Derryn Hinch dies aged 82
Updated ,first published
Veteran broadcaster, bon vivant and sometime senator Derryn Hinch has died aged 82 after a long battle with a series of infections stemming from a bad fall last year.
Melbourne radio station 3AW confirmed the news on Friday afternoon, saying on air that Hinch “died as he wished, at home, in his own bed.”
In an interview with A Current Event In November, Hinch claimed he had fallen 30 times in the previous 12 months; one of which left him lying on the floor of his St Kilda Road flat for 12 hours until help arrived.
He suffered two broken ribs in the incident in September, the effects of which lasted for the rest of his life and sent him back to nearby Alfred Hospital for multiple extended stays.
In frequent posts on Facebook, Hinch updated his friends and followers on his health (in decline) and diet (his tendency to become emotional) while displaying as much optimism as a man who had been treated for cancer, had heart surgery, an infected leg and a liver transplant could muster.
Hinch’s last Facebook post came just hours before his death. It was a photo of his brother, with the caption: “A casual photo of my usually very serious brother Des.”
When news of Hinch’s death broke on Friday afternoon, the post attracted a flood of comments praising him as a “fighter” and “inspirational.”
“That’s life” was his famous catchphrase on television and radio for decades. And to him, death was an inevitable part of that.
“This would be a great place to entertain,” he said of his balcony overlooking the Melbourne Grammar field. “I’m sitting in that chair, looking at the clouds. Good night nurse, goodbye world.”
Although tough on politicians, Hinch considered becoming a senator one of the greatest achievements of his long, storied and often controversial career. And one of his biggest disappointments was not being able to become a senator anymore, after failing to win re-election in the 2016 election after serving a single half-term of three years.
“Getting out the vote was one of the scariest days of my life,” Hinch said. ACALast year it was Martin King.
For a while, Hinch was perhaps better known for his caricature than his actual career, thanks to Steve Vizard’s parody of him. Fast ForwardFrowning, fast-talking, squealing, twitching, Hunch was known to do his best to provoke anger with each monologue.
However, the real man’s career was long and remarkable.
Born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, in 1944, Hinch started journalism in 1944. Taranaki Herald He was only 15 years old in his hometown.
Three years later he moved to Sydney and joined. Sunafternoon tabloid sister Sydney Morning Herald. This was the beginning of a long stint with the Fairfax group, which took him to New York for 11 years, where he served as bureau chief before returning to Sydney to become an editor in 1976. Sun.
But radio was where Hinch found his voice, literally and figuratively; In 1978 he moved to Melbourne to host the morning show on 3XY and rival 3AW the following year.
After working as one of the talk station’s main attractions for eight years, he moved to television in 1987; Here the “mouth from the south”, as it was known to northern audiences (and the “beast from the east” for those in Western Australia), had mixed success. Short-lived panel show Beauty and the Beast humbly followed by said person hinch (first on Seven, later on Ten) and a brief spell as presenter of Nine’s Noon Show.
Hinch never had an opinion and rarely lacked the energy to express it in print, on screen, on air, in whatever format. He has published more than 20 books (most of them were memoirs), was publishing a podcast until 2022, and continued to write occasional articles until late last year.
Although he was often portrayed as a shock jock, Hinch’s views could not easily be described as openly or exclusively right-wing. He supported Indigenous rights despite voting no in the referendum; despite eating meat, he advocated for animal rights; he was a tireless campaigner for tougher prison sentences for pedophiles and men convicted of violent crimes against women; He supported a strict law-and-order approach, but two members of the Justice Party who served in the Victorian Parliament from 2018 to 2022 voted mostly with the Andrews government.
In short, he was a complex, sometimes contradictory, often fractious presence in public discourse, and he will be missed. This is life.
