The life and times of Bruce Baird
Plus, Josh Frydenberg's book and Anthony Heraghty's text messages.
It is as transformational to have James Chessell on board at Rampart as I always knew it would be. In case you missed it, his first piece last week on the NRL broadcast rights deal and the pricing implications for Kayo and Foxtel subscribers was a ripper. It is abundantly clear Lachlan Murdoch pulled off a superb manoeuvre offloading the structurally challenged and debt-laden asset to Sir Len Blavatnik's global sports streamer DAZN, but the real genius was in convincing Len to take Patrick Delany off News Corp's hands.
In his piece, Chessell briefly touched on Delany's infamous career faux pas. I have a few favourite stories from my dozen years writing Rear Window, but one from the early years I remember most fondly was revealing that Fox Sports had painted over the disabled car space right by the elevator at its Artarmon head office so that Delany – then Fox Sports CEO – could park his Jaguar in the prime spot. That one certainly didn't need over-writing, and still, all these years later, no punchline is required.
James Chessell
It was toasty bordering on stifling in St Andrew's Cathedral, where more than 500 people gathered on Monday last week for the memorial service of former New South Wales minister and federal MP Bruce Baird.
Bruce's eldest child, former NSW premier Mike Baird, joked in his eulogy about the service being moved to St Andrew's from the family's parish church St Matthew's in Manly because "we thought Dad deserved one last upgrade."
"Dad loved an upgrade. When Joe Aston's book, The Chairman's Lounge, came out, Dad called. He said, 'I'm on page one!' He wasn't disappointed, he loved it. No one wants to be in that book, but he did."
At the risk of being macabre, it was also quite fitting – as his daughter Julia observed – that Bruce died in the Qantas lounge in Singapore, which isn't far from heaven to any incurable aerosexual.
