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Derryn Hinch, the man both lauded and derided in life as The Human Headline, managed in death to shock one last time with an appropriately salacious revelation from friend Tony Tardio.
“Derryn always said, ‘The only thing history owes the dead is the truth’,” said Tardio, Hinch’s partner in his final media venture, a podcast that ran for 79 episodes. “Well, here it goes. Derryn and Bette Midler engaged in a bit of horizontal rhumba after [an] interview, and that is the truth.”
What the viewers watching at home made of it is anyone’s guess, but many among the crowd of 350-odd gathered at the Timber Yards in Port Melbourne tittered at the revelation. So very Derryn, so very typical.
Hinch was celebrated throughout the state funeral service as much for his personal proclivities as for his professional achievements. And in both, he was prodigious. The wine, the women, the work – not necessarily in that order – all got an airing.
Speaking from the outback, where she is currently filming, Jacki Weaver, to whom Hinch was married between 1983 and 1998, devoted most of her time to a tribute written by her son, Dylan, who was 10 when he first met the man who would become a loving stepfather.
He looked, Dylan wrote and Weaver read, “a bit odd … decked out in beige slacks, loafers, silk business shirt unbuttoned almost to the navel, gold chains, and navy blazer with a red rose pinned to the left lapel”. With his big hair, big beard and full chest of hair on full display, Dylan added, Hinch cut quite the figure: “’70s porn star or journalist and broadcaster, you be the judge”.
Weaver added a farewell of her own that brought her, and many of those present, to the brink of tears.
“Goodbye. I love you, Joby,” she said, using a nickname derived from their early days of dating, when she called him Joe to put others off the scent. “I’ve loved you from the very start to the very end. Good night, sweet dreams. Good night, Joby. I love you.”
Though she did not speak at the event, Lynda Stoner, Hinch’s partner from 1979 to ’82, before his marriage to Weaver, and again from 2016 until his death, shared with this masthead her sense of shock at his passing.
“He achieved more in his lifetime than many would achieve in 10 lifetimes,” she said, describing him as “unstoppable” and “monumental”.
“He lived by the adage, ‘never say no’. Most would have been felled by the amount of times he was sacked from various jobs, but he always dusted himself off and got on finding the next one. From all of that to the Senate, perhaps his most treasured role of all.”
Stoner, who is chief executive of Animal Liberation Australia, also said it was a great gift that he and her son, Luke Sumner, (with the late actor Peter Sumner) got on from the get-go. “Derryn thought the world of him and would regularly say Luke was one of the most honourable, compassionate and caring people he had ever met,” she said.
Hinch’s death had left “a giant void inside of me”, Stoner said. “He is gone and all of us somehow have to learn how to believe it and live in a world without him.”
The mourners included a who’s who of Melbourne’s media scene from the 1980s and 1990s: Steve Vizard, who famously parodied the man as Darren Hunch on the comedy sketch show Fast Forward; newsreader Jennifer Keyte; entertainer Rhonda Burchmore, who sang They Can’t Take That Away From Me and recalled first meeting him more than 40 years ago, when she was appearing in a stage show alongside Weaver; broadcaster and singer Denis Walter; TV and radio presenter Greg Evans; journalist Ray Martin.
Martin described a complex man whose compassion for the underdog didn’t quite extend to First Nations people. “He wouldn’t have much cared for the Welcome to Country,” that opened proceedings, Martin – a fierce advocate for Indigenous rights – wryly noted.
The pair had been colleagues, friends and rivals over many decades (Hinch even replaced Martin as host of Nine’s Midday show in 1994), and Martin observed that “he was born with a megaphone for a voice … there was nothing subtle about Hinch or his endless opinions”.
He had an ego, he said, “that could light up a small city, but he was also very likeable, and I liked him a lot”.
Observing that his old mate would have loved the fact he was being seen off with a funeral paid for by the same state that three times sentenced him for failing to abide by the rules designed to ensure a fair trial for even those accused of the most horrendous of crimes (including child sex offences, Hinch’s bete noir), Martin said: “There’s only one other thing he would have demanded today, and that’s a standing ovation.”
Naturally, he got it.
Speaking after the service, Vizard said he first heard Hinch on 3AW because his mother was a big fan of radio. What they said was he was the voice of Melbourne, he recalled.
“He did that thing that even if you vehemently disagreed with him – and I did, that’s what I was satirising – even if only to yell at him on the radio, or to ring back and contest it,” Vizard said.
“Someone said he turned a switch, which made you want to pay attention, and that’s a gift. To be able to turn a spotlight on something is a remarkable gift, not many people can do it. Stuff gets washed out, it bleaches out in all the dross. But he could turn it on and then you could work out what you thought.”
As for how the veteran journo felt about Vizard’s impersonation on Fast Forward, initially, he hated it. “But when the rating figures came in and [he was told] it was helping his ratings, he loved it. When we went in a bit hard, he said he hated it. Another time when we were having a drink, he said he loved it. And eventually he just saw it as part of being in the business. As he said to me once, ‘you know you’ve made it when people are wanting to parody you’.”
Hinch was a campaigner, a carouser, a curmudgeon, and at times a cartoonish figure. He was never not sincere, and as the women in his life would attest, he was always chivalrous (though not always faithful). As his brother Des said, via a tribute read by former producer Craig Willis, he was many things to many people – including a roommate in a shared childhood in New Zealand.
In a messy bedroom shared with Desmond, young Derryn had two prized possessions: a telescope and a crystal radio set. “His happiest time was when atmospheric conditions allowed he could listen totally rapt for what seemed hours to Australian radio stations,” said Des.
He urged everyone to remember his brother through a cherished moment, and suggested, “if we could all gather those memories together, they would fill that bedroom from our youth.
“You could look at them through a kaleidoscope,” he said. “And with each twist of the tube, you, as the observer, would see the colourful, constantly changing, multifaceted mosaic that was his life. Kia ora.”
Read more of our coverage on Derryn Hinch’s death
