not so perfect

I know what I am about to talk about now will unleash the perennial arguments when somebody dies. On the one hand people will say: ‘Never speak ill of the dead’. And ‘Show some respect. Think of  the family’. And ‘You are a coward. Why didn’t you say that when he was still alive’.

The people who push that last argument don’t understand the laws of defamation. And you can’t defame the dead.

On the other side is the argument that I have long adhered to: ‘ All history owes the dead is the truth’. And I hope it applies to me and my faults and frailties as much as anybody.

All history owes the dead is the truth. And the reason I bring it up today is because of  the man they called Peter Perfect. Peter Brock, the racing car champion, who died tragically last week.

In some areas, although most of the newspapers and the TV tributes, have not even alluded to it, Peter Perfect was NOT perfect.

And cracks are starting to appear in the public persona. His partner of 28 years Bev – who took his name but never married him – wrote about Brock’s philandering in her book last year called Peter Brock—Living With a Legend.

Then Brock left her and moved in with a family friend Julie Bamford who said at an understandably tearful and emotional media appearance ‘Peter and I were on an exceptional journey of love and growth within a committed relationship’.

How committed is only just coming out. Julie is estranged from but still married to  Brock’s long-time friend Ron McCurdy. The bitterness of the love struggle surfaced in court last year when McCurdy was fined $700 and ordered to undertake a anger management course  after he punched Brock in the nose.

In The Australian newspaper today McCurdy claims his wife and Brock had been having a clandestine, adulterous affair for fifteen years. His wife of 36 years walked out on him and their two children in May last year.

He said he saw the relationship brewing ‘but I didn’t think it would go that far’. He also said that Bev and Julie and another close girlfriend would meet to discuss Brock’s  extra-marital affairs.

And in her book Bev Brock wrote ‘eventually, though, I made a decision. It was the early 90s and there had been one too many secretaries’.

And then there was Brock’s brief marriage to a former Miss Australia Michelle Downes. In the sports and modelling worlds there were rumours that Brock was a wife-basher. Brock and Downes married in 1973 and divorced the following year.

Coincidentally I received an e-mail overnight that said in part ‘Mr. Hinch,
the public have a right to know that Peter Brock was not so perfect!! As a relative of Michelle Downes I have watched in amazement of how this creep got away with things over the years! Apart from the beltings he gave Michelle and the drunken rages and womanizer that he was, he certainly was no hero or role model.’

All this in no way diminishes Peter Brocks’ status as a sporting champion.  But it makes the nickname Peter Perfect sound a bit shaky.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2006