This was published 9 months ago
On a TV game show, I locked in my answer. What happened after raised new questions
By Mark Brandi
The author with Millionaire Hot Seat host Eddie McGuire in 2010.Credit: Paolo Lim/illustrationroom.com.au
I’m about to be humiliated on national television. A TV game show? What the hell was I thinking? In the green room, there are stodgy sandwiches and nervous bursts of small talk between contestants. I’m convinced I’ll bomb out on the very first question, the sort of thing friends and enemies will recount in perpetuity. Eventually, our turn comes. It feels like a walk to the gallows. The studio audience cheers, my stomach churns.
And there’s Eddie McGuire, opposite the Hot Seat. What follows is a psychedelic blur of bright lights, studio make-up and wide-eyed terror. Somehow, the other contestants bomb out and I end up in the Hot Seat for the very last question. I’ve downed so much filter coffee and Xanax that I’ve almost completely dissociated.
“All right, Mark. You ready to go?”
My mouth is dry, my lip starts to twitch.
“I’m ready.”
“Righto then. For $50,000, the source of comic-book superhero Green Lantern’s special abilities is his ‘power’ what?”
A: Belt
B: Ring
C: Key
D: Watch.
I hear myself talking through the answers, so I know I must be speaking. But it’s an out-of-body experience, a nightmare, too terrifying to be real. The clock ticks down.
“B: Ring.”
“Lock it in?”
“Lock it in.”
Eddie smiles, his eyes sparkle. He savours this exquisite tension, prolonging my torture. He asks the other contestants what they would have picked, and I rue my stupidity. Time stretches out, loses all meaning. Then, these words: “Mark, you’ve just won 50,000 dollars!”
The audience cheer. Eddie reaches over and shakes my hand, but I can hardly believe it. I walk out of the studio in a daze. By some cosmic fluke, I’d got it right. I sit outside in the studio car park, smiling like a lunatic. But it’s only later that I’ll realise the significance of what just happened – it will set in train a series of events that will change my life forever.
Mark Brandi and Eddie McGuire: “By some cosmic fluke, I’d got it right.”Credit: Courtesy of Mark Brandi
After winning the cash, I’m able to go part-time at work. On my days off, I start a writing course at TAFE. It’s there the beginnings of my first novel, Wimmera, take shape.
Fast-forward 13 years, and my fourth novel has now been published. Looking back, I’ve often told a version of this creation story at writers’ festivals and literary events: Eddie McGuire + prizemoney = writing career.
But the truth is, my luck started much earlier. I grew up in relative privilege, with both parents working blue-collar jobs before starting a small business. We weren’t especially wealthy, but had a mostly stable and nurturing home life (aside from the occasional blue between siblings). And whatever mistakes my brothers and I made (plenty), we always knew if things got rough, there was a room for us back home.
We tell ourselves we earned whatever success we have because of the risks we took, the hard graft, the sacrifice.
For many Australians, there is no such safety net. With one mistake, illness, or just plain bad luck, many are doomed to a life of struggle. Still, the egalitarian myth of a fair go persists – stories of self-made men and women are celebrated, venerated and blown out of all proportion. The reality? They’re a statistical exception, not the rule. And most had a lot of help along the way.
Many of us fall for the same mythology in the stories of our own lives. We tell ourselves we earned whatever success we have because of the risks we took, the hard graft, the sacrifice.
In the literary world, it seems almost everyone has some version of this myth. Me included. In reality, it’s mostly a matter of luck. As the lights went down in that TV studio back in 2010, Eddie and I posed for a photo holding each end of a novelty cheque. As I went to leave, the boy from Broady had some parting advice.
“Fifty grand, mate. Tax-free. Would take you a long time to save that.”
“Yep.”
“Just don’t let anyone get their claws into it, right? You earned it.”
But I’ve never felt like I truly earned it. I’d only reluctantly auditioned for Hot Seat because one of my brothers urged me to – he thought winning might help me realise my dream of being a writer. And any trivia skills I had were mostly due to the many childhood hours we’d spent watching countless episodes of Sale of the Century. Without Tony Barber and Glenn Ridge, none of it would’ve happened.
I recently found myself in the self-help section of a local bookstore, filled with how-to guides promising material or emotional success. In another section sat memoirs and biographies of sporting heroes and entrepreneurs, offering their stories of hard-won wisdom. In this crowded market, it seems luck barely rates a mention.
But perhaps if we stop and rethink our personal stories, appreciate the role of good fortune, it might encourage us to be more mindful of others. Studies show the more we think of ourselves as lucky, the more generous we become, regardless of circumstances. A shift in attitude might be a small step toward a more compassionate society, and something closer to a fair go for all.
In this spirit, I give belated thanks to Eddie McGuire for his small role in my literary journey. But I also want to recognise the opportunities I inherited, the stability of my upbringing and the confidence it gave me to chase my dreams.
From now on, when people ask how I ended up writing for a living, it’s going to be the truth. It wasn’t talent, hard work, or determination.
I just got lucky.
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