04 | The Hungry Truth with Adrian Russell Wills

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ABC: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners are advised that the following episode contains the name of an Indigenous person who has died. 

Evelyn:  Darling, listen, I want to warn you – there are curse words ahead. Also if you haven’t watched the episode, what are you doing!? Go now and watch it! We wouldn't want things to get spoiled now, would we? 

Helen: Good evening. I'm Helen Norville.  

Dale: And I'm Dale Jennings. You are watching News at Six.  

Leigh: I am flag waving kangaroo, Leigh Sales.  

Lisa: And I'm Lisa Millar, and I am not singing for the network promo.  

Leigh: Welcome to episode four of the Newsreader podcast, The Hungry Truth.  

Lisa: This episode was so powerful. It was written by Wonnarua man, Adrian Russell Wills, who we're going to meet a little bit later in this episode. 

Leigh: And I'm also super excited because we're chatting to John Logue, who's the creative mind behind those amazing 80s hairdos and the makeup of the newsreader. I hope he brings his curlers and green eye shadow to test out on you. 

Lisa: Green suits you, Salesy, with your red hair. Before we get too carried away, can we just do a super quick check back of this episode? 

Leigh: Yes, okay. So it opens with The News at Six team filming the Bicentennial Network promo, swaying and singing arm in arm.  

Group singing: It’s 88….Here we go, take it out! Yes! Oh, celebrate!  

Lisa: We discover that Kay has gone into rehab.  

Leigh: Geoff is having to deal very unhappily with some protesters on live TV.  

Lisa: And that awkward situation where Noelene clocks that her boyfriend is a bit of a casual racist. Is she going to let it slide?  

Leigh: Hot Tim is back! Um, Helen's not happy about it, asks Dale if he knew. 

Lisa: Noelene decides to do that deep dive on whether Charles and Di have separated, and Dale then uses the Royals as a bargaining tool to get Helen's Lynus interview up.  

Leigh: And surprise, surprise, Lindsay is unhappy about a development in the evening's news.  

Lindsay: I gotta tell you, if Charles and Diana are doling out Australian television interviews and we're blacklisted, we are royally fucked.  

Leigh: So, can we start with Dale proposing for the second time after his botched effort last time around to throw the gossip columnist off the scent? Now he's busted out the fairy lights.  

Why does she say no? Because she was saying in episode one, Hey, you could have Gerry on the side. We could have an arrangement like their marriage, but now she's saying, no, this won't work. What is going on with her? 

Lisa: I don't know is the short answer, but I kind of feel like we are learning something new about her all the time. She is complicated. 

Leigh: Now, as you know I love Geoff and Evelyn. I find them fascinating characters. And so, I think this subplot is amazingly done, where they're trying to come to terms with what happens with Kay.  

Geoff: It’s a disease of the modern world. Casting themselves as victims. Fact is we gave you the childhood most people could never dream of. And for you to sit here and attempt to blame your mother and I for your own drug addiction.. 

Leigh: Between that and Geoff's reaction to the way his live cross is interrupted by the protest, it's a really great examination of how Geoff is a man of his times and how those times are changing and he is not dealing with that.  

Geoff: A small group of protesters disrupted live broadcast. It wasn't a disruption, it was a bloody assault.  

Evelyn: Darling, I'm worried that Kay's starting to think that I'm keeping you from her.  

Geoff: I've visited her several times.  

Evelyn: I know, but now they want to conduct these counselling sessions. They're of the belief that the family should play a role in someone's recovery. 

Lisa: Here's a question for you, Leigh. We've got the counselling session, Kay and Evelyn are both there. Geoff has been the softy of a parent. He was the one who was giving cash to Kay, right? So why isn't he turning up at these sessions?  

Leigh: That's a very good question. I guess because, well, a few thoughts. Maybe he just finds it too heartbreaking to look square in the face that his daughter is a heroin addict because, as you say, he is the sort of softy and she's clearly the apple of his eye. So maybe it's just all a bit hard.  

And then, as we know, the Walters family are all about appearances, so it would also be just shameful to him that his daughter's in an institution. He's probably fearful about being seen there because he's Geoff Walters.  

Lisa: And there was that line about, oh, could we do it later? And Kay said she doesn't want to be seen in the light. She wants it to be dark.  

Leigh: Yeah. And so I would guess there's a bit of a fear for him about, um, you know, being being seen, so all of the above. But also I suspect he probably just does not know how to deal with such a complicated thing. And because he's a man of his times, you know, when Kay explains what her childhood was like to them, he gives that big lecture, basically the theme of which is you're an ungrateful little brat and how, how dare you speak about the, the perfect upbringing you had in this kind of a manner. 

Um, and so maybe also, the fact that he's kind of coddled her a bit and handed her money and looked after her, that he feels affronted now that she's throwing that back in his face when he feels like he's done and given her everything. So I think that there's just a lot going on with him. I mean, I'm guessing that Geoff is going to have to have some kind of reckoning where he either changes his style of parenting as this unchallenged authority figure, or he's going to have to accept that he is permanently losing his daughter because she at this point seems to be in survival mode. And survival mode, as she indicates by when she gets up and walks out from the counselling session, it's not going to include being around parents who treat her like that anymore.  

Lisa: Yeah, that's still gonna, that's still got a lot to play out clearly.

Lynus: You cannot scribe your lies into truth. Australia is not a nation it’s a crime scene. 

Lisa: The big storyline of this episode and why we're going to be talking to Adrian very shortly is because how 1988 was treated by most newsrooms with barely a nod to the original inhabitants of Australia. We've got Helen. fighting to have the First Nations story told, what do you make of how she's trying to do that?  

Leigh: Well, firstly, I just wanted to say what uncomfortable viewing it is in a modern context to note the celebratory tone of it with, with, you know, barely a hint of even acknowledgement about Indigenous Australians. So, I mean, Helen, I like to think that Helen is well intentioned by, you know, talking about trying to cover that aspect of the story, so, you know, I would give her that. But when you're watching her interaction with Linus, when she actually gets in there and they do the interview, one of the things that really struck me watching it was despite her championing, we need to cover this issue, was her inherent racism and paternalism that she displayed towards him. Like, he is saying in the interview what he wants to say, and she cuts him off and basically lectures him.  

Helen: You're just delivering a diatribe. People are just gonna switch off.  

Lynus: What, you rather I put on a little show? 

Helen: I've watched you, Lynus, and you do know how to connect to people. So maybe just try... putting a little bit more of yourself into it.  

Lisa: And it's interesting because I was thinking about Helen that we don't see her stepping away from the desk too often but it's happens when she thinks she's trying to fix something. So she goes out of the office for Hoddle Street she goes out of the office for Lynus. And so I was thinking, oh, this is her thinking she can fix the unjust coverage, but she does it in such a clunky way with her inbuilt biases showing through. 

Leigh: Literally as soon as she arrived to try to talk Lynus into coming on the show. I just knew that he was going to get screwed over.  

Lisa: Oh, I felt ill. I felt ill because I thought he's going to trust Helen in the end, and he's going to be let down. Why do you think we both saw that coming?  

Leigh: Because I think we've been around it. And because I just knew that he'd either be taken out of context, or the story would be dropped. Because I just know from that era that the, and, and, you know, it, and it went on quite a long way after this era too, that those issues, Indigenous rights, were really marginalised during that time period. 

And news directors like Lindsay really didn't want to give a voice to Indigenous Australians at that time. They thought that it detracted from the good news story of the Bicentennial. So they did, they weren't interested in that as an issue generally.  

Lisa: Yeah, but then can I throw that scene then with Dennis into the conversation here because you would think that Dennis as a person of colour would then be trying to argue for the Lynus interview to run.  

Leigh: But he's the person in the meeting who's arguing strongest against Helen. Yeah, I noted that too. I thought that was really interesting. Look, my guess is that like women of that era, if you were not a white man, you basically had to fit in if you wanted to get ahead. 

So my guess is that Dennis is attempting to deliver what he thinks Lindsay wants. He, in that meeting, is basically being the voice of Lindsay. He's just channelling Lindsay because you don't want to draw attention to yourself. You want to fit in with what the culture of the place is and the culture of that place is set by Lindsay, who's a racist. 

Lisa: I found the episode so powerful, so provoking and authentic, and it is terrific that we're able to speak to the writer of the episode, Adrian Russell Wills.  

Lynus: You know, when people were talking about the life expectancy of our mob, my eldest brother would say, these white fellas, they think we die because of disease and chronic illness, alcoholism, drugs, violence, suicide, you name it, but none of that, none of that matters. It's all bullshit. Because our mob dies from a broken heart. 

Lisa: Adrian I had goosebumps through that. Were their challenges or sensitivities to your own people that were on your mind when you were thinking about how you were going to portray that moment in history?  

Adrian: Um, look, my brother was what I would call a grassroots activist and that black fella that was sort of on the, you know, the front of the, of the march and protesting. 

So he and I used to have a lot of conversations around all of these issues that you see in the, in the show and the episode. And I think Lynus is in a big part based on my brother, Albert. And I think for myself, while he's at the front of the protest, marching and calling and yelling for with passion and anger and fervor, I've always, and he's always respected as well, the way that I do my marching is through writing and to be able to put it into an episode like this on a show that has such a fantastic following. It's um, what I like to call and do a lot in my work is the Trojan Horse.  

Leigh: Yeah, it's, it's fascinating the point you make about writing being its own powerful weapon because I think a lot of people would watch this episode and walk away and feel very thoughtful about what they just saw because as this episode conveys so well, it's kind of mind boggling when you look back at 1988 now and you see that uber celebratory tone. 

Adrian: Absolutely. I mean, I hope what's also strong, and I think, you know, Linus sort of embodies it, is a passion and hope and optimism and possibility, I think, through his character. And Helen, of course, is one of those characters and voices that in terms of Aboriginal protest or Aboriginal forward movement in terms of the movement, characters like Helen are really important and were really important to any advancement that Aboriginal people have had in this country politically. 

Lisa: Adrian, what are your memories of the Bicentennial year? What were your experiences?  

Adrian: Well, it's quite a long story, and this is one of the things that Michael really loved about this episode and working with me on this story, because my personal experience of 88 and the Bicentenary was I was adopted into a white family, and my parents were very well off and very Um, successful people, my father, particularly in business. 

And so we were on this yacht with this organisation called young president's organisation, which included people like Nick Greiner, Nick Whitlam, you know, those sorts of people. So I'm on this boat, um, with all these sorts of people and the echelons of Sydney, uh, in white, dressed all, well, I think we were all dressed in white at the time. 

And I'm looking over at the harbour and the foreshore and with all the protest. And I just felt like I wanted to be there. And I felt like this really in strong need, knowing that I should be on the foreshore, not where I was.  

Lisa: What an internal conflict for you that must've been.  

Adrian: It was like, I must've been like 12 or something. And it was just, it was this feeling that I'd never felt before, but I had, cause I hadn't been around Aboriginal people before, cause I grew up in Mosman on the North shore. So to see that sort of. Passion and that sort of, just that knowing the sense of like, I actually should be there, not here.  

Leigh: Did you think your parents had any understanding of that? 

Adrian: I don't think so. We're going back into like, you know, when I was born in 75, growing up in the eighties, when people were adopting kids from different backgrounds, my sister was adopted from South America. I don't think they realised the cultural specificity that comes with adopting children of other cultures.  

I think we know differently now today. But I didn't think they understood or had the skills to know what to do with kids of other cultures in terms of nurturing a culture that they don't have access to. 

Leigh: Adrian, can we come back to this episode of the Newsreader, The Hungry Truth? One of the things... That did strike me watching it is that scene in which Linus finally goes to the studio and then Helen cuts him off and instructs him on what she thinks he should say.  

Adrian: Yeah, I think, look, part of the, and this is again, the dichotomy of my brother that I tried to bring through Lynus is that, you know, the, the anger and the passion can often turn people off or make people switch off. Um, and what Helen does, I think, or hopes that she does, is appeal to him to engage the audience on a different level, um, through relatability, um, and finding a way of telling us, and I think this is unique as well, and is often not allowed in the media, um, tell us how it feels.  

I worked on a show called Redfern Now many years ago, and one of the things that I always remember from comments back from audiences was, particularly white audiences, was they didn't expect to tune into that show and see their own family. And I think that's something that I hope with this episode with Newsreader, such a prolific sort of show that audiences will tune in and be able to relate to Lynus as if he was a member of their own family. 

Lisa: Leigh and I were also wondering, Adrian, about Dennis's role with it all, because we were curious about the fact that even though he's a diverse member of the team there, that he's arguing against giving Lynus airtime. So. What was going on with the decision making with that scripting?  

Adrian: I think Michael and I really enjoyed, um, working in that moment and sort of, I think Michael's drawn that character so beautifully from the beginning, from the inception of the show and in terms of the casting, Dennis gives us a constant insight into what it takes to be a leader of a newsroom like that and the decisions you have to make. 

Uh, constantly in service of the audience and the ratings and the business of the show. It doesn't matter about colour or creed. Dennis is a character that's there to service the audience. the statistics to service his job. It's not about making it personal. In fact, he keeps his personal life very separate. 

Leigh: Yeah. Lisa and I, as people who were in newsrooms, you know, around this era, we were saying as well that if you weren't, if you were a woman or you were a person of colour, of whom there were very few in newsrooms of this era, you were trying to not. Make a target of yourself or draw attention to yourself in any way. 

And so both of us, when we watched that felt like, well, that's Dennis trying to just deliver what Lindsay wants. You, you all the time, second guessing what does the news or news director want and trying to deliver it, particularly when you're the person in Dennis's position.  

Adrian: Yeah. He has a clear goal. And I think what I love about what you're saying, Leigh is, and I completely can relate to that, is that. In some ways and in some part, you do hope that the passion and what you're trying to get across to your audience comes through your work instinctively and is imbued in the work, but you still have a job to do and a service to provide.  

Lisa: Can I just say, I don't want to speak for Leigh here, but I don't have much rhythm, right? So that scene in the community, radio station Adrian,  

Leigh: I've got the moves though Adrian, don't you worry.   

Lisa: Adrian that's debatable.  

That scene in the community radio station, when Helen goes to track down Linus and he's playing Marcia Hines, your love still brings me to my knees. He is dancing, right? And she is moving like us. When you were writing it, did you end up having a bit of fun with that as well? 

Adrian: Oh, look, I'm going to give full credit to the, to the cast and the director here. Um, what was on the page, uh, well, took. took them to that moment, but that was definitely something that came up on the day. And I think also Hunter Page, who I've known since he was like five years old. Hunter obviously comes from an incredible lineage of, of dancers who are, you know, not from this planet or this world. 

In terms of Bangarra and Stephen Page being his father and David Page, who I was very close to being his uncle and Russell Page. I mean, those, they were born moving. Um, And Anna as well had worked with Hunter in a show called Fires. So they had worked together, they have great rapport together. And I just think when you are, again, at that world class level of craft, in a scene like that, that was all improvised. The dancing and the moving and offering, we call it, from Hunter to Anna. Just the safety and trust that they have of each other as, as actors, I think allowed for a moment of brevity, which is really, you can't write that stuff. You can't write those moments. That's the truth.  

Leigh: Adrian, it's been so fun talking to you and you've been so humble, but we're going to let lavish praise on you and say you just have done the most fantastic job, um, with what you've done with that episode. So thank you very much for coming in and helping explain and unpack it all for us.  

Adrian: Well, thank you for having me, and it's been an absolute gift, this show, and I'm really excited for audiences to see it. It's an honour to my brother, who has passed, and it's my way of following his legacy through, so... It was a real honour and gift to be asked to be a part of it. 

Leigh: It was a beautiful tribute to you, brother. Thank you. 

We've talked a lot in every single episode of our Newsreader podcast about the look of this series and recapturing the 1980s, and one of the people most responsible for that is hair and makeup artist John Logue, and he's with us. John, thank you for coming in.  

John: Thank you for having me.  

Leigh: Of course, to a viewer, it looks like it must have been the greatest fun in the world to replicate those 80s looks, but I presume it's actually a lot of hard work. 

John: Uh, yeah, I guess there's a lot of structure behind it and ideas, um, and also, you know, a lot of people will sort of have a bit of input in regards to the looks and all of that sort of thing.  

Lisa: John, can I just butt in right now because Leigh has just skipped past something really truly Fabulous. Which is your own hair. For people listening to this podcast, John has the most extraordinarily well groomed, long, curly mane. How long have you had hair like that?  

John: Oh, probably the last 10 years, I'd say. You know, I'm in my mid fifties now and I thought that I was going to start losing it and I thought, I'm just going to let it grow out. I'm just going to rock it and see what happens. Well. It's still with me, so. 

Leigh: I would kill to have that much thick hair, John. 

Lisa: And don't worry, everyone. We are going to post some photos so you can see his beautiful mane. So sorry, Leigh, back to the interview.  

Leigh: Okay, yeah, thanks. Back to our regular programming. How did you learn how to do 80s hair and makeup? 

John: Well, I did my apprenticeship through the eighties, so I started in the mid eighties and finished in 1989. I was part of a makeup department and you would get rostered onto different things, and one of them was the news, so you would quite often do. You know, you guys would be aware you do updates and all that sort of stuff, so you would have somebody come in in the afternoon, you make them up, you do the updates. So I got to do that, sort of, then.  

Lisa: So what are you doing with the hair back then? And for the newsreader, what is different about what someone would do to Leigh or I now?  

John: I mean, it was sort of a transitioning and sort of in 1989, you know, from the bigger hairstyles to, you know, sort of flatter and all of that sort of thing. 

I mean, one of the newsreaders at the time was Jo Pearson. And we you know, we sort of went through that stage where she went home one night and dyed her hair orange and snuck into the makeup room, went through hair and makeup, went on air. So that was a big, big thing at the time. 

Leigh: Ooh that was the era I assume where that would have been just, you would have heard the screaming ten blocks away from the news director. 

Lisa: Like Lindsay would have been on the phone going, what the hell?  

John: A hundred percent. A hundred percent, yes.  

Leigh: And did you get in trouble for that?  

John: I didn't get in trouble for it because I didn't do it, but, um, her nanny at the time was a hairdresser. So they just did it. 

Lisa: Yeah, that's going to roll with Lindsay.  

John: That’s gonna roll with Lindsay, that red face is beaming. 

Leigh: And also red hair was not really, I say this as a freckly faced redhead, it was not really a sought after hair color on the world of commercial television in the 1980s.  

John: Absolutely not. Cause it was all about pretty much, it was mostly blondes.  

Leigh: It was.  

Lisa: So, with Helen, when she's Helen the newsreader, are you doing a lot of teasing there? Are you, like, what's going on with that hairstyle?  

John: yeah. So, there's quite a sort of build that goes underneath that. Um, it's all her hair, lots of teasing, and depending on what we're filming and, and um, how the days are running and stuff like that. You know, like sometimes we'll finish the day, she'll come in, she'll brush her hair out and stuff. And she'll go, should I wash it? Should I leave it? And I go, nah, leave it because it just gets better and better. 

Lisa: So I walk in every morning, I walk in to see the makeup artist here. For news breakfast at about quarter to four. And they look at me with expected eyes and I say three day hair and we don't care.  

John: Yes, absolutely.  

Lisa: So each day that goes by, it gets better for them. 

Leigh: Except I reckon you hit a peak where then it's, it, it hits. It's really problematic. Because you can't do a thing with it after a while when it's really filthy and laden down with product.  

John: I think the best we ever did was five days with, with Anna and um, and she was pretty happy about that. 

Leigh: Now tell us about Noelene's hair because it's a very different hairstyle to Helen's but it's still very identifiably 1980s.  

John: With, um, Michelle, when she first came in, she just had very long, straight hair, like she didn't have any fringe, nothing or anything like that. So I just, I sort of said to her, how do you feel about if we do like, now we call it curtains. But it's a flick in the eighties. So I just asked her if, if she would go there with that. And I showed a few images and what have you. So, and she was brave enough to do it. And of course now, you know, I think she still runs with it in her real life. Because everybody just loved it.  

Lisa: John, can I ask you about the character of Cheryl? For people who don't know TV Land, is Cheryl the kind of person you would have found in a newsroom back then?  

John: Absolutely. I worked with a make up artist back then and I know she works here at the ABC. Her name is Sue Hollins. 

Leigh: Oh, I love Sue Hollins. 

Lisa: Don't tell me Sue is Cheryl? Sue is Cheryl. 

Lisa: There you have it, folks.  

Leigh: We know who Cheryl is. There you go.  

John: We do, yes.  

Leigh: I loved the Cheryl look too, because again, as with Helen and Noelene, who have very different looks, but they still look both so 80s, Cheryl is another, incarnation of the 1980s look, which is the perm and the big fringe. 

John: Yeah. And, and the makeup, you know, she's probably one of the characters that has the most makeup on, you know, with the blue and the pink eyeshadow and all that sort of thing. Um, which once again is Sue Hollins. 

Leigh: Cheryl in the show becomes a source of a lot of trouble because she's passed on some gossip to Evelyn, which causes chaos. How important is it for makeup artists to be discreet. And can you resist gossip when you're often working up close and personal with big stars and you're privy to a lot of information? 

John: Look, you do have to keep a lid on it. There was a scenario in The Makeup Truck one day where we were all waiting to find out who was going to play Gerry. One of the new characters, and one of my team had Marg Downey in the chair, Evelyn, and was doing her hair and makeup, and they were talking about who was going to be cast and all of that sort of stuff. 

Anyway, she blurted out who she thought it was going to be, and then she went, Oh my God. I've just Cheryled. I'm Cheryling. So this within my department has become a thing that we all of a sudden go, I'm just going to Cheryl a little bit.  

Lisa: How much did the others have influence on their look. For example, Marg Downey, she's been around for a long time. She knows what works for her. So what did she have, as far as input?  

John: Marg was very open. She was an open book. And, and, um, with season one, she came in and did some costume fittings and what have you, and was sort of talking to the costume designer at the time and they were talking about that hairstyle and they sort of came in and spoke to me about it and sort of said, what do you think? 

You know, cause I was sort of going in a different direction with that, but then I was sort of  like, yes, that's a great idea. Let's go with that. And I think Marg still is wearing that blonde hair bob, in her life now as well.  

Lisa: We say IRL in real life for various hair or outfits we might wear on air that we go, you know what? That would work IRL.  

John: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely.  

Leigh: Yeah. But you do tend to associate your work newsread-ery kind of clothes with. work. Like this blouse that I'm wearing today, I haven't worn since I quit 7.30 a year ago, because I associated with 7.30 and even putting it on today when I saw it in the mirror, I was like, oh yeah. 

Lisa: Is that why you've been interviewing John with your glasses down on your nose? Treating him like he's the Prime Minister. 

Leigh: Giving him the full Kerry O'Brien. I'm about to start the grilling now, John.  

Lisa: So people watching the Newsreader and they've been listening to us having a chat about it as well. How real to life is it, given that you have been right in the thick of it for your whole career? 

John: Oh yeah, absolutely. You know, as soon as I walked on that set, all of a sudden I'm back at Channel 10, because even the colouring, the tone, everything about it was so real.  

Lisa: How did it make you feel? 

John: I mean, fine. I wish it made me feel young, but it didn't.  

Um, but you know, the full ashtrays and all of that sort of stuff. Like, you know, we used to, back in Channel 10 days, stand outside the door of the makeup room and smoke. The ashtray was in the makeup room, we'd stand outside the door and smoke. Somebody’d come in to get made up, you quickly butt out your cigarette and make them up. It was just revolting.  

Lisa: Wow. John Logue, thanks for ironing out all those questions. You've really blown us away.  

Leigh: My apologies, John. He's done us a good turn by coming in.  

Lisa: It's been a treat, John. Thank you. 

John: Pleasure. 

Lisa: After that conversation with John, I thought I'd go on a little mission to actually find Sue Hollins. And she is in the makeup room at the ABC. So I'm walking through the lobby right now, and I'm gonna spring this on her. Let's see how she takes it, right?  

Hi Sue, I've got a question for you. We've just been chatting to John, the makeup artist, and he says you're the inspiration for Cheryl. 

Sue: John Logue? Seriously?  

Lisa: Did you know that you're the inspiration?  

Sue: Well, I was an 80s hairdresser and the higher the hair, the closer to God, I believe. Ha, so, um, I'm not surprised, ha, ha, ha, but um, yes, well, let me tell you some stories that John could do big hair as well and he hasn't had too much trouble doing it, I don't believe, for the show. 

Lisa: Now. I've got to tell you, Sue, Cheryl is, uh, getting herself into a bit of strife with some gossip in this series. So how close to the bone is that for you?  

Sue: Wow. Ah, you know, makeup is the vault and what happens in here. And you'd have to prise our nails off and rip our hair out to get any information out of us. 

Lisa: Well, I'm going to go and report that back to the crew. I thought I should check in with you. Uh, did you have a perm, by the way? 

Sue: Um, I've got very frizzy, naturally curly hair and I spend my life, um, straightening the living bejesus out of it. So, um, I had that hair naturally and John was very, very jealous of my scrunchies because I could have big water fountains, but he had Bo Derek braids as well at the time. So Johnny, my darling, I could tell some stories about you too, darling.  

Leigh: So that's it for another episode, I have to say next time I'm most interested to see what happens with Geoff and Evelyn and Kay, because that is at a real tipping point. I'm kind of more invested in them at this point, I reckon, than what happens to Helen and Dale.  

Lisa: Oh, really? No, I kind of want to find out what's developing with Dale. Gerry, I think, is going to surprise us.  

Leigh: Well, whether you're a Millar and you want to know what's happening with Gerry and Dale, or whether you're a Sales and you want to know what's happening with Geoff and Evelyn, you can keep following us on the ABC listen app so that you are first in line when the next episode drops.  

Lisa: Join us next week because we get to meet the most senior and the most junior people in the News at Six team, Lindsay and Noelene. William McInnes and Michelle Lim Davidson are stopping by to help us unpack episode 5.  

Leigh: Two of my favourites. Don't forget you can catch up on all the episodes of the Newsreader whenever you damn well please. Thanks to ABC iview. 

Lisa: See you next time. 

Lisa: This podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. Thanks to our producer Michele Weekes and our executive producer Alex Lollback. Sound engineer is Angela Grant and the manager of ABC podcasts is Monique Bowley.  

Dale: I’m Dale Jennings, this has been News at Six, goodnight Australia. 

Floor Manager: And we're out!