Reporter: Charles Wooley
Producer: Sandra Cleary
If anyone has the inside story on Ray Martin ... it's Ray Martin. And now, after four decades of telling other people's stories, Ray's telling his own.
At the age of 64, Australia's most famous journalist has written an autobiography and there are certainly some extraordinary revelations. Perhaps most surprising of all are Ray's recollections of his childhood.
These were hard years, marked by poverty and the emotional turmoil of living with a drunken, violent father.
But Ray transcended those early difficulties and become a huge star on the television screen and, as Charles Wooley reports, an even bigger star behind the scenes.
Story contacts:
Ray Martin’s book Stories of My Life published by Random House Australia, October 2009, is available from all good book stores.
Full transcript:
STORY -
CHARLES WOOLEY: If it's down to sheer popularity and a mastery of the common touch, Ray Martin wins the title 'Mr Australia' hands down. The man who moves so easily with princes, prime ministers and movie stars, has an extraordinary empathy with ordinary folk, and they with him.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I should say that, even when the camera isn't rolling, you were still engaged with these people.
RAY MARTIN: I mean, I sit on an aeroplane or in a bus, I invariably talk to the person alongside me and I invariably find something interesting. I like it, I guess that's - people ask me, when they come and think about being journalists, 'What do you need to be a journalist?' Well, I guess, you've got to be curious you've got to actually like people.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Charming at first, this impromptu circus would prove a growing frustration as we attempted to tell his story.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Finally, we escaped the madding crowd - but only by dragging Ray away on a long road trip to trace his origins. It would have been a dirt road in those days?
RAY MARTIN: It was dirt and treacherous and windy. Always conscious that, right down there, just down there, was a drop. Say 'goodnight', nurse.
CHARLES WOOLEY: He was a country boy with three sisters. They shared a tough, impoverished childhood. Ray remembers 13 homes in as many years as his father, an ex-serviceman, searched for work. Ray's favourite place - lovely Yarrangobilly, where his dad toiled on the Snowy Mountain Scheme. So, somewhere over here?
RAY MARTIN: Yes, this is the where the policeman's cottage was, and we had a one-bedroom cottage. That was our house.
CHARLES WOOLEY: But there's not much left?
RAY MARTIN: No, this is it, Charles. There you go - the history of my life.
CHARLES WOOLEY: A couple of bricks. Mate, you think they might have put up a plaque or something?
CHARLES WOOLEY: As idyllic as it all looks here, there is an aspect of his childhood Ray has never revealed. His father was a violent drunk, who one night fired a shotgun to intimidate his family.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I think it's inspiring but it's also horrific, your early life, I think.
RAY MARTIN: It's funny and horrific - it's all relative.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Well, a drunken father who brutalises your mother and, in fact, hits you and even threatens the family with a firearm, I mean...
RAY MARTIN: We were terrified that he had threatened my mother, that he'd kill her if she ever sort of left, and I guess there are enough examples of his violence - and it was getting worse - for us to believe him.
CHARLES WOOLEY: It has taken a lifetime for this reporter to reveal the dark detail of his own early story. He has been equally protective of his family - his wife of 40 years, Dianne, and two children, 24-year-old actress Jenna, and 19-year-old Luke, a student, all of whom he has shielded from the media spotlight until now.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Did you really, as he says in the book, kiss him the first date?
DIANNE MARTIN: Look, he insists that I did, but I cannot remember.
JENNA MARTIN: He was that memorable!
RAY MARTIN: That's right! The kiss was THAT memorable!
CHARLES WOOLEY: Look, as a journalist, I know you can bore your family with stories about little things that you've saved or changed during your career. Does Ray do that?
LUKE MARTIN: Charles, you open up, it's not a can of worms, it's just a bucket of whatever you open up.
JENNA MARTIN: You can't say, "I've heard this story, "I've heard this story. "I'm sorry, Dad, I've heard this story," because he enjoys telling it.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Ray's strong bond with his children is in stark contrast to the relationship he had with his own father. In 1955, at the age of 11, Ray and his family finally fled their father's drunken and violent behaviour. And, a further revelation - back then, Ray Martin wasn't Ray Martin. He was born Raymond Grace. That was about to change here, at Sydney's Central Station.
RAY MARTIN: Mum had decided to flee.
CHARLES WOOLEY: You were doing a runner here?
RAY MARTIN: We were doing a runner, we were fleeing.
CHARLES WOOLEY: And you saw the name 'Martin' somewhere?
RAY MARTIN: My mother had to fill a form out to catch the train to Adelaide.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I remember from childhood, you know, the 'Martin's something' was advertised - it was either an insole for your shoe or some kind of pill for incontinence or something.
RAY MARTIN: Could have been either, could have been both, could have been both, but it became permanent. Mum changed it by deed poll a little while afterwards and I can't imagine being anything else but Ray Martin.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Who would have guessed it would become a household name?
CHARLES WOOLEY: For Ray, it all started with the ABC - and quickly. Within four years, he was posted to America and covering all the big stories from Washington to Rhode Island. But it was at Channel Nine that the star was born. For 30 years, centre stage as Mr Australia. From '60 Minutes' reporter to the showman at 'Midday'. Throw in some serious debates and 'Carols by Candlelight' and, along the way... ..gather five Gold Logies.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Watching it all happen and providing much of the musical accompaniment is his old mate, the bandmaster Geoff Harvey.
CHARLES WOOLEY: I hear the music, it's over here, and it's your song!
RAY MARTIN: That goes on!
GEOFF HARVEY: Hello, Charles! Hello, Ray!
RAY MARTIN: Were you playing that for Charles, were you?
GEOFF HARVEY: No, no, no, for you.
CHARLES WOOLEY: It's like that, isn't it? To be out with Ray, it's like that.
GEOFF HARVEY: We left the airport one day, and between the airport in Sydney and Channel Nine studios, two blind men were cured and one person called Lazarus or something like that, who was dead, was walking.
CHARLES WOOLEY: What's his great strength, other than listening?
GEOFF HARVEY: I think he does his homework. If we're being serious, he really does his homework. He is just a very good interviewer, a very terrible singer, and not a very good conductor of orchestras but, somehow, great charm gets him through.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Over 45 years, Ray Martin has taken us inside the lives of more celebrities than we can count. But there were also those who weren't so happy in the spotlight. The Paxtons, a family who infamously preferred the dole to work, were outed by 'A Current Affair' when Ray was the host. Today, it's a kind of journalism that makes Ray Martin uneasy.
RAY MARTIN: I think we could have done it better. I think 'A Current Affair', as a program, and I, the host, we could have done it better. The impression was left that we had exploited. It was like a public stoning of this family, and I think that's probably what it was. When I wrote the book, that was one of the revelations for me. When you add it all up, we were rating so highly in commercial television, and such things feed more ratings.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Then came the Paxtons' revenge. With a member of the contentious family in tow, a youthful satirist named John Safran turned up at Ray's home, back in 1998. It's not often that the all-round decent bloke Ray Martin loses his cool, but when he did, it made headlines.
CHARLES WOOLEY: That gave your critics a chance to say, "Ray can dish it out but he can't take it."
RAY MARTIN: Yeah, he's a serial pest, a serial pest.
CHARLES WOOLEY: And do you wish you hadn't lost your cool with him?
RAY MARTIN: No, not really. I'm just glad that he wasn't hurt, because I grabbed him by the throat.
CHARLES WOOLEY: There was a tribal warrior coming out?
RAY MARTIN: And I said, 'What are you talking about?' And that voice, that high-pitched voice, went and said he was just doing a comedy thing, just a comedy thing. And so I said, 'Alright.' So I felt guilty then, and I stopped and talked and the comedy was asinine, the comedy was ridiculous, and so I moved on - but I've lived with it for another 10 years after that.
CHARLES WOOLEY: It still comes up?
RAY MARTIN: People who ask questions!
CHARLES WOOLEY: 'The Ray Martin Story' tells us that, no matter what cards we are dealt in life, we strive to play them to the best advantage and hope for a little luck. Despite adversity, Ray was never one to become a victim of his past, though he never forgave his father for those violent beginnings.
CHARLES WOOLEY: He did try to contact you later in life, didn't he?
RAY MARTIN: He did, when I first joined '60 Minutes' and suddenly I got a message from the gatehouse at Channel Nine that there was a bloke who was half-drunk there who said he was my father and he'd left a number for me. And my mother was still alive and I thought it would be an insult to her that if I suddenly resumed a relationship that he'd ended 20 years ago...
CHARLES WOOLEY: You never regretted that you didn't try to make contact again?
RAY MARTIN: No, I honestly haven't. It's...as far as I'm concerned, he died when I was 11. But I must say that it makes me cuddle my son and my daughter much more than perhaps I would have.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Can I finish this with a schlocky little Ray Martin question? You love him, don't you? How much do you love him?
JENNA MARTIN: God! I mean - I can't talk about it. You know, it's just... There - I wouldn't have - I can't!
LUKE MARTIN: We can't.
JENNA MARTIN: He's a nerd and he's wonderful and I couldn't have anybody else or want anybody else, ever.
LUKE MARTIN: He's not Ray Martin at home, he's Dad.
CHARLES WOOLEY: Di, what better endorsement can a man have than that, from his children?
DIANNE MARTIN: None, I don't think.
CHARLES WOOLEY: The wife's tale must be different though?
DIANNE MARTIN: No, it actually isn't very different. But, again, I knew him and met him and loved him long before he was ever anybody or anything. He's wonderful and - and I love him. I always have.
CHARLES WOOLEY: And, it seems, he is loved, not just at home, but wherever he goes. Whatever his station in life, from Tumut to Sydney Central, everyone wants to get aboard the 'Ray Martin Express'.
CHARLES WOOLEY: He's an extremely important man and his time is really valuable.
TRISH, RAILWAY WORKER: Oh, yeah, please! Sorry!
RAY MARTIN: Not at all, Trish, don't listen to him, I can stay all day and talk!
CHARLES WOOLEY: He can, that's the problem!
CHARLES WOOLEY: I would quarry in vain, wouldn't I, to find the dark side of Ray Martin? I suspect there isn't one there.
RAY MARTIN: Not that I know of. I'm, you know - my psychiatrist might tell you differently - I don't have a psychiatrist! I love - I've been a journalist for 45 years. I can't imagine doing anything else. I can't imagine anything else being better than this, and that's the luck of the game.
