Of all the things George Negus will be remembered for, helping Australian journalists find their voice will probably be the greatest.
After all, Negus introduced the Australian accent to Australian broadcasting.
Before him, we either spoke like the BBC or like Bob Menzies. Both were remarkably similar.
A wander through the sound archives of Australia is quite an ear opener.
It reminds us that as late as the 1980s, just how English were the cadences of spoken English on the nation’s airwaves.
Why should that really surprise when at the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, we are still a monarchy and about to host our English head of state?
George would have had a lot of angry words to say about that in the most demotic Australian tones he could muster.
George Negus was the journalist who brought the true blue Aussie accent to TV – literally
Charles Wooley (second right) has paid tribute to the late George Negus (third left). They’re pictured with Liam Bartlett (left), Liz Hayes (second left) and Ray Martin (right) at the 2018 Logies
In the late 1960s, Negus first raised eyebrows in the hallowed corridors of the ABC, housed then at Gore Hill in the upper north shore where people spoke a lot like educated Poms.
‘Have you heard his appalling Australian accent. He should be taught to speak,’ I remember a senior executive still complaining when I arrived there a decade later.
‘If that’s considered acceptable then anyone can go on television.’
And of course that was George’s forte. He wasn’t anyone but he sounded like everyone.
He was perhaps an imitation rough diamond, but for us slightly younger recruits who were trying to sound like the BBC, it was clear that Negus was stealing the show.
When he did the unthinkable and left the ABC for the vulgar commercial world and something called 60 Minutes, our bosses assured us, ‘My dear chap it will never last.’
Though if you go online and pull out some 60 Minutes stories even from my time, as late as the 90s, we all still sounded quite British. The great Ray Martin included.
‘Good evening and welcome to television’ were the first words spoken on Australian TV on 16 September 1956.
By today’s standards, Bruce Gyngell sounded like he had just got off the boat.
But he was a boy from Sydney Grammar and so, channeling George, I might remark that, ‘Bruce would have had no trouble putting on the dog.’
Unleashing the real Australian accent and broadcasting to the masses in the language they spoke was a great breakthrough – and 60 Minutes was a runaway success.
George Negus gave the show a common traction as it introduced the world to ordinary Australian families every Sunday night at 7.30.
Years later travelling the world for the program he had pioneered, I always had the feeling that we were setting up our camera in George’s tripod holes.
George’s death hasn’t come as a surprise.
I call it death because as an old-style journo he hated to mince words. He wouldn’t pass. He would die.
And it wasn’t a shock. With Alzheimer’s he had quietly slipped away from us some time ago.
I like to think that in the speechless quiet that enveloped him George was still able to rerun his great adventures in every corner of the world and hear them over and over again in the everyday language and accent of Australia.
The tone that was his great legacy.
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