NOT SCAREY MR. CAREY

Well, the Carey canary was on public display on television last night but whatever song Wayne Carey was singing for Andrew Denton it certainly wasn’t the truth.

But then he admitted that he was so out of it on booze and cocaine benders that maybe he could be forgiven for not remembering everything. Not remembering anything.

Denton’s program is called Enough Rope and it was certainly aptly named last night. He gave the disgraced football star enough rope and he hanged himself.

I don’t intend to go into a blow-by-blow dissection or review of everything that Carey said last night. His weird interpretation of domestic violence, his pathetic reconstruction of how a wine glass just happened to connect with the face of his girlfriend, how coppers in two countries just got it wrong.

I actually hadn’t planned to do much on this story again because it has filled magazine pages, and newspaper headlines, and leaks from the ABC even before the interview went to air.

But at one stage Denton confronted Carey with an allegation I had broadcast about an incident in Bendigo back in the 1990s when he was playing for, and captaining, North Melbourne.

Denton replayed this from my Drive program on 3AW about some of Carey’s nocturnal ecapades:

Maybe, tell the colourful story about the night at the Dunny Diner, the late night food van beside the Old Post Office.

Apparently, Carey and his crew began rocking the van with the owner inside with a deep fryer and hotplates etc.  They attempted to roll the van over until police came from the station around the corner.  Carey took a pistol from an officer’s holster and was lucky not to have been shot.  He was taken to the cells and used his clout to have a policeman friend from Melbourne drive to Bendigo and take him away with a warning never to return.’

On Denton Carey denied it. Called me a liar. He said ‘ That’s ludicrous. It’s a total lie.’

Then said ‘It’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard’ but then corrected himself by saying ‘it’s not funny because it’s about me’.

Carey said he had never heard of the story but later said his manager, presumably Ricky Nixon, had told him something about a report that ‘I was rocking a van’. And he says he’ll be consulting his lawyers about it.

I stand by that story. And will await the lawyers’ epistle with interest. It will be fascinating to hear Carey claiming my report helped to destroy his reputation when he has no reputation left to destroy.

After the Enough Rope interview went to air threatening legal action against me one of my Bendigo informants e-mailed me to say: ‘Let him go for it mate - he already conveniently can't remember what happened when he was pissed. He is a lying good for nothing lowlife and if anyone watching didn't see the insincerity then they are fools.’

And while we’re on Bendigo, Wayne. Maybe get your lawyers to check out another bruising incident you were involved in there concerning a coach at the Inglewood Football Club.

Tuesday, April 1 , 2008

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2008