lad. So I grew up with my grandparents and my mother; we lived in Brisbane.

Realising I was working class when I got to uni (University of Queensland) and I had to study my own political sociology. That politicised me. Then I realised that my family had struggled all my life to make me proud of my own upbringing.

Jumping the fence from school-teaching to journalism. I worked out that they paid you money to ask questions in journalism, so I left teaching and somehow or other I got a job with The Australian in Brisbane. I was 27; I got the job the day in 1969 that man walked on the moon.

A bomb went off in my brain one morning when I realised there was no proof for religious faith. I had converted to Christianity during the Billy Graham born-again period but I turned from religion to reality. Thinking myself out of religion intellectually and philosophically is one of the most important things that has ever happened to me. I’m not sure that I would have ever learnt to think properly if I had not had to think myself out of the absurd simplicity of religious faith. The result is a lifelong interest in religion.

Moving into television. I was Dick Carleton’s sidekick on This Day Tonight in Canberra and Dick conned me into believing you could only do TV live. I was supposed to run for cover, I think, but I didn’t. Since then, live television has never held any fears for me.

The dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975. I ceased to take Australian politics seriously from that day on. I still find it difficult. I mean, we had a coup. How else can you look at it? On November 10, 1975, we had a government we elected and on November 11,1975, we didn’t. In democratic terms it was nonsense.

Getting the flick from the ABC after two huge blues with Malcolm Fraser during the ’77 election campaign, I was told I was no longer the political correspondent.

Becoming a celebrity through 60 Minutes. Sam Chisholm rang me one day and said, “Do you like travel?” I had no idea what the job entailed. 60 Minutes was a lifestyle, it wasn’t a job. It was crazy. I was a sex symbol, which means a lot of people have got very strange taste. It was personality cult journalism.

Meeting Kirsty Cockburn at the Logies in 1984 was life-changing. I’d been married when I was young but been single for a long time. Kirsty had been warned I was a womaniser. She told me that children were on her agenda and I think that was supposed to frighten me away, but I said no problem because I sensed a partner, a soulmate. I was 42, and I’m a natural parent. I came to it very easily.

Going to the bush to live because we didn’t want our kids to grow up in the city. Ned was born in Sydney at home; Serge was born at home in Belligen (northern NSW). I think that’s why we’re such a unit; there has never been any separation.

Going to Italy was pure indulgence. After a falling out with a producer at the ABC, we decided to live in Italy for a year. And I wrote The World from Italy.

Getting the chop from George Negus Tonight was ridiculous because it had been a success. And it momentarily destroyed the hopes of some very talented young people. I knew I’d survive but it really gave me the shits. So I left the ABC.

Walking into SBS, two days later, and doing the international thing on Dateline felt like “going home”. We’re perfect partners. And I’m going to write another book, The World from Down Under, a collection of interviewer/travellers’ tales.