Before I sign off from CBD, here are the stories behind the stories

The end of something is always the beginning of something else. But before I get to the something else, as it is time to call time on my CBD stint, which stretches back to July 2020 on and off, here are a few stories behind the stories.

Off the record

“Why the f--- would I want to talk to you?” an ex-mayor spat when I called for a response to a court matter, before launching into a bitter denunciation of our coverage. Off the record, they then added.

This person was not, we hasten to add, ex-North Sydney mayor, local government icon and CBD favourite Jilly Gibson, who made a dramatic exit after 25 years of local government service by storming out of a meeting after colleagues refused to name a plaza after her.

Melbourne councillors turned out to be a special breed. One falsely claimed I had harassed her by contacting her 19 times for a comment and then went through my social media and posted mocking images of me.

Rebuttals and peace summits

Feedback came in all forms. One of Australia’s most prominent barristers wrote us a 988-word memo about long-standing CBD coverage of the Victorian Bar.

Josh Frydenberg preferred the telephone. While still federal treasurer, the Liberal MP once rang up to subject CBD to an itemised 20-minute rebuttal of our coverage.

A peace summit was arranged, held at some ungodly early weekend hour at a cafe in Hawthorn. I was chaperoned by a senior Age journalist.

The pair set off on a discussion I simply couldn’t understand. I mean I understood the words, and the order in which they were uttered, but I felt like I had been dumped in the middle of a conversation I couldn’t possibly navigate.

I was pretty new in town. It became apparent that they were talking about the Carlton Football Club.

I joined the office footy tipping comp pretty soon after that.

Feedback in real time

As a CBD columnist, I never knew what items would attract reader interest. Certainly Sydney’s ultimate work-from-home couple, American porn star Billy Santoro and his Australian husband, Gage, did.

The couple’s nocturnal filming in their apartment-cum-studio in Surry Hills’ exclusive Monument complex led to a resident rebellion, and the couple eventually moving out. We could not have found a more Sydney story, involving as it did sex, social niceties and real estate.

Live feedback was provided in real time after I woke up after the Midwinter Ball at parliament to find to my surprise that the column had labelled staunch unionist and firebrand Labor senator Don Farrell as a Liberal.

Farrell even discussed it at a press conference with Treasurer Jim Chalmers to the amusement of the entire federal parliamentary press gallery – except me. I emailed an apology.

“No dramas, it’s given me an opportunity to make a light-hearted response at the trade press conference,” Farrell responded when I grovelled.

Another apology was due when we made a grievous error about Arthur Moses, SC, prominent barrister and partner of ex-NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian. He immediately fired up in an email.

“The CBD of The Age and SMH has long enjoyed the well-deserved reputation of being accurate and fair but I am afraid that today it seriously defamed me. I am not a Canterbury Bulldogs fanatic but a Parramatta Eels fanatic,” Moses said.

The famous silk soon softened. “Your column is always a lot of fun and helps people realise not to take themselves too seriously. I am off for a run in my Eels training shirt.”

Not funny, Stephen

Recently what we thought was a minor CBD item about an International Women’s Day lunch hosted by Claudia Karvan at Justin Hemmes’ Ivy venue drew outrage from former ABC presenter Simon Marnie, who sounded off about it on Facebook.

The comments on his post were divided on whether we were right to point out the irony of booking the Ivy for an IWD event.

“Bad writing, low thinking, long bow, and worst of all, not funny,” wrote Bernard Zuel. And this is a guy who writes for our sister paper, The Sydney Morning Herald! Don’t worry, Bernard, it’s the sort of feedback I can regularly get from my family WhatsApp.

Difficult times

CBD learnt it was “difficult” to get an invite to the National Gallery of Victoria’s annual gala. Or, maybe I was difficult.

It might have been after our report about the exclusive donor dinner held before the main event, where Real Housewives of Melbourne star Janet Roach bizarrely noticed her cutlery going missing and even more bizarrely turning up in her handbag.

The prankster on the loose turned out to be none other than $100 million NGV Contemporary donor and transport billionaire Lindsay Fox. Roach was accompanied by her partner, Sam Gance, the billionaire co-founder of Chemist Warehouse, who modestly introduced himself to us as the guy who took Janet’s photos.

Hold that thought

Much of what we wrote encompassed major events.

Encountering ex-Victorian governor Linda Dessau and her husband, Tony Howard, at the grand prix last year, I went up to give a cheery greeting, which was countered by Howard, who asked, “Are you going to be nice to us this time?”

Also at the grand prix, we had engaged in conversation Janet Whiting, president of the Council of Trustees of the National Gallery of Victoria and the former chair of Visit Victoria.

Whiting is a powerful presence in Melbourne. But that didn’t stop us dumping her mid-sentence when we saw businessman Luke Sayers in his relaunch phase after his phallic photo scandal walking right behind her.

Would he do a quick interview? He would! I was proud of the scoop back-of-my-head photo that appeared in almost every Sayers news story in subsequent months. I wish I had put more product in my hair.

On good terms

“Is Tim Wilson a moderate?” a colleague asked the other day.

“Not after he read my 2000-word profile on him,” came my reply.

The “Lunch With” interview, during which we were ambushed by an irate non-Liberal voter, came shortly after Wilson’s unique federal election achievement as a Liberal candidate who won a federal seat off a teal independent, Zoe Daniel.

The piece, written in between filing CBD columns, was one of my best read and generated 11 texts in 4½ hours – and that was just from Wilson himself.

The profile was certainly profile building, and now Wilson is shadow treasurer. Tim and I get along fine.

Daniel had been a beloved ABC correspondent before entering politics, but not by everyone, as I found out a few years earlier at a journalism awards ceremony.

“Let me tell you about Zoe Daniel,” a possibly inebriated senior ABC correspondent said in forthright terms.

They didn’t get the chance. A hand appeared seemingly out of nowhere, clamped itself over the open mouth and dragged its owner away through the crowd.

I remained none the wiser.

Later that night more feedback came in the form of a bear hug/headlock combo administered by reporter Seb Costello, then working for Nine, whose adventures as a foreign correspondent had been chronicled by me in my previous incarnation as a media diarist.

“You haven’t been very nice to me,” said Costello, son of the then Nine chair, former Liberal politician Peter Costello.

Objectively, this was true. “Don’t worry,” he said, releasing me. “I’m pretty hard to sack.” Seb and I get along fine.

Thanks for the tips

Thank yous: the readers, the editors, the lawyers, our late and much-missed cartoonist John Shakespeare, fellow CBD columnists – old and new – Samantha Hutchinson, Kishor Napier-Raman, John Buckley – and anyone else who ever helped out and gave us a tip.

Thank goodness for Jewel Topsfield, long-time queen of the Age newsroom who has since moved overseas. Mutual friends urged me to befriend her. I invited her out for a coffee. She was a bit reticent. Age shyness, I thought to myself.

Jewel and I got along famously.

It was only two years later at my 50th birthday in front of all my friends that she gave a speech about one of my old media columns, headlined “Jewel tarnished”, which slagged her off for writing some “silly woke tweets”.

I had completely forgotten about it. She had not, and chose the best time to reveal it, for maximum effect.

“It taught me not to take things personally,” she told me afterwards. Jewel and I are on very good terms.

So that’s it from me. CBD will continue – new columnist Fiona Byrne joins John Buckley next week. I am off to reinvent myself in another part of the newsroom, far from the eyeline of the newsdesk as The Age’s special correspondent.

After spending years distilling the activities of bold-faced names into items of 300 words, in my new gig, I’m not getting out of bed for fewer than 2000 words.

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