ABC Radio breakfast in Brisbane played some of the interview this morning. That was followed a number of text messages that were received all but one of which were extremely negative - some had been received before the excerpt was played requesting it not be broadcast. Things like I work in a busy ICU hospital, the unit is full of these cases, why is her story any different? Is the money she is making for this story helping those families? I doubt it; Please no KAK, what happened to her husband happens to hundreds of families a day … yet we all cope without publicity; … Sounds a lot like attention deprivation syndrome on her part.
Not having seen the interview, I was a little shocked as these were unsolicited and KA is a “Brisbane-girl” (having started on the Channel Niners), but having read the above, I can understand a bit more.
Taking Kerri Anne back to the golf club where the accident happened was to evoke emotions and of course it did that part of the interview we see Kerri Anne at her most emotional.Mike said to her at the golf club today is the longest time you have spent away from John since the accident and of course that caused the tears to flow. At one stage her mascara was running down her face and Mike just kept asking questions and didn’t give her a tissue, she realised and was given a tissue.
With these type of interviews emotions are of course running very high and are taken advantage of to make the interview even more dramatic, as we know this always happens and in this case it was a celebrity in the spotlight.
I don’t believe any of this would of bothered Kerri Anne she knows all too well how the business works and plus her mind is on her husband.
Such a terribly sad situation for Kerri Anne and her husband .
But it’s true of any celebrity story…ordinary people get married, have babies, get cancer, attend functions, whatever… The interest is because it’s a celebrity. I don’t think anyone, including the celebrity, thinks they are any more special or important than anyone else.
Mike said on Sunrise he wasn’t sure if he should stop the interview or not, but he did in the end, and KAK said she didn’t give a toss about her mascara.
NEVER AGAIN
Aching loss. Remarkable survival. Leadership. It’s been 20 years since the grotesque rampage at Port Arthur and Sunday Night has assembled a remarkable group of Australians who were each dramatically confronted and altered by the atrocity and who resolved to ensure it will never happen again. It is the time that John Winston Howard will never forget – the time that, for many, would come to define his years in office. Six weeks after becoming Prime Minister he was at his Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, when he got a phone call – “There’s been a shooting in Tasmania, turn on your TV”. By the end of that bloody Sunday, Martin Bryant had shot and killed 35 men, women and children. Walter Mikac lost his wife and two children. John and Gaye Fidler somehow survived the maelstrom inside the Broad Arrow Café, but they lost a trio of dear friends. Paramedic Peter James had to attend each and every scene of death. Sunday Night’s Melissa Doyle tells the inside story of how a group of everyday Australians and a Prime Minister decided to act and try to make the nation a safer place. From the moment alone in his Kirribilli office to his bold and contentious plan to ban automatic and semi-automatic rifles, Mr Howard gives Melissa Doyle a unique and detailed insight into what it meant to be the Prime Minister during this bloody chapter in Australia’s history.
LAUGHTER AND TEARS
He’s the enduring funnyman who’s become the ultimate MC. Billy Crystal is at home on a comedy club stage, a late-night TV show or holding an audience of billions and a room full of Hollywood A-listers at the Oscars. He’s also a bona-fide film star who will forever be remembered for his part in that scene with Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally. He’s affable, there with a killer line, the consummate showman. But the happy-go-lucky life of Billy Crystal took a massive blow with the death of his best friend and fellow comedian and actor Robin Williams. In a heartfelt interview with Sunday Night’s Rahni Sadler, Billy opens up about the laughter and the tears and how, after his Williams tragic death, he resolved the show must go on. The man who began his career as a stand-up comic has never lost his love of performing live and will bring his latest production to Australia later this year. The baseball tragic may even bring a new curiosity for cricket after a surprise game in the corridors of a New York hotel with our reporter.
ONE SMALL STEP
It fast became a Sunday Night favourite – Denham Hitchcock’s delightful story last year on the junkyard orchestra in Paraguay where kids were making beautiful music with instruments fashioned from rubbish. And among the inspirational images was a fleeting, four-second shot of a two-year-old boy struggling to walk. It was a boy named Toby and he was born with club feet. He wasn’t in the orchestra but his plight struck a chord with Sunday Night viewers. After our story went to air, an Australian mother contacted us. Her son was also born with the same condition and she wanted to help little Toby. And as you’ll see, a single shot in a story can start something special. We go on the hunt to find one little boy in a country of millions. A search led by Sunday Night viewers, determined to make a difference.
This edition of SUNDAY NIGHT hosted by Melissa Doyle airs on Sunday at 8.30pm on Seven.
Less than a day into a two-day voyage an Australian ship suddenly lists and takes on water at an alarming rate. One by one the 10 crew members were forced from their duties, others shaken awake to struggle through gushing saltwater onto the deck and into a flimsy rubber life raft before the MV Blythe Star lifts its bow to the sky and sinks without a trace.
They’re relieved they made it, the worst is surely over and they expect rescuers will fish them out of their predicament within hours. Only nobody knows their ship has gone down, and little do the men of the MV Blythe Star know they’ve only just begun one of the most extraordinary against-the-odds struggles for survival in Australian maritime history.
And yet, like the plight of the crew, very few Australians know about this incredible high seas drama. Until now. In a stunning, sweeping television first, Sunday Night brings this incredible story to life through the gripping recollection of the last man standing, Mick Doleman.
Mick – until recently a senior figure in the Maritime Union of Australia – has been reluctant to recount the detail of his ordeal until now. Even his family has been unaware of the challenges and life-and-death incidents that swamped their days at sea and lost in remote wilderness.
Now, he’s the last survivor and Mick has resolved that he didn’t want to take his account to his grave. In honour of the men lost in this nightmare at sea and in the time since, he wants the nation to know of their bravery, humanity and their inspirational determination to survive and be reunited with family and friends.
Sunday Night’s Rahni Sadler tells the at times tragic but ultimately heroic and stirring story of the MV Blythe Star in The Last Survivor. And in a moving conclusion takes Mick and his family back to the remote and rugged landfall where he decided he and the remaining crew were not going to die.
THE SAVING AUSTRALIA DIET
Australians have eaten themselves into a deadly health crisis. Is it possible to eat our way out of it and save thousands of lives? Across the nation, the killer disease Type 2 diabetes is now claiming a victim every five minutes. Until recently, Type 2 was thought to be irreversible with sufferers consigned to uncertain drug therapy and developing cardio vascular complications that lead to amputated limbs, heat attack, stroke, blindness and even dementia. But there’s growing evidence that sufferers can turn around their Type 2 with a radically different approach to eating. In this special and vitally important Sunday Night experiment, three ordinary Australians set out to defeat this insidious disease with three different dietary regimes. Like so many confronting Type 2, Cass, Tony and Jack had no idea they were sufferers until their diagnosis. Each typifies the Type 2 candidate and so many at-risk Aussies, with their love of junk food, sugar, bread and pasta – and loads of it. The architect of the 5:2 diet Michael Mosley and MKR judge and Paleo devotee Pete Evans lead the effort to save our trio as each is assigned a dramatically new way of eating – calorie crunching, high protein-low carb and a conventional approach applied by many mainstream dieticians. They’re determined to defeat their Type 2 and lead longer and healthier lives, but it’s not going to be easy changing a lifetime of eating habits. Sunday Night’s PJ Madam is your guide as we follow Cass, Tony and Jack over eight weeks to see if they can set an example that will help turn around a national epidemic.
THE LAST WITNESS
Sunday Night’s telling of the remarkable Blythe Star saga stunned and enthralled Australia. It was truly one of the greatest tales of survival in Australian maritime history. But now we can reveal another remarkable chapter and one that could have prevented the loss of life and seen the hapless crew of the doomed ship rescued far sooner. It’s emerged that a young lighthouse keeper spotted the ship just hours before it sank. But Tony Parsey’s report was disregarded by authorities and 10 days after the ship went missing the search was called off and the crew presumed dead. Sunday Night’s Rahni Sadler has this latest remarkable twist in this amazing and epic tale as Tony Parsey tells his story for the very first time.
RHINO WARRIOR
They were once among the most magnificent animals roaming throughout central Africa. Half a century ago they numbered in their thousands but poaching and bloody wars in the Congo have decimated their numbers. Now there are just three Northern White Rhinos left – Najin, Fatu and the last remaining male, Sudan. No-one knows more about their plight than zoologist Kes Hillman Smith. For decades she’s been tracking their numbers, fighting to save them from extinction. On Sunday Night, Kes takes reporter Steve Pennells on a grand adventure through Kenya to meet Najin, Fatu and Sudan. And with time fast running out for the mighty Northern White Rhino, we discover hope in a small lab on the other side of the world where science is working hard to keep their species alive.
This edition of SUNDAY NIGHT hosted by Melissa Doyle airs on Sunday at 8.45pm on Seven.
KILLER CONFESSION
For 47 long and painful years it’s been one of Australia’s greatest murder mysteries – who took the life of the beautiful, young beauty queen, Lucille Butterworth. In a long-running Sunday Night investigation, reporter Mike Willesee has uncovered a series of extraordinary mistakes during the original police investigation. Confessions were ignored, crucial leads missed, vital information dismissed. Now, a major breakthrough. Findings from a new police inquiry have been examined by a Tasmanian coroner who has taken the extraordinary step of identifying the murderer, Geoffrey Charles Hunt. That, as a former prisoner has come forward to explain for the first time on television how Hunt confessed to him in horrifying detail about the crime. Hunt is a man already well known to police. He was convicted of the brutal murder of another young woman in 1976. This Sunday Night, Mike Willesee speaks to the key players in a case that has finally been solved and goes in search of the man who murdered Lucille Butterworth.
UNSTOPPABLE
The Marathon des Sables is the toughest and most physically challenging ultra-marathon on earth. Seven days through some of the hottest and harshest lands in the world – the Sahara. For an able-bodied athlete it’s a massive challenge, but the challenges for Kate Sanderson are beyond comprehension. With scorching temperatures and sand dunes that stretch for kilometres, Kate has two distinct disadvantages – she only has one foot and burns to 60 per cent of her body. Five years ago, Kate and Turia Pitt were engulfed by a bushfire during a footrace in Western Australia. Both were badly injured and amazingly, both have beaten the odds to race again. But for Kate Sanderson, the Sahara marathon might just be the biggest challenge of her life. Sunday Night’s Alex Cullen was there to see if she could make it.
ALL ABOUT THAT MEGHAN
She’s the international superstar determined to do it her way – just as she is. At first she was behind the scenes writing songs for other singers then Meghan Trainor broke through spectacularly, singing her own mega-hit All About That Bass, a celebration of her shape and stereotype-busting anthem for body image. This week she proved just how committed she is to being herself when she pulled the video for her latest release because producers had Photoshopped her slimmer. And as Sunday Night’s PJ Madam found out, this comes as no surprise. During a forthright and candid interview in London, Meghan speaks about the challenges of ‘not being like Britney Spears’ and the ‘awesome’ impact she’s had on women and girls around the world. On the set of that controversial video in Los Angeles, Meghan speaks about the constant challenges to her vision and her voice. She also invites us along to meet her biggest fan, her father, and tells us that family will always be far more important than fame.
BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME
He’s the Queensland science teacher who heard a higher calling, left Australia to take his message to a bigger audience and who’s wound up building the biggest timber-framed structure on earth: a massive recreation of Noah’s Ark. Standing seven-storeys high, nearly 200-metres long, using 10 kilometres of timber and costing more than a hundred million dollars, Ken Ham’s vision has become a project of Biblical proportions. In doing so, the former Brisbane science teacher is now one of the most powerful and polarizing religious leaders in the United States of America. Ken Ham’s critics label him a fanatic selling a mind-bending view of world history; his supporters believe he is a modern day messiah. This Sunday Night, reporter Steve Pennells takes us deep inside America’s Bible belt and into Ken Ham’s dream build to meet the man convinced the world is only 6000 years old, evolution is a fraud and that Noah really did usher all those animals onto his Ark two by two. We’ll meet Ham’s fervent supporters like the controversial county clerk Kim Davis who – famously or infamously, depending on your view – refused to sign same-sex marriage licenses. And we’ll hear from Ham’s staunchest critic, Bill Nye the Science Guy, who is determined to challenge and debunk the religious leader’s teachings at every turn.
HEADLINE IN THE HOUSE
It’s not for nothing that Derryn Hinch is known as the Human Headline. In his professional life – and his private life – he’s generated more than his fair share. Now at the sprightly age of 72, and after decades of challenging politicians and their flawed policies, he’s decided he wants to become one himself. Senator Hinch. In his own words, Derryn has “jumped the shark in moving from journalism to politics”. But while he has a prominent public profile as a man who’s prepared to stand on principle, like all potential politicians, his every word will be closely scrutinized, his every move closely watched. Who better to keep the wannabe Senator honest than another veteran broadcaster, Sunday Night’s Mike Willesee. In an Australian television first, the two old foes finally go head to head. For the past two weeks Sunday Night has been on the campaign trail with the Justice Party leader, culminating in an interview where nothing is off limits.
GET AFTER ‘EM
The need for speed sits deep within the Brabham clan’s DNA. First the legendary Sir Jack, then Geoff, now Matthew Brabham is taking on the world on four wheels. Next week, Matt lines up with some of the most accomplished racing drivers in the world for America’s grand motor race. Sunday Night’s Alex Cullen caught up with the baby Brabham in Indianapolis and found that for Matt, it’s not so much about the prize money; it’s about the family name being back on the winners’ podium. Can he win the storied race in its 100th year? Many think he can.
SAVING AUSTRALIA DIET – THE CHECK UP
In a week where frightening reports about an explosion of Type 2 diabetes in Australia’s poorer suburbs – even claims by experts that amputation factories will need to be built in Western Sydney to cope with an emerging 300,000-plus T2 sufferers – our Saving Australia Diet volunteers are well into the challenge to turn their lives around and turn back this dangerous and deadly disease. Sunday Night’s PJ Madam checks in and gets the results so far. They will astound you.
This edition of SUNDAY NIGHT hosted by Melissa Doyle airs on Sunday at 8.45pm on Seven.
HEARTBREAK AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD
It was their ultimate dream: a husband and wife, together making it to the top of the world – Mount Everest. Tragically, one would succeed and one would die trying. This Sunday Night, the real story behind an Australian couple’s pursuit of mountaineering’s ultimate prize. Just over a week ago, Maria Strydom and her husband Robert had made it to the south summit when Maria was overcome by altitude sickness. In his own words, Robert takes us through the next heartbreaking 30 hours – the desperate attempts to get his wife to safety, his own battle with altitude sickness and the moment when their oxygen supplies ran out. In Kathmandu, reporter Steve Pennells meets a grieving husband shattered by an adventure that went horribly wrong. As Robert now says of Maria: “I still can’t look at any pictures of her because it just breaks my heart.”
RED HOT
For years, the Red Hot Chili Peppers had as many hits as bad headlines. Drug taking, a band member dying, they were the bad boys of hard core funk rock. Now the Chili Peppers are back on the road again and making news. Two weeks ago they cancelled a concert when lead singer Anthony Kiedis had to be rushed to hospital. With a long US and European tour ahead and a new album on the way, the Red Hot Chili Peppers sit down with Sunday Night for their only Australian television interview. Reporter Rahni Sadler hears how fatherhood has so dramatically changed life for Anthony and catches up with Aussie bass player Flea who’s still having a whole lot of fun more than 30-years later.
PLAY ON
The footy hero. The tennis champ. The nurse. They’re three extraordinary people all determined to play their part to defeat an insidious, killer disease that claims two Australians every day. Motor Neurone Disease. Footy fans know Neale Daniher as AFL royalty. He was a champion player and has forged an enduring career as coach and a behind-the-scenes figure at a number of AFL clubs. But he’s also become one of the fiercest campaigners for research into a disease without a cure. Neale was diagnosed with MND in 2013 and wasted no time putting the energy he displayed on the footy field into fighting to find a cure. Alongside Neale is former tennis pro Ange Cunningham, who has been stricken by the disease as well. Despite it leaving her trapped in an immobile body, she still summons an amazing resolve to get on with what remains of her life with humour, love and a complete absence of self-pity. Joining Neale and Ange on the frontline in the battle to beat MND is Cath Baker, a former intensive care nurse who’s been caring for Ange. Together they share a resolve to help researchers uncover the cause of MND and find a cure. Neale’s defying the odds, living longer than he should and using that precious time to help unlock the secrets behind MND. For the past month, Sunday Night has been welcomed into the Daniher family’s day-to-day life and inside the world of Ange Cunningham and her family. We found two amazing people who have no time for sadness, whose families celebrate every new day and whose approach to MND is uplifting and inspirational. We were also there for the day Neale feared he’d never live to see - the marriage of his eldest daughter. As Sunday Night’s Melissa Doyle discovered, Neale Daniher is making sure the final quarter of his life will be his finest. As he encounters sufferers across Australia he gives them a hug and encourages them and their loved ones to Play On. But as we’ll discover in this very special Sunday Night report, a cruel disease has a cruel twist in store.
MAN AT WORK
It became the raucous, cocky theme song for one of Australia’s greatest ever sporting achievements and a people’s choice national anthem that was heard loud and proud around the world. By the time Down Under was blaring out as the battle song for Australia’s America’s Cup challenge at Newport, Rhode Island in 1983, it had already dominated international charts and made a band called Men at Work one of our biggest global acts. Down Under was the first of a string of hits. The Men won a coveted Grammy award, and sold millions of albums. Now, 35 years after Down Under’s release, founding member and lead singer Colin Hay looks back at the heady highs and heartbreaking lows of an epic musical journey. Sunday Night hits the road with Colin in the US where there’s still great affection for him, his old band and their music. In a brutally frank and deeply personal interview, Hay talks about life on the road, the legal stoush over their biggest hit and the loss of close friend Greg Ham, who he says he still thinks about every day. He’s funny, heartfelt and unflinchingly honest.
This edition of SUNDAY NIGHT hosted by Melissa Doyle airs on Sunday at 8.50pm on Seven.
IN THE PRESENCE OF THE GREATEST
It was one of Mike Willesee’s biggest risks and it yielded one of his biggest rewards. In 1975, as heavyweights Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier prepared for their ultimate showdown in the Thriller in Manila, Willesee flew to the Philippines on spec to try to secure an interview with the man who’d become arguably the most celebrated sports figure in history. Once he’d cajoled himself past the minders, Willesee was told he’d have a couple of minutes with The Greatest. Instead he got three hours one-on-one and an access-all-areas pass to Ali’s backroom antics and scalding training sessions. The result is one of the most extraordinary profiles of Ali ever assembled. Dressed in a bathrobe and lying down on his hotel sofa, Ali spars and swings and ducks and weaves with Willesee through a range of incendiary topics – race, money, religion, sex and death. And unsurprisingly he speaks his mind. Now, as the world mourns the death of Ali, Sunday Night presents this phenomenal encounter with him, the story behind the story and Willesee’s contemporary reflections on what made the champion such an inspirational and important figure. It is a profoundly revealing portrait of a monumental man.
SECRET WEAPON
It is one of the most disturbing and perplexing health crises the world has seen. The mosquito-borne Zika virus has swept across Brazil and brought hundreds upon hundreds of malformed babies and distressed parents. It’s prompted the World Health Organization to declare an international emergency and shaken the planning of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games as sports people and spectators worry about the implications of Zika. Now as the countdown to Rio 2016 begins in earnest, some secret Australian know-how is being trained against the virus and the results are extremely promising. Sunday Night’s Denham Hitchcock joins the Australia-led effort in Brazil to eliminate Zika with Aussie mozzies and ingenious science. He meets expectant mums anxiously awaiting their test results and others lovingly caring for their babies stricken with microcephaly – the disfiguring and debilitating birth defect caused by Zika. Can the team conquer Zika in time as the world arrives for Rio 2016?
This edition of SUNDAY NIGHT hosted by Melissa Doyle airs on Sunday at 8.20pm on Seven.
Good to see Seven reaching deep into their archives for some truly historical footage. I imagine this interview would’ve remained forgotten if Willesee hadn’t been back on staff at Seven all these years later. I’m a little too young to remember this report although I remember Willesee being on the TV most nights in our household at that time. Looking forward to this.
DAMI’S PROMISE
Her performances at Eurovision were so electrifying, so powerful the unimaginable almost happened. Australia came within a heartbeat of stealing Europe’s most precious pop prize – the Eurovision Song Contest. Dami Im, a local favourite since she floored everyone with her spectacular voice and won The X Factor Australia, became an international sensation as she belted out Sound of Silence in front of hundreds of millions of Eurovision fans. Naturally, the next step would be to ride that success into Europe itself with a sold-out tour of venues and a brand new record to sell. Certainly Dami was under pressure to exploit her new found fame but remarkably she said no. She’s made a promise to a little girl she’d never met and she was going to honour it. So Dami Im, freshly minted global superstar headed home to suburban Brisbane and husband Noah and prepared for what she considers the most important trip of her life – to Uganda and a six-year-old named Jovia. Sunday Night travels with Dami as she turns down the immediate opportunities of Eurovision success to fly to Uganda in Africa to meet and help Jovia. Sure she’ll perform to a packed house – but it’s a school hall filled with 200 children swaying, clapping and smiling as Dami plays a heartfelt set of songs. But most of all, it’s a meeting of a lifetime that will change a little girl’s destiny.
THE NEVER-ENDING STORY
Imagine there was a way to live forever but it came with a chilling caveat – you have to die first. That’s the confronting contract that one young woman has bravely entered into in her plan to rejoin her boyfriend and her father sometime in the future. Kim Suozzi, a young, super bright neuroscience student, has joined a growing number of people who put new found faith in Cryogenics, the procedure in which patients are frozen after they die and stored in stainless steel containers awaiting a scientific breakthrough that will enable them to come back to life. Science entrepreneurs are pouring big money into Cryogenic facilities and technology in the developing view that we’re closer than ever before to cracking the secrets of reanimating life. It’s an expensive procedure, but Kim and her partner hit upon a novel way of raising the money for her cryo process. They used social media and supporters rallied to her cause. In this startling glimpse into an emergent world Sunday Night’s Denham Hitchcock examines the science behind cryogenics and meets the trio who are hoping to one day be reunited in a second, endless life.
GIVE IT AWAY, GIVE IT AWAY, GIVE IT AWAY NOW!
Our recent story on the irrepressible Red Hot Chili Peppers caused quite a stir after the global rock press picked up our interview with troubled front-man Antony Kiedis. He denied that a recent illness that forced an all-time-first cancellation of a Chili Peppers gig was down to a drug relapse. The day after we aired, rock’s hardest working band invited Sunday Night to a headline gig in California to see them all in full flight and back on top of their game. Celebrated pop biographer Larry Sloman joins us to explain why there’s such and enduring fascination with Kiedis, his self-destructive foibles and his super supportive bandmates as we reveal an incredible opportunity to see the band in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Don’t miss your chance.
CATCHING THE STOCCOS
It is one of the most destructive and bizarre rampages in Australian criminal history. Two men – a father, a son – posing as farm handymen, preying on unsuspecting Australian families. Stealing, looting, destroying, menacing and ultimately killing.
For eight years they cut a deep scar through the lives of honest, hardworking families throughout Queensland, NSW and Victoria, causing millions of dollars damage and untold heartache while the authorities seemingly did nothing. And disturbingly, over the course of their wanton crime spree, they stole guns and built an imposing arsenal. They were preparing for an inevitable showdown – and inevitable bloodshed.
Australia first heard the names Gino and Mark Stocco on a Friday afternoon last October when the pair opened fire on a police highway patrol, raising the stakes in one of the biggest manhunts ever undertaken by Australian law enforcement.
The Stoccos were desperate, dangerous and on the run. Twelve days and thousands of kilometers later, it came to a bloody end when the pair was arrested for murder and a catalogue of other offences. For the first time, Sunday Night takes you deep inside this intriguing true crime drama as reporter Steve Pennells pieces together the forensic detail of a crime spree eight years in the making.
From outback Queensland, through the backblocks of NSW and all the way down south to Victoria’s Ned Kelly country, we piece together the extraordinary puzzle that brought havoc and devastation to countless families. They were master manipulators, targeting isolated communities, charming their way into the homes of the unsuspecting, always one step ahead of the law.
Sunday Night exclusively profiles the crusading farmer forced to turn amateur detective to gather evidence against the Stoccos to force authorities to act. And other families struck by the pair, but who bravely campaigned for action.
This major Sunday Night investigation charts the audacious, inexplicable reign of terror that Mark and Gino Stocco got away with for too long.
This edition of SUNDAY NIGHT hosted by Melissa Doyle airs on Sunday at 8.15pm on Seven.
