Читать книгу Tugga's Mob - Stephen Johnson - Страница 8

Four kilometres east of the excited newsroom an iPhone7 vibrated on a Tuscany-inspired desk. It was the South Yarra home office for Andrew Hackett, aka The Hatchet. Italian design features filled the villa that could have naturally blended into a hillside near Florence. Hackett loved to brag to visitors that it cost $4.3 million to build and furnish. Money was always in Hackett’s thoughts and he had assigned an hour of his Saturday afternoon to work on station spreadsheets. After-hours work was necessary in his high-powered job, but also pleasurable. Hackett was a numbers man at heart and loved the symmetry when everything tallied, as it should.

Hackett saw it was work that wanted his attention and chose to ignore it. He assumed it was the news chief of staff wanting approval to hire more crews for a breaking story. He glanced over 10 seconds later and smiled when his assumption was confirmed. Panic merchant!

Hackett was mildly curious about what the latest request might involve: a plane, an extra camera? Did they want to pay for sensational footage, which the seller would pass on to the opposition for half the price? The smile broadened as he imagined O’Malley cursing him aloud while he waited for the call to be answered.

Should he pick it up for a change and catch the neurotic COS mid-tirade? That would be a laugh. Hackett was aware of the newsroom’s nickname for him and it made him proud. I’ve chopped a few of those news wastrels.

Hackett had been employed three years earlier to turn around the financial state of the company. He had no experience in television production, but he was renowned in the business world for rescuing companies in dire financial straits. Hackett believed a television station shouldn’t be different from other businesses he had saved. Squeeze the outgoings and income rises. His battle plan was consistent: slash staff numbers and operating costs. The strategy always worked and it had made the 55-year-old extremely wealthy.

The phone stopped ringing so O’Malley was left to beg on voice mail. Hackett would do the right thing and at least listen to it before departing with Marianne, his wife, for drinks with Ferdy Ackermann, his best friend. Hackett wasn’t in the business of spending money unnecessarily. If he saved cash for the company it made more money for himself, thanks to a carefully crafted bonus scheme. Ironically, the company had improved from the dire predicament that had initiated his employment. Ratings and advertising rates were steady at his Melbourne operation, with an occasional boost when a reality show sparked online media outrage.

Significantly, Hackett’s scorched earth policy was working. Staff had been culled and those who remained were too terrified to complain, even when the toilet paper ran out. They still use their hands to wipe their arses in those oil-rich countries, don’t they?

The coffers were slowly filling again thanks to a raft of cheap reality TV shows, not that surviving staff would ever know that. International reality shows could be picked up for next to nothing, and back-to-back crime series kept viewers glued to their sets for hours on weeknights. Then there were the money machines; the programs that guaranteed audiences and advertising revenue.

Hackett knew the must-have programs in Victoria involved Aussie Rules football. Therefore, Hackett’s savings were being squirrelled away in a private war chest to make a bid for the golden goose – rights to televise some of the AFL matches. The station had never been in the game for a slice of the live footy action before and Hackett knew he could never match the prices paid by big networks.

Under his guidance, the station was close to becoming a player. He wasn’t after the whole goose, just a few golden eggs that would ensure the station’s future and a significant boost to his own prestige and bank balance. Hackett also secretly fancied a seat in the AFL Chairman’s hospitality box on Grand Final day.

That would be appropriate for my efforts!

Against that master plan, ad hoc payments for flights, reporters, cameras, news pictures and other petty requests didn’t rate with Hackett. He decided to ignore the message and left the office.

I’ll check it later, after drinks with Ferdy.

June 10, 1986

What a blur the last few days have been. It’s Tuesday, I think, and the bus is on a four-lane motorway south of Paris with all the other traffic going about 150kms an hour. They’re crazy drivers but they seem to know what they’re doing as we haven’t seen any accidents.

It was a fabulous and frantic three nights in the City of Lights, capped off by the Folies Bergere. They were cheap tickets – standing room at the back – but at least it gave us a taste of a real Parisian cabaret which I’ve always wanted to see since I first started dance classes. The dancers were stunning. They were tall, elegant and moved so gracefully. For most of the evening they were clad in feather boas, skimpy costumes, sequins and extravagant headdresses. The finale had the guys on our tour spellbound as there was a lot more flesh on show. We never saw anything as revealing in amateur cabaret productions back in Waikato! I think my lovely old dance teacher, Mrs Somerville, would have blushed at the risqué nature of the show. I can remember she almost had a heart attack when I organised an ‘impromptu’ performance of the Can-Can with the girls during an end of year recital. Mum laughed but still grounded me for a week for upsetting the dance teacher. Such are the ways of life in Waikato! Ha ha.

I’m still pinching myself to make sure this is all real. Saturday morning at 5am I was getting on a bus in London, that night the bus had taken us across the English Channel, driven down the Champs Elysees, around the Arc de Triomphe eight times – what a madhouse – and stopped under the Eiffel Tower. And now we’re heading for the Riviera and Monte Carlo. Amazing!

The Parisians weren’t as rude or haughty as the English said they would be. A bonjour went a long way towards getting some courtesy in return, just like back home. We’ve tried much of the local foods, even escargot – snails! but they’re too slimy and garlicky for my taste. I’m loving the baguettes, paté and cheeses though. Such variety and they’re all scrumptious. Dad would be hard pressed to find a steak-and-three-veggies dinner anywhere in Paris. If he did, it would taste better than anything to come out of Gran’s old cooking range at home. Apologies to Mum, it’s just that the French know how to make the simplest food taste divine.

The weather has been pleasant for early summer and the city has been busy. There are dozens of coaches forever dumping or picking up us tourists — and all amidst such a babble of languages. It was crowded at the Louvre, Versailles and every other tourist site, but I still got close to the Mona Lisa (had to hip-and-shoulder a few Japanese gents out of the way) and I even touched a Rembrandt painting. Naughty me!

There are 35 of us on the tour: 16 Aussies, 15 Kiwis, three South Africans and one American. Most of them seem okay, but we’re so rushed it’s hard to get around everyone and say hello and have a natter about where they come from and what they do back home. That’s one of the reasons I left Te Awamutu – I want to learn more about people and this big wide world.

At home, there were always plenty of customers in the pharmacy where I worked. I loved chatting to them although the conversations were starting to be too much the same: the family, farm life and rugby. Even in summer when there’s no rugby they still like to look ahead to the next season.

I love Waikato, and rugby, but I know there is much more to discover out here. Speaking of discoveries, there are more boys than girls on the tour. Great, a couple of them are cute. One guy was quite attentive to me yesterday.

Dear Diary… should I share what happened after drinks at the camping ground bar? Perhaps another time!

The tour company seems amateurish. It was chaotic at the camp site getting meals ready and arranging tents.

Our driver and guide, Eddie Malone, is on his first trip by himself and is struggling to cope with all his duties. I think he’s getting around by following the other tour buses everywhere. A wally on a Contiki bus called us the Budget Bludgers after Eddie stuck to their rear bumper for the return trip from Versailles. We don’t care as we’re having fun. NB: fill in the blank dates while on the road!

These early entries always brought a smile to the holder of the diary. The excitement and enthusiasm for the long-awaited adventure was infectious. The Judy Williams that Te Awamutu knew was always a glass-half-full person. She was blue-eyed, attractive and her engaging personality created many friendships across the community.

Her athletic physique was toned by summer tennis and winter netball. Dreams of a career with the Silver Ferns briefly flourished when Judy was selected for a Waikato junior squad as a Wing Attack. However, she stopped growing at 1.55 metres and the height and pace of the modern game left her behind. Judy’s blonde ponytail would be seen bobbing up and down the court, leaping frantically for intercepts that her taller opponents picked off with ease. She never lost her passion for netball and usually played at least twice a week; occasionally in back-to-back matches if a team was missing a player.

Judy was never short of friends at school, or dates for the district’s social events. She was briefly tempted by a Bachelor of Arts course at Auckland University, which could lead to a teaching qualification. A job at a primary school had some appeal. However, images of London and Europe had fuelled Judy’s dreams from her mid teens. The only way to make them real was to save money, and to do that she had to work hard. And that she did, milking the dairy herd with her father in the mornings before a full shift on the counter at the pharmacy in Te Awamutu. All the customers, friends and family knew about Judy’s dream trip – and that she earned it.