Tim Blair

MOTHER AND THE PIG

My old boss Mark Day remembers Australian football legend Jack Dyer, a longtime columnist at the paper where I first worked, and a famously clumsy radio commentator:

It was unrehearsed and unconscious. And it was endearingly funny, although some folk in radio felt his rough edges should be knocked off. A voice tutor was hired to give him elocution lessons, which he rejected because "my full back got killed doing that". His former team-mate's day job was as an electrician.

Jack was never one to remember names. In 20 years of knowing him, I never made it past "son". If memory lapses made life a trifle difficult as a football caller, it was minor compared with the time Dyer was hauled into the witness box in a libel trial.

Truth also published an anonymous sporting column called The Count – a repository for all the goss no self-respecting reporter would put his (exclusively male in those days) name to. At issue in the court was the name of the author of The Count. Dyer, a former copper, took to the witness box and swore himself in, whereupon the plaintiff's QC cut straight to the point: "Mr Dyer, who is The Count?"

"Er, I dunno."

"How long have you worked at Truth?"

"Ten years."

"Well, you must know the people you work with."

"Yeah, well, there's the Pig, there's Mother, there's Mopsy, there's Bluey."

"Step down, Mr Dyer."

What a place to work. When I first joined the paper, in ‘88, many of the staff were banned at several local bars. For brawling. Amongst themselves.