Derryn Hinch spent a lifetime chasing other people’s secrets, and it turns out he was sitting on one of his own.
The broadcaster known as the Human Headline died on July 10 at the age of 82, after a long health battle he shared openly with followers, according to 7NEWS.
Mourners gathered on Monday at the Timber Yard events space in Port Melbourne to say goodbye, at a service the lifelong atheist had arranged himself, 7NEWS reports.
True to form, Hinch had one last story ready to go off, delivered by someone else, after he was gone.
Former 3AW colleague Tony Tardio took to the podium and told the room a truth Hinch had apparently kept quiet for more than five decades.
“The only thing history owes the dead is the truth,” Tardio said, according to 7NEWS, before revealing that Hinch’s 1970s interview with Hollywood star Bette Midler had not stayed strictly professional.
“Derryn and Bette Middler engaged in a bit of horizonal romper after that interview,” Tardio told mourners. “And that is the truth.”
The room broke into laughter, 7NEWS reports, as Tardio went on to call Hinch a “journalist James Bond”, the kind of man drama simply followed.
It was a fitting note for a man who built his name on saying the unsayable.
Hinch became a household voice through his decades on Melbourne radio station 3AW, where his blunt style reshaped what talkback radio could be, 7NEWS reports.
He later moved to national television and became known as a fierce campaigner against child sex offenders, a crusade that eventually landed him in jail for contempt of court.
He was just as frank about his own struggles, once revealing he had been drinking six bottles of wine a day before liver cancer forced a life-saving transplant, according to 7NEWS.
As his coffin was carried from the service, the room filled with a live rendition of Frank Sinatra’s That’s Life, sung by country artist Bob Valentine, a nod to the song and catchphrase that followed Hinch his whole career.
Even from the other side, the Human Headline still managed to get the last word.
