Later in our rooms we donned our stylish white robes, grabbed bottles of champagne and stepped onto our individual balconies. Overlooking the courtyard, we toasted Paris, each other, our unbelievable job, and of course Kerry, for making it all possible. We filmed it all, just to piss off the editors. Someone said, ‘This is not a bad pub,’ and the word stuck. For the next 30 years, any hotel we slept in, regardless of location or price, was ‘the pub’.
Other great ‘pubs’ we tried in Paris were the George V, the Bristol, the Plaza Athénée, and my favourite the Hotel Le Meurice. Unlike the Crillon’s somewhat showbiz clientele, the Pub Meurice was classy, and boasted Queen Victoria, the Sultan of Zanzibar and Tchaikovsky as regular guests. Best of all, our 250 kilos of camera gear was ‘never a problem’ for the porters at the Meurice; in fact, they were extremely helpful, unusual for porters or Parisians.
•
You see, concierges and porters run the show. If you can get them on side, you’ve got it made. A great concierge is worth their weight in gold, there is nothing they can’t do.
Two of the best I met both worked at the Athenaeum Hotel in London. Alex, a suave debonair Spaniard who managed to put three sons through private schools in London, was the best of the best. Any ticket to anything was right there in Alex’s briefcase. You want front row for the Wimbledon men’s final? No probs. FA Cup Final? Piece of piss. Latest Picasso exhibition sold out for three months? How many tickets would you like? Sure, you paid for them, but to most of his customers that was the least of their worries.
Then there was Donald. A super-charming gay Irishman who was the favourite of lonely, frustrated, cashed-up wives of philandering millionaires. He had them wrapped around his little finger and inside those little fingers were placed wads of cash as Donald could and would procure anything they wanted. And, boy, did they want. From the Texan housewife who asked him to find two well-endowed black men, to the young couple who requested he rollerskate naked with them around their luxury suite (Donald politely declined), the ever-discreet concierge had heard and seen it all.
And then there are the worst. Such as Joe from The Plaza in New York. This was a hotel I’d seen in movies and had dreamt of staying in since I was eight, so I was pretty excited when I checked in for seven days.
With key in hand, and surrounded by my fourteen cases, I called over the porter and politely asked for help with my luggage.
He looked at me, then the bags and said, ‘Nope!’
I was flabbergasted. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I ain’t takin’ your bags, buddy.’
‘You’re refusing to take my bags?’
‘That’s right, buddy.’
‘Hang on, are you a porter here?’
‘That’s right, buddy.’
‘And you are refusing to take my bags?’
‘That’s right, buddy.’
Incensed and jet-lagged from the Sydney to New York flight, I checked his nametag then marched straight to the manager’s office. I explained the situation, using every threat and trick I knew. The manager didn’t flinch. It was as if I was complimenting him on his wonderful hotel.
‘Was it Joe?’ he asked.
‘Yes, it was Joe.’
‘Nothing I can do about Joe, he’s head of the union.’
I left the manager’s office ready to tear the place apart, and Joe if I saw him. When I got back to the others, I saw two young porters loading everything onto a trolley, only too happy to help. One of them told me he’d overheard what Joe had said and he’d like to apologise for Joe’s attitude. Fifteen minutes later, with all the gear neatly stacked in my room, I handed each of them a $100 note and told them to make sure they told Joe.
That night we went out for a biggy in the Big Apple. Grog, restaurants, taxis, laughter, camaraderie. Back in my room, with bulk food and alcohol swirling round my gut, sleep wasn’t going to be easy, but I did feel drunk enough to immerse myself in American TV. Pissed being the only way to watch American television. I grabbed a beer and the remote and made myself comfortable on the chaise longue. Fifteen minutes and a hundred channels later, with a hole right through my pissed TV theory, I got up from the couch and headed for the toilet. Two steps from the couch I heard what sounded like a bowling ball smashing through a cathedral window. Shards of glass went flying past and onto me. I looked back to the chaise longue and saw the remnants of a chandelier all over it. Above that was a giant hole in the ceiling. I couldn’t believe my luck. Saved by my bladder! But how would I explain the broken chandelier? I’d heard of lords and rock stars swinging from chandeliers in hotel rooms, but who’d believe that I’d done nothing more than watch crap TV?
The only option was to go on the attack. So back to the manager’s office I went. Two hours later, having screamed about their shonky hotel and my near-death by chandelier, and threatened to sue, I had myself a fresh new room, a suite in fact, with two chandeliers. And helping me to move were two porters, neither of which was Joe.
•
We were away so often that some hotels became our much-nicer home away from home. One of these was the Draycott, another great pub in London. We stayed so often there were a couple of long-term relationships between 60 Minutes crews and hotel staff. There was even a marriage.
The Draycott was actually called a club, though I never figured why. Extremely beautiful, small and intimate, the hotel was nestled in the back streets of Sloane Square, a hundred metres from Kings Road, Chelsea, four blocks from Harrods. The heavies from the music and movie worlds loved staying there; the staff didn’t treat them as if they were famous and the luminaries loved it. The décor was magnificent. Huge vases of freshly cut flowers everywhere, their beautiful aroma permeating the whole building. Everything was perfect. The service was outstanding for everyone ... except us. We got none. Instead, we became such great friends with the staff that it was as if we were just bunking down on their floor at home except we—well, Kerry—was being charged three hundred quid a night per room for the privilege.
The bar worked on an honesty system. I don’t know how honest it was, nothing was ever written down, but at the end of our stay a gigantic amount of money owed would appear on one of our accounts, preferably someone else’s and not mine. Whoever scored the bill was always in shock, but then again we drank nothing but champagne or cognac except when pangs of conscience about the budget hit and we’d have a beer or twelve, but you can bet the Draycott was never out of pocket.
Ludwig (Ludy) the barman was a 5 feet tall Frenchman who spoke at lightning speed. His English was not too bon and nor was his service. In fact, come to think of it, his English was much more bon than his service. We would go behind the bar and help ourselves as Ludy, lying on the chaise longue, would shout, ‘Une gin and tonic pour moi while you’re there!’ I’m sure the G and T ended up on our bill, but it was the mixing with fascinating, eccentric people, both guests and staff, that made the Draycott our abode of choice in London for many years.
•
Another beauty was the Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto in Rome. A great pub. All class. With an astute porter who, on seeing Channel 9 logos plastered all over our gear, said, ‘Hey, you just missed your boss, that’s his car pulling out now.’
‘Boss? What boss?’
‘That boss, that’s Alan Bond.’
We ducked behind our cars in case that boss suddenly remembered he’d forgotten something.
Bond had just bought the network from Kerry Packer for a billion dollars, and obviously realising he’d paid too much, tried to save a few bucks by releasing his ‘Nine Manifesto’. It was a ripper. It proclaimed that a few heavies, such as Ray Martin and Jana Wendt, could travel first class. Lesser stars and producers, who were actually working on the flight, could travel business class, and the rest—i.e. film crews—would be at the back of the bus. And hotel rooms? Well, though not proclaimed, he would have assumed we’d be sharing motel rooms or, even better, camping out. If he’d seen us walking into the Excel
sior, he would have hit the roof, and probably us. After all, this hotel was for media tycoons and millionaires, which a few years later he wouldn’t be. Bond was later bankrupted and convicted of fraud, swapping a suite at the Excelsior for his own room in a West Australian prison for more than three years.
I don’t think it was our week at the Excelsior that bankrupted him (though the grog was expensive), I think it was the fact he paid $54 million (which he didn’t have) for the van Gogh masterpiece Irises. And possibly the fact we all continued to travel business class and stay in the most expensive hotels.
•
Establishments such as the Hotel Le Meurice, the Draycott or the Excelsior don’t exist in Gaza, most of Africa or places like, say, the Thai border.
On a story about an overcrowded Cambodian refugee camp on the Thai/Cambodian border, we needed accommodation. Easier said than done. There was a small village not far from the camp with not a drop of accommodation to be found, but like every good village, it had a brothel. So we bought it. Girls and all.
Our daily budget was the same as if we were in Paris, so we paid the girls, gave them four days off, and moved in. It was no Meurice but there was a roof over our head, and beds. The beds, normally rented by the hour, weren’t super comfortable, obviously planned that way, but they were luxury compared to the toilet and shower, which came in the form of two buckets. The bucket with the ladle was to wash with, the one without a ladle was to shit in. The single 40-watt globe hanging over the uncomfortable rent-a-bed meant not a lot of reading was done, and the deep dent in the bed meant not a lot of sleep. But we kept the place neat and tidy, not wishing to incur the wrath of the girls who had obviously done their best to keep their workplace as comfortable as possible. And we were grateful. At least we had electricity, beds, privacy and a roof.
The camp refugees had none of the above. When tropical storms hit, there was slight relief from the heat, and that’s all. Sitting in mud under small pieces of plastic were mum, dad and four or five kids with vacant looks in their eyes, staring, waiting and hoping, hoping that some day they’d be accepted for a new life in the US, or preferably Australia. Some had lived like this for years, grateful to be alive, they told us.
The food drop was heartbreaking. Once a day a truckload of rice was tipped into a great mound on the dirt, and it was every man for himself. The women and children had no chance. There’d be a desperate fight to grab as much rice as possible. It was a horror show, and there was nothing we could do to help these people. Watching felt so wrong. Filming even more so. Some stared down the lens, challenging me. But I did film it all and I did get amongst it, and I did feel guilty. I could only hope that once these images were shown at home they might prick a few consciences and get something done.
Yet there was a sense of hope in parts of the camp. You can’t hold back drive and determination. A few entrepreneurial individuals had somehow got hold of sewing machines and set up tailor shops. Others ran small ‘stores’. Cardboard boxes piled on top of each other for a counter, selling Coke, ice and sweets. Very few had money to buy any of this but there was no holding down good capitalists. It was truly inspiring, and I found myself trying to imagine just how I would have coped under such circumstances, unfortunately I knew the answer.
Witnessing the refugees’ wretched conditions day after day made us appreciate our brothel and two buckets. But in a few days’ time, we knew we’d be appreciating a gin and tonic by the pool at the Bangkok Hilton before we’d retire to our air-conditioned suites, all paid for by someone else. We sure were lucky and I never forgot just how lucky we were.
5
Down and Out in Cairo
‘You want to buy hashish?’ asked the teenager with fewer teeth than a one-year-old.
‘How much?’
‘Twenty pounds.’
‘Okay.’
I took the matchbox-size block of hash and handed over twenty Egyptian pounds, not knowing what an Egyptian pound was worth and not caring either. I was in a foul mood and ready to kill. Surrounded by 22 cases of camera equipment, I was sitting on the footpath outside the Cairo Hilton Hotel waiting for porters.
Five hours earlier we had arrived in Cairo airport for a story on Anwar Sadat, the Egyptian president. Reporter Ian Leslie had been trying for months to get an interview with him. His persistence paid off and Ian was summoned to Cairo. We immediately bought four tickets to Egypt, the rest we’d organise when we got there.
Our first hint that things could get a little difficult was when the customs officers, having taken one look at us and all the gear, told us to ‘sit over there and wait’. We flashed our correspondence from the president’s office but it made absolutely no difference. So we sat over there and waited. After two hours on rock-hard cement in the very hot and now very empty airport, we once again fronted up to the unshaven, unhappy customs officers to ask what the problem was and why it was taking so long. We were informed our paperwork was not accurate. We needed a special visa to film in Egypt and some of our equipment could not be brought into the country. Why it had taken two hours to tell us seemed a little odd, but we kept our composure, though this was becoming more and more difficult. The stalling continued until the sudden mention, the sighting and the handing over of a few hundred American dollars.
Bribery plays a big part for film crews travelling the world, but every now and then, surprise, surprise, you meet an honest official and he or she takes offence at our assumption that they’re on the take, and decides to make life even more difficult. But this time, with huge toothless smiles all round, there was no offence taken, only the money. All our troubles were solved. Well, those that involved customs officers.
Half a dozen cabs later, we arrived at the Hilton Hotel. With our rush to get to Egypt we had nothing booked, rare for us, but we figured we’d be fine. We assumed there were hundreds of hotels in Cairo. Probably even more.
Producer Allan Hogan wandered into the Hilton while we waited outside for porters. Five minutes later, Allan was back.
‘You’ll never believe it, the place is full.’
‘Well, we’ll try somewhere else,’ said Ian.
‘I have. There’s nothing.’
‘What, in the whole of bloody Cairo?’
‘Yep, the whole city is booked out.’
‘How can that be?’
‘Dental convention.’
‘Dental convention! Look at ’em, half of them haven’t even got teeth.’
‘I’ll go and see the manager, and do the customs trick,’ said Allan.
With a one hundred dollar note deftly folded in his hand, he went back inside and asked to see the manager. An impeccably dressed Egyptian with a perfect set of teeth and an outstretched hand walked towards him. Allan responded with his lumpy handshake. The manager looked down at the lump, back to Allan, down at the lump, and with a very pukka British accent said, ‘My good man, are you attempting to bribe me?’
‘Well, actually I am,’ whispered Allan. ‘We’re desperate.’
‘I’m sorry I can’t help, we really are fully booked.’
Allan rejoined us on the footpath to consider plan B. And there it was in my hand, the twenty-quid hash purchase from the toothless teen. With nothing else to do, nowhere to go, and no cigarette papers, Allan and I decided we would eat plan B. So we started nibbling.
Ian and soundman Peter Fragar decided not to partake, which was a good thing. Within an hour Allan and I were completely out of it, and the footpath seemed like an excellent place to spend the night.
Ian went off to find accommodation, any accommodation. For some reason he didn’t find the footpath as comfortable as Allan and I. He plunged back into the Hilton and talked them into letting him use their phone. After half an hour, he emerged grinning. Success.
‘And it’s got a pool, we can do laps every morning,’ said Ian triumphantly.
We piled into another six cabs and headed for our new pad, a motel called ‘The Kanzy’ on the outskirts of Cairo.
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Now I know beggars can’t be choosers, and if I’d been able to speak I would have said something, but the hash was well and truly doing its job. Which meant that Ian and Peter were doing the thinking for four.
The Kanzy was an extremely small, ugly, dark brick building resembling a pizza oven. There were only two rooms left. We would be sharing. No porters, of course, so the four of us started dragging the gear across the lawn. Then I noticed a ladder and realised that what we thought was the lawn was actually a film of blue-green algae luxuriating across Ian’s lap pool. The rooms were tiny, but at least they had bathrooms. We wouldn’t be reliving our Thai brothel/bucket experience. There were no phones. Not a good sign for producers who spend their lives on the phone. That is what they do, hundreds of phone calls a day. And the president’s office had told Allan they would call when the extremely busy president could spare a few hours for an interview.
Through his hashish haze Allan started to look worried. The one and only phone was in the office, and was not going to be used by guests telling stories about having to ring President Sadat. Luckily Allan found a public phone a kilometre down the road, and advised the presidential office we were in town. After being told to ring back tomorrow, we prepared for dinner. All those dentists couldn’t stop us from eating in their salubrious digs, so we headed off to the Hilton for dinner.
I’ve always subscribed to a ‘when in Rome’ philosophy, and Cairo was big on chicken livers. The livers were washed down with a couple of fine bottles of red. Perhaps it was the wine on top of the hash. But suddenly I didn’t feel too well.
What a time to be sharing a room. Both ends of me opened up like Mount Vesuvius. It was relentless. How could a few small chicken livers produce so much lava? I could manage ten minutes in bed before being hit by more eruptions. The trips to and from the bathroom were wearing me out, so I decided to stay sitting on the toilet and leaning over the sink. I drifted in and out of what I’d like to call sleep, but it wasn’t, it was a state of mind I had never experienced before. When I did feel conscious I had strange and confusing thoughts that weren’t mine, much more loopy than those the hash had given me. I wanted to die, and I knew Peter, lying on the other side of the paper-thin bathroom wall, was hoping my wish would come true.
All This in 60 Minutes Page 5
