THE KENNEDY SAGA

On Friday on 3AW I talked to former Channel Nine, Channel Ten and 3AW sports reporter, Rob Astbury about his love affair with the King of TV Graham Kennedy.

I asked him directly: Were he and Kennedy lovers. I already knew the answer. If it were not true you would either say “No” or “how dare you even suggest that”. Astbury said “No comment”. And he rambled on about the sensitivities of the Kennedy and Astbury families.

I also asked, with brutal honesty, if Astbury was HIV Positive. Again he answered with “no comment” and I knew the answer to that question before I asked it.

It all came about because with the death of Australia’s greatest TV star – whose stature will never be emulated – I exposed on radio that Graham Kennedy was gay.

I knew that Kennedy and Astbury had been lovers -- not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that as Seinfeld would say. I had actually, personally, sprung them at a restaurant called Ziggy’s in Annandale in Sydney where they were sharing a candlelit dinner.

I also caused some angst in the media and the entertainment industry this week when I said on radio that I believed Graham Kennedy had died from an AIDS-related illness. The death certificate said pneumonia.

There is a medical report, that Ray Martin brandished on A Current Affair, saying that Kennedy had had a blood test only days before he died that showed he was HIV negative. Why you would do a blood test for AIDS on a 71-year-old man in a nursing home is beyond me.

(An e-mailer put forward the argument that I cannot confirm that if a person has AIDS, towards the end they will indeed test "negative" for it because their immune system has been so thoroughly destroyed there is no place for the virus to reside and so it is sequestered in various organs and not free in the blood.)

I did say on radio: You are not going to like this but I believe Graham Kennedy died from AIDS.

The pages of deserved tributes didn’t mention it. But Graeme Blundell, his biographer, who spent seven years working on his book, hinted at it in The Australian newspaper. He wrote about meeting Kennedy two years ago – long after the star refused to cooperate on his biography, appropriately called The King.

He talked about him “wearing heavy blue pyjamas, some sort of undershirt beneath, and Ugg boots. Unshaven, he stared out the window, his beard wispy and orange in colour, his thin, patchy, shiny white hair plastered across his scalp.”

And then, in the article, came the telling sentence: “There were large black patches on both his cheeks. They were so dark they looked like as if they had been applied with makeup”.

That is Karposi Sarcoma -- the black sign of the black death. I have had several gay friends who have developed those splotches and have sadly died.

Several, like Graham Kennedy and Richard Wherett, eventually from pneumonia or other diseases. Their immune system drops and can’t cope any more. And especially, like Kennedy, when you are a heavy drinker and chain smoker.

I said on 3AW: The obituaries will make much of his solitude and his almost fanatical protection of his private life. My theory was that because, at the peak of his fame, he was paranoid that his awesome audience would discover that that he was gay. I know several of his male lovers from back then. Remember that this was at a time when if the word got out you were a “poofter”, it would destroy your career. The famous singer Johnny Ray almost got sprung in Sydney and lived in fear of international exposure.

It could have destroyed people like Mike Walsh and John –Michael Howson. It was a sad, judgemental, homophobic period.

That’s why it was such a joke when the magazines made front page headlines about Graham Kennedy getting engaged to singer Lana Cantrell. He was gay and she was a lesbian. You wouldn’t know which way to turn.

Philip Adams wrote in The Australian that Kennedy, when the camera was switched off, was “lonely and vulnerable.”

He said Kennedy was like a ventriloquist’s doll you could fold up and plonk in a suitcase until the next show. And Adams said, to prove my point, Kennedy was “imprisoned by his sexuality”.

That is so sad. That a person, at the peak of their fame, cannot be publicly what they are privately. But that was back in the days when nobody was called a homosexual. They were, euphemistically a “confirmed bachelor”.

Graham Kennedy was a complex character. Undoubtedly the most successful performer ever on Australian TV. He was also successful on radio. He was a great performer in movies like The Club and Don’s Party and even in a dog of a film called The Odd Angry Shot. Kennedy and Bert Newton were the best Abbot and Costello combination that Australia has ever seen.

But Kennedy was almost a loner. And after he walked away from the business he deliberately had few friends. A complex character. A touch of the Tony Hancock’s. I know one producer who worked with him for six months on that extraordinary “news” programme called Coast to Coast. They worked together for six months and he never once spoke to Kennedy. He had to slip fax messages under the star’s door.

Journalists who got rare interviews with The King had to communicate the same way.

He became increasingly reclusive and, in retirement, hit the red wine very hard early in the day. He had a bad fall which caused serious head injuries. He trusted only a few people like comedian and neighbour Noelene Brown.

I’m told he was a great cook and a great host before he withdrew into country solitude.

The obituaries have made much of his solitude and his almost fanatical protection of his private life. My theory is that because, at the peak of his fame, he was paranoid that his awesome audience would discover that that he was gay. These days, who cares?

May 29, 2005

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2005