‘I feel ripped off that I couldn’t enjoy the experience’: Amanda Keller on THAT Logies controversy

The radio host reveals what really happened in the aftermath of her Gold Logie nomination, as she makes an emotional admission about her husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis.

Relating to people’s everyday concerns with wit and wisdom has made Amanda Keller a radio and TV stalwart.

But since her husband of 34 years was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the 62-year-old podcast host has also learnt to listen to her own needs.

In a poignant interview with Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About, Keller joins host and editor-in-chief Sarrah Le Marquand to share the new-found appreciation she has for the love of her life, the bittersweet reality of watching her two sons enter adulthood, and her fraught memories of being a two-time Gold Logie nominee.

You revealed last year that your husband, Harley Oliver, had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease about six years earlier. How is he doing? And how about you and your two sons, Liam and Jack, who recently turned 23 and 21?

I’ve brought a tissue with me today just in case, because every time I talk about this, sometimes I’m fine and sometimes it gets a bit overwhelming. Look, Harley is quite remarkable. He’s so pragmatic with this. He just gets on with it. And I’ve gone through a phase of being angry because I’d say things to him like, “Oh, come on, stand upright”, or “Your voice…”; I knew what it was, he’d been diagnosed. I knew what was going on but I found it hard to accept. And I feel now I’m very much on the path of acceptance – or that radical acceptance, as we speak about. Some days that’s a phrase that I’m trying to live and other days I do feel it. But we’re both on the same page now. For a while I was kind of fighting it.

Listen to the full interview with Amanda Keller on Something To Talk About:

As I said, Harley is quite remarkable in his approach to this, and because of that, our sons just get on with it, too. It’s hard for them because they don’t live at home anymore and I see Harley every day. It was Jack’s 21st birthday just last month, and I got very emotional talking

on air about how it felt to be going to that without Harley, and how he is normally the archivist of our lives. He would have done the audiovisuals and he would have done a speech and all of this. I just felt wrong that I was going without him. And then, not long into the evening, my friend said, “Harley is here.” As a surprise, he’d organised with a friend and a driver to get him there. I still feel very emotional about it because I know how hard it was for him to do that – but how amazing that he did. In that moment, the love I had for him and for our family … I just thought, “He’s still him,” and he is still him. The physical things are going on, but the heart of him is still him and the brain of him is still him, and it was a great reminder.

‘You have to spruik yourself, and that’s not everyone’s skill set.’ Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Every time there’s a diagnosis in a family, whatever it is, everyone is on a very steep learning curve. Has it been, to put it mildly, an incredibly steep learning curve for you?

Interestingly, only through living through it. I’ve remained quite Pollyanna-ish on this, in that I haven’t deep dived on the medical story. I’m living it as it happens, and part of that is choosing to be naive. There’s no easy way out but I know what I’m like and I’d be prone to overthinking and panic and trying to fix things that are so out of my control.

I see a fantastic kinesiologist, and she is a fabulous therapist as well. She said to me very early on, “You’re in a boat beside Harley. You can’t paddle his boat and you take his agency away by trying to.” We’d had a similar conversation when my son left home – I still want to cry about that, too – and she said, “You have to let his boat go,” and I said, “Can I be in the back of the boat?” She said, “You can be in the back of the boat, but it’s his. It’s his shining light that’s navigating it.” It’s similar with Harley in that I know I’m trying to make everything right for everybody and a) you can’t because you’ll exhaust yourself, but b) that’s not what’s right for everybody.

Amanda Keller, on the cover of Stellar. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

You and Harley have been married for 34 years, so you have experienced what it was like for it to be just you and him before the boys came along. As you mentioned, your sons have left home now. How are you and Harley feeling about that?

I think the preparing for it and the imagining of it is worse than the reality of it. Liam left to go to university in Newcastle four years ago, and I found that really hard. Then Jack went to live on campus in Sydney, and I thought I’d never get used to it. But Jack is a party animal, and so me getting up at four in the morning and him getting home at two kind of had a slight clash to it. So to my shock, I found that it was OK. They’re both now in Sydney. They don’t live at home but I see a lot more of Liam than I used to and Jack makes a real effort to talk most days, so I feel OK with it in a way I never pictured … I’ve always tried to be gracious and accept those milestones, but also, I lost my mum 20 years ago and I want to say to her – because I just left home, didn’t look back – and I thought, “Oh, did she feel like this?” And I want to say, “Gee, I’m sorry I was so ungracious.” I thought my life began when I left home. Now I think, “How dare my sons’ lives begin after me? How can that be?” So I try to remind myself to be gracious if they don’t return my text or something.

‘I feel ripped off that I couldn’t enjoy the experience.’ Amanda Keller has reflected on her Gold Logie nomination experience. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

The Sydney radio star has opened up about her husband’s Parkinson’s diagnosis, in an emotional interview with Stellar’s podcast, Something To Talk About. Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Aside from co-hosting your radio show Jonesy & Amanda with Brendan Jones for the past 14 years, you’re also co-hosting a podcast, Double A Chattery, with your best friend and forensic psychologist Anita McGregor. You talk about “smart, dumb, topical things”.

Because that’s life, isn’t it? That’s how it is … Anita and I have gone on weekend walks together for about 14 years. We walk my dog and that’s exactly what our conversations are like. She’ll say something amazingly profound and I go, “Oh my God, I hadn’t thought of that,” and then we’ll talk about picking your nose or something ridiculous. So we thought other women like us are talking about this stuff, and I thought, having worked in the media for a long time and worked on FM radio, where you talk about certain topics and for a certain period of time, it would be nice to have a longer chat about topics that Jonesy isn’t necessarily interested in – but also, that a forensic psychologist brings a different skew to.

You were nominated for the Gold Logie in 2018. It ended up being won by your Dancing With The Stars co-host Grant Denyer, whose campaign was overseen by comedian Tom Gleeson. In 2019, you were nominated again, and many people were hoping it would be your year, but Gleeson won the Gold himself. Five years later, what are your thoughts about that time?

Tom and I have very much made our peace. He reached out not long after that, and to be honest I wasn’t ready to talk to him too early on. Not that I was bruised by him – I’ve always respected Tom and I knew he was being comedic – but the rules had changed in that people didn’t campaign that way. I find the Logies really hard. You have to spruik yourself, and that’s not everyone’s skill set. It’s really uncomfortable and he saw great comedic opportunities there, but the hard thing for me was the way it was played out in the press. It became Tom versus me, and suddenly it went from “aren’t we all lucky to be nominated”, and it didn’t feel fun. That’s what I feel. I don’t feel ripped off in any way that I didn’t win, but I feel ripped off that I couldn’t enjoy the experience because every interview I did they said, “Oh, Tom is coming for you,” and I thought, I’m going to be the butt of a joke that I’m not really part of here … To be honest, I’m not one of those people who thinks I should have a Gold Logie. Not by any means. I’m quite sanguine about the fact I don’t have one, and I didn’t need to win one. Just to be nominated – and it sounds trite, but it’s so true – was such an honour, and I’m OK with that. But I wish I’d been able to enjoy the experience more.

Amanda Keller’s episode of Something To Talk About is out now:

Aside from Dancing With The Stars, you have worked across a variety of TV shows, including Beyond 2000 and most recently on The Living Room, alongside Dr Chris Brown, Miguel Maestre and Barry Du Bois. You’re not on television at the moment.

Is there another high-profile TV role in your future?

I’d like to think so. I’ve got some TV things in the works for the second half of this year. As much as I was sad to see The Living Room go – I really loved that show and I think it had legs in it to keep going – having said that, the schedule was getting so hard for me. I don’t mind the calmer life I’m having now with breakfast radio: getting up at 4am, talking for three hours, all the rest of it that comes with that. I don’t know if I’d do a big, long stint on TV again. I like the idea of doing a project here and there. I think that would probably suit me better, but I hope to do more television. I love TV, and it’s a very different skill set to radio. I do get offered things all the time, but I’m just choosing what and where and how. And with Harley, too – he is always supportive, but I want to make sure it’s the right thing if I’m not going to be at home or I’m working longer hours. I’m starting to choose some things, and I’d really love to think that big things are around the corner television-wise. I’m certainly not finished with it yet.

Listen to Double A Chattery on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts. Jonesy & Amanda airs weekdays from 6am on Sydney’s 101.7 WSFM.

The latest episode of Something To Talk About is out now. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘I feel ripped off that I couldn’t enjoy the experience’: Amanda Keller on THAT Logies controversy