"The highlight of my life": Peter Overton's special night off
Nine newsreader Peter Overton was nowhere to be seen on screen Wednesday as he spent the evening attending to a special commitment.
The father-of-two revealed that he locked in a night off for a major event on the school calendar at the request of his eldest daughter, Allegra.
“She came to me and said, ‘Don’t forget, it’s the father-daughter dance this year and you have to have the night off,’” Overton told 9Honey.
“She really wanted me there and I really wanted to be there as well, so I said to her, ‘Of course I’ll be there’.”
The 53-year-old said his supervisor was more than supportive of his leave. “I went and told the news director and he said, ‘That’s a no-brainer, you’ve got to have that off’.”
At the event, the father-and-daughter pair went to join dozens of fellow Year 6 students and their fathers or grandfathers to have a go at Macarena, barn dances, YMCA and other classics.
“It was the highlight of my life,” he told 2GB about the night.
“It was lovely to go and do it without having to do the news, just completely devoted to the little one.”
Overton said he is determined not to let work commitments prevent him from being present for his daughters’ milestones. The conviction came after a chat with his cameraman, a fellow father of two.
“He was telling me one of his greatest regrets was that he’d missed just about every milestone in his daughters lives because of the job,” Overton said.
“I, at that moment, said, ‘That’s not going to happen to me.’”
Overton shares two daughters – 12-year-old Allegra and 10-year-old Giselle – with wife Jessica Rowe. “I’ve never loved in such a pure way as I love my children,” he said on Super Mums podcast.