Sweet Surrender (2 page)

I've been fortunate in my career. As a school leaver I didn't give it much thought. My parents were both journalists, and I had grown up during a time when finding exactly the job you wanted was much easier and less competitive than it is today. I didn't go to university – degrees in communications hadn't been invented in the 1960s – I simply started work as a magazine copygirl, making tea and running messages at the
Australian Women's Weekly
. Before too long I was awarded a cadetship, a three-year on-the-job apprenticeship, and graduated as a graded journalist before I was twenty.

My career path has zigzagged according to my passions. As a young woman I loved film and television and was excited to work as a feature writer and reporter in those areas for several years. I started a family and was a passionate homemaker, then worked part time as a journalist on
House and Garden
magazine writing stories on domestic themes, before moving the family to Leura in the Blue Mountains. There I became a committed organic gardener and my work changed accordingly. For more than two decades, I wrote articles and edited books and magazines about the joys of gardening. I was keenly interested in health and alternative medicine, and in my thirties landed a job editing a
national preventive health magazine. I was always keen on politics and environmental issues in local government and edited and co-published two anti-development local newspapers in the community where we lived.

In my early forties I was approached by ABC-TV to work on
Gardening Australia
, and thus began a very happy and productive nine years of my life. It was one of my busiest periods as I also juggled caring for four teenage children and my elderly mother, maintaining a large garden (partly for professional reasons), and meeting various other writing and editing commitments.

Since I became a graded journalist I have never gone looking for employment; whether because of my enthusiasm or my positive outlook on life, opportunities have always come my way and, although I sometimes felt daunted, I have been brave enough – or foolhardy enough – to seize them.

One of the crazier jobs I've had in recent years was being cast by the Nine Network as one of a panel of women for a daytime, live-to-air chat show. In late 2004, some time after my first two books were published, I was approached by an executive producer from the Nine Network and asked to audition for a program tentatively named
The Watercooler
. She was cagey about the format, which was based loosely on a successful, long-running American program
The View
.

I was flattered. For an older woman – I was fifty-four when the producer from Nine approached me – there are very few opportunities in the cut-throat world of television. The ABC is an exception to some extent, with women such as Geraldine Doogue and Caroline Jones still gracing the screen, but women over fifty seldom play prominent roles in commercial TV these days – I suppose the stand-out is Kerri-Anne Kennerley, who has been on screen for so long that nobody cares about her age.

The auditions were gruelling. I'm a journalist, not an actress, and was therefore unaccustomed to a process that can be soul-destroying
for those who do not make it from one round to the next. Years before I had done an audition for
Gardening Australia
. Compared with this meat market, that earlier test was a doddle; a small crew (producer, cameraman and sound recordist) came to our house at Leura, and in ten minutes we shot a relaxed sample of me chatting away about various aspects of my much-loved garden. I got the job!

The Channel 9 test was different. There would be other women involved and we were to voice our opinions on various topics, from the news of the day to issues affecting young mothers at home. I felt quite comfortable with this. The chance to express my opinions and attitudes about the problems facing modern society was an opportunity I certainly didn't want to miss.

I must admit that when I quit
Gardening Australia
I was relaxed about not being tied to a weekly television commitment, and not the slightest bit fazed by the notion that I would probably never work in television again. In fact I felt relieved to be out of the thick of it. Yet here I was just a few years later, preparing to try out for a show that involved a daily commitment that would mean that I would have to live in Sydney for most of the week – madness! What I hadn't realised was that dozens of prospects were being tested out for the show on that particular day. When I arrived there were women in small groups chatting and comparing notes: I didn't know any of them and felt rather out of place and overwhelmed. I was dressed very simply in a linen suit – not power dressing but not casual either – and I had spent quite a bit of time getting my hair and make-up right because I had been told our auditions would be taped so that our performances could be seen by network executives.

Eventually it was my turn to face the camera alongside three other women to whom I had been introduced only minutes before. I was the oldest, by quite a margin, and everyone – not just me – seemed nervous and unsure of what was expected. We had been given a list of topics to think about – nothing very challenging – and the idea was that we were
to bounce them around in a conversational manner, just as women would do when gathered around the watercooler or coffee-maker at the office. To be quite honest, I can't remember who the other women in that audition were, or what topics we bandied about. I do remember that after a rather shaky start I relaxed and had some fun – I tried to be as natural as possible and even managed to slip in a couple of slightly saucy one-liners. The experience wasn't as painful as I had feared.

When I heard nothing back from the network within several weeks, I assumed that I had been eliminated from the search. I had learned that more than sixty women from all around the country had been called in to the first round of auditions and I expected my chances of getting to the next stage of the process were very slim.

Then, out of the blue, I had a call-back from the producer. Could I come down for another round of screen tests? I was surprised but quite chuffed and wondered who else had been selected and what form the next audition would take. The producer told me the reaction around the network to my first tape was that I was knowledgeable and down to earth, yet wicked – an ingredient they wanted in the production.

This time a decision had been made to allow a ‘getting to know you' session before the taping. I was introduced to three prospective co-hosts: the gorgeous ABC and SBS television journalist Indira Naidoo (I was a huge fan); another ABC journalist who I wasn't so familiar with, Shelley Horton; and tall, willowy, utterly beautiful Cleo Glyde, a former model who had become a magazine style editor. The four of us seemed to gel pretty quickly, chatting excitedly about the possibility of doing the program, and I was surprised to discover they had ‘googled' me to discover my background. I hadn't even heard of Google in those days, and felt a bit underprepared; I had been living out of the city for years, and was no longer up on all the latest trends and technology. Cleo also talked about having a ‘spray tan' so she would look better on camera. I'd never heard of a spray tan, so again I felt slightly naïve and not as savvy as the others.

It was obvious from the start that we had been cast to cover a range of requirements. Shelley was smart, funny and plump, a single woman in her late thirties without children. Indira was highly educated, intelligent and calm, also in her thirties, married but without children, and representing the ‘ethnic' audience. Cleo was the glamour queen, clever and quick and doing it tough as a single mother. I was the token older woman, a mother and grandmother able to speak from life experience.

This time the audition was in a large studio with a mock-up set, and the highly experienced Liz Hayes was our moderator, steering us from one topic to the next. We did the best we could under the circumstances. The idea was to keep the conversation bouncing along quickly; to agree to disagree, and not to talk over the top of each other. It was important that everyone get an opportunity to speak to every topic, but without us creating polite silences while we waited for the next person to take their turn. In other words, the intention was to create a relaxed but vibrant discussion between women that would provide a point of identification for female viewers at home.

After the taping it was a waiting game. The edited ‘pilot' program had to do the rounds of the network, being shown to program directors in every state, as well as to the upper echelon at PBL, the magazine arm of company. I was concerned it might fall flat because, from my limited experience in television, it lacked production quality. There had been little pre-production or ‘styling', and to me it felt raw and a bit rough around the edges.

Nevertheless, a month later, we got the call that the show was ‘on' and would start production early the following year, going to air at the beginning of the ratings period. I was astounded, but also excited at the prospect. To celebrate we were to be invited to a boardroom lunch on the third floor of the Nine Network's main building in Artarmon. That meant we had really made the big time – I chuckled mightily to myself. David and I had met for the first time in this very building, more
than thirty years earlier. He was working as the associate producer of a family situation comedy series called
The Godfathers
and I had joined the publicity department after completing my training at the
Weekly
. My ultimate ambition was to join the Channel 9 newsroom as a reporter. Three months after I arrived, David asked me out, right there in the studio where we had just taped the talk show pilot. Just thinking of the path our lives had taken in the decades since that moment, it was not lost on me that I had come full circle.

Next came the contract negotiations. Having worked for the ABC for nine years I had a pretty fair idea of what an average television presenter is paid, but this was different. Our show was to be one hour, live to air, five days a week, and presumably it would not be expensive to produce with its studio set and chat format. I knew that we could not demand a rate of pay like Kerri-Anne Kennerley's because her show is heavily sponsored and she is the sole host. Nevertheless, I was determined not to undersell myself. I knew that the network would negotiate hard and that they would keep the four of us apart during these negotiations. David came with me to meet Channel 9's director of daytime television, and we were both surprised at just how little they were prepared to pay. We managed to push the fee up a tad; the network also agreed to pay for my accommodation and weekly airfares from Bathurst, where we have a farm, to Sydney. So we shook hands on the deal. A contract was to be posted out the following week.

I kept in regular communication with my co-hosts, but we steered clear of discussing the delicate topic of our individual contracts. I secretly wondered, though, if they were being paid as little as me. I rationalised that if the show took off I could renegotiate a much better deal for the following year.

The boardroom lunch date was set, and the atmosphere was one of high spirits and excitement. French champagne was opened and we were introduced to half a dozen top-level executives who would be involved on the periphery of the production. I can't remember the menu, but
I do recall that almost all of us – Indira being the definite exception – drank far too much wine, and were very loud and totally over the top. The heady combination of the situation we found ourselves in and our underlying nervous energy put us in a skittish mood. I wondered, with hindsight, if our behaviour at this lunch had any bearing on what ultimately happened. I do recall that when dessert was offered I feigned horror and asked the waiter if there was to be a cheese course. The nerve of me, flaunting my French influences. He scurried back to the kitchen and produced a platter of cheeses for us to share – everyone seemed to think it was hilarious, but of course it was very bad manners. I cringe when I think of it now.

No contracts arrived. Week after week there were emails of apology and explanation and the starting date for pre-production was moved further back. First to March, then April and then May. It was a nightmare for all of us because our careers and lives were ‘on hold' during the drawn-out process. Channel 9 had ‘leaked' a press release giving details about the program and the names of the four panel members; this was picked up at the ABC, and Shelley Horton was given her marching orders. Cleo and Indira had both knocked back other job offers, while I had cancelled various walking tours that I had planned to lead that year. When the network moved the launch date back to May I asked if it would be OK if I went ahead with a trek to Nepal that had been planned for more than a year. Management readily agreed, as long as I was back in Sydney by early May. It meant changing the dates of the tour, and we lost half our starters. I was cranky but resigned to the fact that I had to fit in with Channel 9's demands if I wanted to retain my position on the show.