This was not okay with me and I let the producer know it. I was furious that I hadn’t been given more warning. I didn’t have a portable battery light with me and it was impossible to get decent shots without it. I raved on about slack producers and headed down to the river, fuming.
Three hours later, we’d filmed the boat race and I was still fuming. As I trudged back towards Steve and his van, he held out a box and said, ‘Here’s your battery light.’ He explained that he’d overheard the conversation, noticed my anger (hard not to), got on his mobile, which in those days was the size of his van, booked the light, charged it to his account and had it delivered to the river.
There is not one 60 Minutes crew member that doesn’t love Steve. Richard Carleton was fascinated by him and marvelled at his vast knowledge of world events. The acid test came in 1992, when our guest reporter was none other than ex–prime minister Bob Hawke. Bob was a great bloke, easy to work with and fun (even though he was now a teetotaller). He caught on very quickly with the way we did things, which is surprising as what we did was rocket science and very tricky and all he’d done was get himself to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship and run a country for eight years. Oh, and create a new world speed record for drinking beer from a yard glass. Two and a half pints of beer in eleven seconds.
Three months earlier Bob was prime minister of Australia, now he was sitting in Steve’s van with us, about to do a story on the 1992 British election. The election was too close to call and it looked as if the UK might even end up with a hung parliament. The main contenders were John Major, the incumbent PM, and Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader, who appeared to be narrowly in front, with Paddy Ashdown of the Liberal Democrats giving them both a little scare.
Producer Andrew Haughton had lined up interviews with all three, made easier by the fact that our reporter was Bob Hawke, who knew them all personally. The first interview was with Paddy Ashdown and, as always, Steve helped carry the gear inside then waited in the shadows in case we needed something more from the car. He also knew that sometimes it was more prudent to stay in the van. His radar to know when to leave, or not, was uncanny.
This was Bob’s first interview for 60 Minutes and although his voice didn’t show it, I could tell he was nervous by the way he threw himself around in the chair during the chat. But he did a good job and on the way home he mentioned to Andrew he thought it all went pretty well and he might even end up liking being a reporter. Then Steve who had been quiet for the first ten minutes of the trip home said in his diplomatic way, ‘It was pretty good, but I think you should have asked him about his affair and the Sun newspaper headline.’
I was flabbergasted. Normally we discussed everything with Steve but this was Bob Hawke, who none of us really knew and had been a force to be reckoned with in Australia for decades. Micky the soundman and I looked at each other in shock, wondering how Bob would react to the driver giving him advice.
‘You really think so, do you?’ said Bob. ‘And why do you think that?’
Away went Steve with Bob hanging on to every word.
Back at the hotel, Bob invited us up to his suite to discuss the next day’s shoot with Kinnock. He told Steve to park the car and come up, too. Bob spent the next hour picking Steve’s brain about English politics and what he thought of Kinnock.
After the Kinnock interview, Bob, ignoring our producer, asked Steve how he thought it went. Steve said it was okay but he forgot to ask Kinnock why he had dropped his commitment to unilateral nuclear disarmament. That night back at Bob’s suite, Bob asked Steve what he should ask Prime Minister Major the next day. Steve didn’t hesitate to offer sage advice to an ex–prime minister on what questions he should ask a present prime minister.
The interview was set for 11 a.m. at Number 10 Downing Street and Steve, determined to show respect, turned up resplendently dressed in coat and tie. He was aghast at Micky’s and my attire, the regular jeans and T-shirt. He told us we couldn’t possibly meet the prime minister dressed like that. We told him it’s how we dress for our PM and we weren’t going to change for his. He was horrified at our disrespect, ignoring us completely on the drive to Number 10, choosing only to chat with his new friend Bob.
Inside the PM’s residence Bob introduced us all, including Steve, to John Major. And again Steve sat in on the interview, and afterwards Bob was very happy to get Steve’s seal of approval.
The next day we had a meeting with Ted Heath, the ex-PM who was still bitter at having been rolled by Margaret Thatcher as leader of the party. He had an air of aristocratic arrogance about him. After shaking Bob’s hand, he asked Bob who we all were. ‘This is Nick, the cameraman, blah blah blah ... And Steve, our driver.’
‘I don’t allow drivers in my house,’ Heath sniffed.
‘I do,’ said Bob.
‘It’s my house,’ said Heath.
‘He’s with me, and he stays,’ said Bob.
Micky and I just stared silently at our feet. The two ex-PMs, both used to having their own way, kept arguing while Steve quietly left the room—out of respect for Bob. Heath probably thought it was the English class system working just as it should.
The interview went ahead. This guy was no Kinnock or Major. He was full of bombast before the interview, but on the election and the political situation, monosyllabic. Until the discussion returned to being about him, then he droned on relentlessly.
Outside after the interview, Bob apologised to Steve for Heath’s rudeness. Steve, way too smart to be upset by it, thanked Bob for sticking up for him then asked how the interview went.
‘He just fuckin’ waffled on. Steered round the fuckin’ questions, just like Ashdown the other day. Fuckin’ politicians,’ Bob said, ‘they’ll never answer the bloody question.’
•
Maybe sometimes you can’t blame them. In 1983 Richard Carleton asked Bob Hawke, who had only a few hours earlier rolled Bill Hayden to become Federal Labor Party leader, ‘Mr Hawke, could I ask you whether you feel a little embarrassed tonight at the blood that’s on your hands.’
A startled Hawke responded curtly, ‘It’s a ridiculous question. You know it’s ridiculous.’ Then attacked Carleton for his, ‘Damned impertinence.’
Carleton was completely unmoved.
Richard George Carleton, legendary reporter, journalist and iconoclast, was the most enigmatic person I ever met. This was the guy, only inches from Gough Whitlam on the steps of Old Parliament House on 11 November 1975, who famously rolled his eyes as Whitlam described Malcolm Fraser as ‘Kerr’s cur’. He ate politicians for breakfast, his unique interview style set him apart from the pack, and nothing ever seemed to faze him. When he arrived at 60 Minutes after about a million years working for the ABC and the BBC, his reputation had us all terrified.
Richard was totally incapable of small talk until he knew you, then he’d let his guard down. I’d been working with him for six months and he still didn’t know my name. Maybe he just couldn’t be bothered. I just didn’t know how to crack this bloke. The other reporters were all easy-going, as I thought I was. Richard’s replacement for small talk was performing magic tricks, which he practised endlessly. He performed a disappearing red handkerchief trick for interviewees from Margaret Thatcher to Untouchables in Nepal. The Nepalese loved it. Thatcher was Thatcher. ‘I’d prefer it to be blue,’ she sniffed.
When Richard wasn’t performing magic, he’d mangle someone in an interview. It was always a contest. He’d take them apart then wander off as if he’d just joined them for afternoon tea. I’ve never seen anything like it. He once told me his job was more as an entertainer than a journalist. This he proved on his famous ‘dole bludger’ story.
Randy Savage weighed 50 kilos, had six kids from two wives and had been on the dole for ten years. Richard’s opening line on the story: ‘Here we have one Randy Savage.’ From then on the savaging was all Richard’s. I shot the interview with Randy standing against a brick wall. Richard’s gigantic frame towered over him.
Richard: No w
ork in ten years. You haven’t even tried.
Randy: I’ve tried very hard.
Richard: Rubbish! Where?
Randy: I’ll work anywhere, anytime.
Richard: But can you see how illogical your position is? Ten years have gone by and you haven’t done a day’s work.
Randy: Yeah, it sounds bad, but it’s not as bad as it sounds.
Richard: You agree it does sound bad?
Randy: Yes, I agree it does sound terrible.
Richard: Shocking.
Randy: Uhuh.
Richard: Disgusting.
Randy: Mmmm.
Richard: Disgraceful.
Randy: Yes.
Richard: You’re really not much of a human being, are you?
‘Not much of a human being’—I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt genuinely sorry for Randy. Their intellectual difference was far greater than their size difference, and probably a good thing. Randy should have been incensed but instead he hung around for Richard to do it all over again from another angle. Randy didn’t seem to mind, but the viewers sure did. Channel 9 was inundated with calls about Richard’s rudeness.
He could be a contrary bastard, who sometimes didn’t do his homework just to piss off the producers. In 1997 in Murmansk, Russia, the story was on the Russian nuclear fleet. The Soviet Union was broke and the navy couldn’t afford to pay its electricity bills to make sure the nuclear reactors powering the mothballed subs remained stable. They were also dumping waste from the reactors with criminal neglect. Producer Allan Hogan had gone to extraordinary lengths to line up a secret interview with a Russian whistleblower, Alexander Nikitin, a former submarine captain who’d been charged with treason. Allan had given Richard folders of his copious research notes. It was an amazing scoop. But on the day of the interview, Richard was in a bad mood and as they got out of the car he said to Allan, ‘So what exactly do you want this chap to tell us?’ Allan was furious, it was as if Richard had no idea what the story was. But Richard, the smooth professional, sat Nikitin down and produced yet another amazing interview.
In some interview situations, Richard could be so insufferably rude that his 60 Minutes crew would fear for their safety. In an Allan-produced interview with Radovan Karadzic, leader of the Bosnian Serbs (now in jail for war crimes), at 1 a.m. in the Serb’s war HQ, surrounded by heavily armed men wearing black uniforms and balaclavas, Richard asked Karadzic, ‘How does it feel to be a mass murderer?’
Karadzic was not happy, but his goons were furious. They swung on Allan. ‘I was pretty sure we wouldn’t make it out of there alive,’ our producer said later.
Richard blithely kept up his interrogation, but he’d noticed the sudden chill in the air. He could also flatter with the best of ’em, so he changed tack just in time. Five minutes after the interview, Richard and Allan were drinking slivovitz, laughing and joking with the mass murderer.
•
We were in the West Bank and Richard, who at least now knew my name, was interviewing the mayor of Hebron. Once again I felt he was inexcusably rude and I was embarrassed. It had been a long day and we were all buggered. I couldn’t help myself. Walking to the car after the interview, I said, ‘Richard, without doubt you are the rudest man I have ever met.’
Richard replied, ‘You really think so, do you?’
‘Yes I do.’
Richard turned, walked back into the house and dragged out the mayor.
‘Mr Mayor,’ he said, ‘I would really like to thank you for what is one of the best interviews I have ever been involved in. How’s that, Nick? And I’d like to compliment you on the way you run your town. Is that all right, Nick? And please thank your wife for the beautiful coffee. Is that enough for you, Nick?’
What could I say? It was so absurd I laughed. Something had cracked in both of us and from then on we were firm friends. For years, at the end of the day, he’d say, ‘Was I rude today, Nick? Tell me if you think I was rude.’ I always looked forward to working with him, knowing I’d have a great time. I now know he was never deliberately rude. He’d just spent far too long covering politics in Canberra.
Actually, come to think of it, he could be deliberately rude if he decided the interviewee was a charlatan. He absolutely hated hypocrisy. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, otherwise known as the Giggling Guru, was in Holland when Richard arrived to ruin his day.
The Giggling Guru, the guy who increased his fame substantially as spiritual advisor to the Beatles, was living in an amazing wooden palace in the grounds of a former Franciscan monastery just outside the town of Vlodrop in The Netherlands. The yogi had built his palace from the vast fortune he’d collected from adoring worshippers. It housed him, a few top banana followers, and a TV studio so he could communicate with his devotees via video and the internet. There was also a subscription-based satellite TV channel called Veda Vision, broadcast in 22 languages, and it had all the latest technology, making Channel 9 look like a provincial 1940s wireless station.
For years the Giggling Guru had been teaching transcendental meditation and yoga. ‘For good health, it is necessary for everyone to do something with the body so that it remains flexible and normal,’ he advised. I couldn’t agree more and I’m a great fan of yoga. But somewhere along the line, megalomania set in and the guru, who claimed to have a degree in physics, told everyone he could fly, and for a price his followers could also gain flying skills that would culminate in world peace. Again I’m all for world peace and obviously so were all his apprentice pilots, but maybe being so gullible they deserved to be parted from their money.
It’s alleged that John Lennon, having realised the Maharishi wasn’t all he was cracked up to be, wrote a song called Maharishi, with the lines, ‘What have you done? You’ve made a fool of everyone.’ Some of the other Beatles, still undecided over their guru, made John change the name of the song to Sexy Sadie.
So the Beatles were now off-limits and Richard had been told there were to be absolutely no questions about them.
Before we hit The Netherlands we went to Iowa in the United States for shots of the guru’s Maharishi University of Management. It was like Fort Knox. Security around the campus was heavy. Except for fee-paying followers, no one, especially film crews, was allowed anywhere near the place. And this was just one of the many Maharishi universities round the world. You could get degrees in business, law and science. How, I had no idea. Most of the academic day was spent in the huge halls for the learning of yogic flying. And when you gained master’s status, you could make yourself invisible, know everything, and, wait for it, walk through walls. As well as universities, the Giggling Guru had a global empire that owned hotels, shops, schools and factories. He was raising hard cash as well as consciousness.
While in the States we interviewed John, an ex-insider, who told us the Giggling Guru was now laughing all the way to the bank. John told us he’d personally spent 23 years and $250,000 searching for the promised nirvana, and he wasn’t alone. Another ex-disciple named Dianne suffered a nervous breakdown from what she called brainwashing.
‘It’s sad,’ she told us, ‘I am one of thousands of bright young people who were scammed by one of the greatest con artists of our generation.’
So Richard had plenty of ammo for his interview with the Maharishi Yogi.
When we arrived at Guru Central in The Netherlands, we were met by a softly spoken, overweight Australian in a whiter-than-white suit. The whiter your suit, the closer you are to the Giggling Guru, and having been a follower for 30 years, the Aussie was now a major player in the sect. I suspected the ultra-white suit meant ultra-sycophantic; for the rest of the mob in their beige suits, not only the art of flying but the art of working the system had also eluded them.
The Aussie told us that he, too, was learning to fly, all in the name of world peace, and that they had recently proposed to the Australian prime minister John Howard, ‘That it would be good to take two or three per cent of the military and have them practise transcendenta
l meditation and yogic flying to act as a prevention wing. When one practises yogic flying, one stimulates and enlivens that basic universal field and that is what neutralises the cause of war.’
Richard then asked him, ‘How far can the Maharishi fly?’
‘I would imagine he can fly any distance, he’s not in the mode of demonstrating such things to the world.’
‘Have you seen him fly?’
‘No.’
‘Has anyone seen anyone fly?’
‘I don’t know in this generation but throughout the history of the world it’s been recorded again and again.’
Then a beige-suited man took us to a large room filled with white mattresses, and bouncing on their behinds on those mattresses were eight Maharishi devotees all convinced that the look on their faces conveyed enlightened euphoria. Unfortunately they all just looked like morons. With legs crossed they hopped on their bums from one end of the room to the other. They were certainly gaining more height than I ever could, but it wasn’t flying. And let’s not forget, they were doing it all for world peace.
In one of our conversations with the white-suited Aussie we let slip we had filmed the yogi’s university in Iowa. Lead balloon territory. He responded unhappily, telling us we’d deceived them and the interview with the Maharishi might now not happen. Richard and producer Hamish Thomson went into damage control, apologising and saying there was no way we were trying to deceive them.
Well, we had tried to deceive them, of course, but we needed the interview with the yogi so we told them whatever they wanted to hear.
The interview was set for 9 p.m., then 5 p.m., then finally settled for 8.30 p.m. And we weren’t to be in the same room. The Maharishi would be upstairs in his TV studio and we would be downstairs. Richard would be interviewing the yogi on a TV monitor.
Our claim that it would be more beneficial for everybody if Richard actually got to personally meet the great man was ignored. It was the TV monitor or nothing.
After setting up lights around the monitor, I decided to light Richard as well, then gave a small video camera to Micky to aim at Richard. The quality of the two cameras didn’t match, but we knew we’d never be able to get the buzz of what was going to be an explosive interview by doing reverse questions later. Richard was going to get stuck into the Giggling Guru. He’d had enough of this charlatan. Hamish, knowing what Richard was like, pleaded with him to go easy. ‘Richard, please, no questions about the Beatles,’ Hamish begged, knowing that if they were mentioned it would be all over.
All This in 60 Minutes Page 15
