December 26, 2024 • 47 mins
In this episode of Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, global megastar Robbie Williams talks his storied music career, his controversies, and why he chose now to make a biopic. Better Man is in theatres now!
Then we hear from extreme adventurer, Andrew Fagan. He joined Francesca to talk his attempt to set the record for the smallest boat to sail around the world solo.
And Maureen Callahan wrote one of the most contentious books of the year all about the famous Kennedy family. She talks through her theories around the family.
Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin brings you the best interviews from Newstalk ZB's The Sunday Session.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB. The big names, the fascinating guests,
the thoughtful conversations, bringing you the best interviews from the
Sunday Session. This is Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, empowered
(00:27):
by News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello and welcome to the summer edition of Great Chats.
I'm Francesca Rudkin, and in this podcast we bring you
some of the best feature interviews from the Sunday Session
on News Talks V throughout twenty twenty four. Now we
ended the year on a bit of a high. On
the Sunday Session. One of my final interviews was with
superstar Robbie Williams. Love him or hate him, there is
no doubt he was is one of the biggest pop
(00:50):
stars in the world, and we got together to talk
about the film Better Man, based on his life, which
has just been released and I absolutely loved it, so surprise, surprise,
I started off the chat with gushing this is Angels
by the one and only Robbie Williams. You know, there
was a time of my life I didn't want to
ever hear this song again.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It just seemed to be.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Absolutely everywhere, and I sat in this film. This version
of the song is from Robbie's new film, and I
sat watching this film and I sung every word anyway.
The movie sees Robbie played by a Cgichimp. It tells
his life story from his childhoods through to take that
and his solo career, and it doesn't shy away from
the dark side of fame. It's brutally honest, including his
(01:33):
use of drugs and his bad star behavior. The film
it's called Better Man.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
I'm Robbie Williams.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
I'm one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
This is my story, but I'm not going to tell
it in an ordinary way because I don't see my
self holt of the semi in the next two hours.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Your house is life, to be honest, I've always been
a little lass Stivolt of rags. So let's take it
from the top, shall we. I am absolutely delighted to
have Robbie with me. Robbie Williams, good morning.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Good morning, Donnin How are you.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I'm very good, thank you. You could tell why.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
The trailer of this film and the artwork that it
was going to be a little bit different, but I
really did not know what to expect and whether it
would work. But I loved it. I laughed, I cried.
I left the cinema with this huge smile on my face.
Are you happy with it?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I am over the moon. I can't believe.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
I mean, I can't believe the final finished thing. And
I am overwhelmed by the response that it's having.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Because the first.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Time I saw it, I was like, this is mind blowing.
It's absolutely incredible. But then I was like, oh, well,
I'm gone because I am prone to ego and narcissism.
Maybe I just think it's the best thing I've ever
seen because it's about me. And then and then I
was like, oh no, what if it's a turd?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
And I just don't know.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
But then you know, people like your good self have
been to see it and saying really positive things about it,
And then lots of people are going back to watch
it for a second and third time.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
It's not even out yet.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I need to go back and watch it again. Because
of course, we saw it as an advanced screening in
order to talk to you, And there were five of
us in the cinema and all of us we're trying
to hold back, just sort of singing along and getting involved.
I think it'll be a fantastic experience with it with
a big crowd.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Yeah, I especially in the rock DJ sequence. When I've
watched it. I think I've seen the film like ten
times now because of premieres and screeners with people and
showing people like your good self. And I do notice
that when rock DJ's on, I'm rocking out in the chair,
(04:05):
and then I look around the city and I seem
to be the only person that's rocking out this much.
Once again, narcissism.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Have you stopped crying when you watch it?
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:18):
Yeah, yeah, But that doesn't mean that the tears have
stopped stopped. They could reappear, and I'm sure that they
will at any time. I'm now on a whistle stop
tour of different countries doing premieres, and I did notice
that in Canada. I started to cry at TIFF the
(04:40):
Toronto International Film Festival at the end of the movie,
and then I had to do a Q and A
and I couldn't do the Q and A because I
couldn't talk.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
And then I thought to myself, oh no, I.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Can't do this at every screening and every premiere, I
can't be broken man crying at own life story like
but like in that one particular moment, paramount in particular.
More tears, more tears. Promote the film, Promote the film.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
How did how did Sorry Robbie? How did the project
come to be? How did you meet Michael Gracie?
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I met Michael Gracie at a party of a mutual
friend of ours, and instantly that loved him, got on
with him really well, and he was just like wow,
he pitched me a movie, not for me to do
anything to it, but it was just telling me the
movie that he was.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
Doing.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
And he pitched it so well and told the stories
so well that I instantly wanted to see the movie
as soon as the last sentence of his stopped. And
then he asked me for a favor. And he came
round to my house and he said, I need a
favor from you, and I'm like anything, mate, And he said,
(06:01):
I'm doing this film. It's called the Greatest Showman. And instantly,
because of narcissism, I think he's going to ask me
to be the lead in it. And he plays me
one song and it's mind blowing. This is me, and
then he plays me another song and I'm just I'm.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Just like, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
And then he shows me the the hand drawn sequences
of the film and I'm like, yes, yes, big break
in Hollywood here I come.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Just ask me. I'm in.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And he goes and here's the favor And I say,
what anything, mate, And he goes, will you ring Hugh
Jackman and convince him to be the lead in the
movie Restfallen?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, and you did it.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Yeah, I did it.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I did it, and I helped to make that movie
a reality.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So he's very kindly come the circle has been completed.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Oh he's made it up.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah. Whose idea was it?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
To have you portrayed as a CDI monkey throughout the film?
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Michael's idea. Michael's brilliant idea. I think the thing is
with biopics. Now we've seen them, we know the format,
it's long, we're getting a bit bored. And he understood
that we needed a usp a unique selling point.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And boy did he come up with one.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Then he needed to convince people with money to put
money behind this idea, and my god, they are insane,
and God bless them that there is still people on
the planet that exist that go, yeah, let's do this.
Whoever they are, I wish i'd have parted with them
in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I think we'd have had fun.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So did that idea resonate with you that you were
sort of this performing monkey, you know, throughout part of
your career, which is is that why it resonated with you?
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Yeah, it just resonated as an idea because it's surreal
and eccentric and unusual. And go going forward, I want
that to be my m O. I want to be unusual.
I want to do unusual things because I've kind of
been chasing the past for the last ten years, and
in chasing the past, I've become.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
A bit vanilla. And I never was, you know, I
never was.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
I had I had ideas that were unusual, and you
know they're they're they're like the rock DJ video or whatever.
The way I say things or the way I present myself.
And yeah, and the documentary me in bed in my underpants.
I don't know if anybody's seen it, but I did
a documentary I was in bed in my underpants unusual.
(08:43):
Going forward, I'd like to carry on with this trait.
And this is a huge, grandiose, unusual swing that we're having,
and so far, so good, but it's.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Not out yet.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
We all know you as the great entertainer, the singer
songwriter who's got it, and you talk about that it
a little bit in the film. But this sort of
takes you behind the person, doesn't it. It shows a
vulnerable young man, an insecure young man who was world
famous at twenty one, as you say, raging alcoholic and
addicted to coke.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
How important was you to you? The story was told?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
So?
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Honestly, I try my best to live a very authentic
life with and shine the light hopefully on my best bits,
and shine the lights on my worst bits too. People
seem to respond to authenticity, and I know that I
(09:42):
can wind people up as well, just by false bravado
or arrogance or you know, I think people can get
wound up by That's the thing is about it. You
have to shine it and believe that you have it
somewhere in you to transcend and project it. And when
(10:05):
you are projecting it's lots of people, including myself.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
If I wasn't me would be going turn it off
now bed. Were you all get it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Were you all it'd all worried about being judged by
being so honest. I mean, I love it. If you weren't,
it wouldn't work. This thing wouldn't work.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
So I've been judged well, I've been judged well, so
not so much in the nineties and early two thousands.
You can't say I'm I'm mentally ill in ninety In
nineteen ninety nine or two thousand and three, you can't
say that I'm on antidepressants, because what on earth have
you got to be sad for, you know? And that
(10:47):
was a moment that I went further into my shell
and felt shame and felt isolated. But you know, it
wasn't It wasn't momentary sadness. This was a genetic mental
illness that has been passed down probably for centuries. And
(11:12):
now I am lauded for things, for saying things that
I used to be derided for. But it also happens
to be I'm at the other end of the arc.
I'm at the other end of the story. I'm talking
about what was and not what is, and I think
that helps.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
You're talking the film about how you lost yourself, and
I'm quite intrigued talking to people about this because fame
is a mystery to most of us.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
How does that happen? What is it about?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Is it about that you're suddenly treated differently, that people
expect you to perform a certain way or be a
certain way, or how do you what does it feel
like to kind.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Of lose yourself?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
I I I do you know what? I'm as baffled.
I'm as baffled. I wrote this thing the other day.
I'm as baffled about what fame is myself. Suppose I'm
going to be asked what it is that makes the
boys in the band sick?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Or maybe I won't.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
I guess we all think, well, it's all the things,
isn't it, without understanding what the things are? To be honest,
I'm not sure I totally understand what it is either,
and I was there. I'd really like a scientific breakdown
for the layman. Why do we become fractured when introduced
to fame? We all have these theories based on presumptions
(12:41):
that we don't really know are true. Overbearing workload, that's
a given, no one there to say no for you,
and no one to fully understand when no should be
the answer. Also a given, no one asking if you're okay,
and often no one listening when you're trying to say
you're not okay, and you yourself not recognizing you are
not okay. But what about all the other things? What
(13:03):
about friends, family, and the people locally who have become
a custom to you not being something big on the tally?
And then I go on and on and on. I
don't understand what it is myself. I just know that
you it's look, I took acid when I was fifteen.
I shouldn't have taken acid when I was fifteen. Fame
(13:24):
is very much like acid. It's like a drug. And
I don't mean addictive, like ooh, I've got to have more.
I mean like a psychedelic experience without the good bits.
It is a psychedelic experience that you don't know that
you're having because you haven't ingested anything or snorted anything.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
You're just on the tally.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
No, it's fascinating, isn't it. I think you do some
of that beautifully. I just want to touch on something
else that was in the film, which I was intrigued
by Guy Chambers, is that films, sorry, that songs.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Are only valuable if they cost you something. What did
he mean?
Speaker 4 (14:07):
By that it's just a line in the movie.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It's a good one, no way, it really is.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
It really is.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
And yeah, I can only speak from experience of what
I want to do when I when I'm trying to
write a song, I guess I'm exercising demons or was
And I wanted to explain myself when Michael Gracie says,
(14:37):
you know, in musicals we sing when words won't suffice,
And I guess that I needed to sing because words
had stopped having meaning and they weren't fixing anything. So
I guess, you know, my songs have cost me something.
(14:59):
I guess. I guess the adage is right. But it's
just a it's just a great line in the movie.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
It's a good line, Robert.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Just to finish up, this is very much a family
drama as well that documents the beautiful relationship you head
with your grandmother and your mother and the complex relationship
you head with your father. Has it been easy to
share that? Has it been quite a cathartic experience having
this sort of portraying on the film.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
No, not really, because I think my dad gets a
rough ride in the movie, and in many ways, I
don't think that's fair, but I can't argue with the
film as a piece. I'd like him to not watch it.
He hasn't yet. It's uncomfortable because there's lots of bits
(15:46):
of our history that we haven't talked about that and
right now, you know, with him having Parkinson's and not
being very well, it's all good.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
I love my dad. I just love my dad.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
I have no ill feeling towards him, and he was
better farther than how he's depicted in the film. Bob.
You know, feelings are how they felt, and it's not
his fault that, you know, his partner gave birth to
a son that was dramatically oversensitive.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Thank you so much for your time and for the
movie is in absolute blast. I loved it.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Thank you, Francesca.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
The biggest names from the Sunday session great chats with
Franciska Rudkins on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks, it'd be.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
That was Robbie Williams.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
As you can imagine, it's quite hard to get access
to Robbie Williams, but we did. I did have to
be at work at two a m. To record the interview.
It was a pre record. I'm going to be honest,
I was sitting here in the dark inclosed that could
be mistaken for sleepwear, and I did think myself, oh
my gosh.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
This has a better be good.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
But it's Robbie Williams and he's a performer and he
was a delight and he didn't disappoint. If you haven't
seen the film Better Man, please do. It really is
a blast. It's a good time now. One of the
most enjoyable interviews I did this year was with Andrew Fagan.
I am endlessly fascinated by adventurers. In twenty twenty two,
(17:22):
Andrew Fagan set off in his five point one meter
sloop to attempt to set the record for the smallest
boat to sail around the world solo via the capes.
Here's my chat with Andrew. This is quite an adventure
and you have done quite a lot of solo sailing
before you headed off on this. But was it a
big leap to go from sailing back and forward to
(17:43):
Australia or to the sub antactic Auckland Islands. Was it
a big leap to go from that to circumnavigating the globe?
I imagine the Southern Ocean kind of prepared you a
bit for this.
Speaker 7 (17:56):
Yeah, it was a big leap, but it was also
something that I felt prepared for, you know, because I've
had the boat for thirty seven years. I've done a
lot of offshore sailing in it, you know, like you said,
Australia and down the sub aantactic organ island. So I
felt in my own mind that this was just a
logical step, and apart from the amount of time it
was going to take, which I thought was about, you know,
(18:18):
twelve a year. Really, you know, I had food and water,
food for fourteen months. But yeah, it was I felt
I was ready for it, and you know that I
aspired to sailing around the world, you know, since I
was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I mean I was quite taken back at how compact
thrilling world is. I mean, it's amazing what you managed
to pack into it. She's a five point one meter
sleep Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
An imperial that's just under seventeen feet. Yeah, so it's tiny.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Cozy.
Speaker 8 (18:48):
Cozy is a nice way to put it.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Francesca, how do you prepare for a journey like that?
Speaker 7 (18:54):
Well, it was about five years of accumulating everything. You know,
you have to mitigate for all sorts of possibilities.
Speaker 8 (19:01):
So it's a lot.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
It was expensive, you know, well it was expensive to
me about thirty thousand dollars worth of stuff that was
on board, you know, life rafts, a lot of freeze
dried food because weight's a big issue, you know, you
can't take canned food or normal stuff no refrigeration.
Speaker 8 (19:18):
So and water.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
I had to take a water maker with me because
you get the weight of water. You can't act fresh water.
You can't actually have enough, you know, to start with.
Although I had two hundred liters on board, but that's
not going to get you around the world, you know.
So there was a lot of preparation, you know, a
spear kitset mast, basically every eventuality you know, you had
(19:41):
to think about. Then you've got you know, your vitamin pills.
You've got am I going to get toothache?
Speaker 8 (19:46):
You know?
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Have I got enough toothpaste? Am I bringing enough toothbrushes?
You know, sun block? You know, toilet paper.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
There's quite a lot to think about, it is.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I noticed that Country Cuisine provided you with fourteen months
of free drive food. I mean, that's that's just that
takes up a lot of space, doesn't it.
Speaker 8 (20:05):
It sure does.
Speaker 7 (20:05):
Yeah, at cost I made. Yeah, it's amazing how you
can pack it down. Yeah, basically one month packed down
into about the size of a pillowcase.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 7 (20:18):
Well, because I absolutely, you know, strap it all up
in plastic. You know, it looks that, you know, it
looks like a big bale of contraband. Really, but I
had fourteen of those on board, so you know, it
was she was The boat was absolutely choker.
Speaker 8 (20:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
What did it feel like to sail out of Auckland,
or maybe what did it feel like to sort of
see the the East Cape disappear in the distance.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
Yeah, a bit melancholy when you know that your ambition
is to go away and you know, for such a
long time to start with, you know, sort of waving
goodbye to friends who were up on north Head there,
sort of watch on a nice hot summer's afternoon watching
watching you go. I sort of felt it from their perspective,
you know. But I was excited because this was the
(21:03):
culmination of a lot of planning, you know, and I
was totally fixated on just sailing east and keep going
east east east, you know, for a year.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
So how do you pass the time?
Speaker 7 (21:15):
Well, most of the time you're occupied with focusing on sailing.
So because you haven't got you know, an engine that
you're allowed to use, because it was about a sailing record,
you've just got to keep that boat moving fast, as
fast as possible, and of course, you know, being that small,
you know, fast as six knots, but average is about
(21:37):
three or four knots, you know, in reality. So I
was doing about ninety miles a day, which was really
good going because the wind was behind me and it
was you know, I was quite pleased about that. But
most of the time the boat's sailing itself, so it's
got a wind vane self steering system. So a lot
of the time I'd just be lying in bed. It's
not really a bed, is it, But I'm inside reading
(21:58):
my kindle or you know, at night you could get
radio reception and I used to, you know, listen to
Bruce Russell. He was there in the evening sometimes when
I had radio reception. And then the further away you
get from New Zealand, obviously you start picking up other
countries radios. But you know, really your whole focus is
on the speed of the boat.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
How long does it sort of take you to get
into that rhythm, Andrew, because I imagine it becomes quite repetitive.
But I imagine you sort of just have to take it.
Speaker 7 (22:27):
Takes a few days, and also I get seasick, you
know when I start okay, Like you've got to get
used to the motion. It takes a few days, but
then after about a week it just becomes timeless because
you know, there's there's there aren't the normal reference points
that you have in your life on land, you know.
So it's all about and you're also because you're by
yourself all the time, you're just and you're tuned into
(22:50):
what the wind's doing and how and you can hear
by the sound of the water outside how fast you're going,
you know, and so you're just trying to keep that
boat sailing as quickly as possible. So you know, you
are occupied, you know, but just in a in a
different way.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
What does the solitude do to a person.
Speaker 7 (23:10):
It depends on who the person is. I like it,
you know, I don't have any issue with it. Whatso
we have and solitude is the right word. It's not loneliness.
It is solitude. But I you know, i'd be there
right now, Francesca if I could by myself out in
the middle of nowhere. It's just something that some people
gravitate towards. And again it's because of the sailing. I
(23:30):
wouldn't want to be motoring, you know, having which I
do in my professional life a lot. Now, you know,
it's the sound of engine noise and all that sort
of stuff, But when you're sailing, it's it's it's it's
a different frequencies that you're listening to, and it's a
different feeling.
Speaker 8 (23:46):
You know.
Speaker 7 (23:46):
It's like when a boat is sailing itself. It's quite
a magnificent feeling just being inside or being on deck
and watching the boat sailing itself.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Is that essentially what you love about endurance sailing?
Speaker 8 (23:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (23:58):
Absolutely, yeah, And endurance sailing is the correct well done.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I read the book, I learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Look, you were experienced some heavy gales and that led
to the really the end of the bedroom sailing, didn't it.
Can you tell us what happened to the boat in
those gales?
Speaker 8 (24:15):
Yeah, So essentially.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
The boat got beaten up quite badly, but it was
nothing that I wasn't expecting, except we did have quite
a bad run. So I got halfway to South America
Cape Horn, which is about two and a half thousand
miles across the Pacific, and on the way there we
had gale after gale, you know, storm, you know, big big,
(24:38):
you know, eight meter sometimes ten meter breaking waves. But
it was again, it was anticipated, and that was part
of the excitement that I was looking for. And also
just to have a look at what it's like down there.
You know, we're talking the northern edge of the Southern
Ocean around about forty two degrees south, you know, so
that's only sort of like christ Church sort of timrou
that's latitude, you know.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
So yeah, it's it's great.
Speaker 7 (25:03):
What was a question again, Oh what happened to the boat?
Oh yeah, okay, damage, Yeah, we got damaged. We got
damaged big time. Basically the boat kept getting smashed by
these big breaking cross seas. So what happens is that
the wind always shifts. It's exactly the same as here
we are in New Zealand, where a gale, a depression
as we call them, a low pressure system traveling around
(25:25):
the globe in the Southern Ocean will the leading edge
will come in with a northwesterly wind. That wind will
back to the west and then to the southwest, and
as it backs you get a leftover cross swell, and
the leftover cross wells keeped on smashing into the boat
and filling up the copit. But you know, big, heavy,
substantial blows, and because the boat was so heavy, because
(25:47):
it was full of you know, fourteen months with float,
a lot of food and everything else, and it basically
cracked what we call the ski the boat. Underneath the boat,
you've got a keel, and you've got a rudder, and
this boat has a or had a skek, which is
which provides what we call directional stability, keeps it sort
of tracking in a straight line. So the glue line
(26:09):
on the skeg, at some stage, quite a few weeks
I think, before it came off, it broke and then
the skeg worked and I could hear these sort of
grunching noises. But I was being a bit delusional, thinking
that everything was okay, might just go away, yeah, and
I didn't. So this gg broke off, and then the
boat was incapacitated.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
And I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, and you're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 8 (26:32):
Yeah, pretty much?
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Is that overwhelming?
Speaker 7 (26:35):
Not really, because I was still floating so the boat
started taking on water, you know, sort of ten to
fifteen liters a day, you know, which isn't bad because
I'm still there. So I'm sponging it out, I'm bucketing
it out over the side, so I'm still I still
felt in control. But once the boat wouldn't steer itself,
I knew I couldn't carry on and I had to
(26:56):
go somewhere else to make a new skig to repair it.
So the nearest land was one thousand miles north of me,
which was Pitcairn Pitkern Island, and so I decided to
sail up there, aim for there. So until you know,
so without a skig, the boat's still floating and you're
still functioning, but you have to handsteer all the time,
(27:17):
which when you're by yourself, you know, it's not a
very good option.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
You used an interesting expression in the book called you
know that you were now sort of negative sailing?
Speaker 8 (27:28):
Yeah? Was it negative attitudes?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, it just it was a great way of sort
of summing it up where all of a sudden it
had I presume your minds being challenged as to how
to deal with the situation and stay positive.
Speaker 7 (27:41):
And I think, yeah, what I what I enjoyed or
not what I didn't enjoy it at all. But what
I found within myself was that one has a capacity
to cope, you know, when things go wrong like that.
To me, it was I just had to look at
what was the next thing I had to do to
achieve my objective, you know. So it wasn't really about
(28:02):
freaking out. It was just about adapting to a new
set of circumstance answers, you know, another form of.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Bad Andrew it wasn't a good outcome, No, you had
to abandon an unfortunate outcome. And it was an unfortunate outcome.
You had to abandon swearly. And I mean, these are
amazing chapters in the book. You're just going to love
reading the story. But by this stage when it comes
to abandoning having to make that decision, as a reader,
(28:29):
I was really invested in this journey and also really
invested in this yacht that you'd had for thirty seven years.
I mean I was devastated reading this process that you
had to go through and everything. What was it like
for you to abandon Swoarly.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
Well again, at the time and the heat of the moment,
it came down to self preservation. So I sort of
put to one side the melancholy feelings and just had
to get on with what was the next problem I
had to solve, essentially, And it didn't really kind of
dawn on me the normalmity of it until I had
(29:08):
been inverted commas rescued.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, so how easy is it to be plucked out
of the ocean by a container ship?
Speaker 8 (29:15):
Yeah, well it wasn't good. Yeah it was.
Speaker 7 (29:17):
It was the most dangerous part of the whole voyage.
And I mean, you know it was it was It
wasn't a foregone conclusion that I would get away with it.
Speaker 8 (29:26):
Put it that way, you know.
Speaker 7 (29:27):
So, so essentially what happened after the skig broke off,
I was trying to sail to pick Ken Island and
then then the rudders snapped off because that must have
got fatigued as well, So then I was completely incapacitated.
And then it was like, well, what are you going
to do? Well in the old days if you weren't
talking to anyone, because I was talking because I had
a satellite text, you know, thing, letting people know what's
going on. If you weren't talking to people, you just
(29:48):
would have drifted for three months until you hit South America.
And I could have done that because I had all
the food and water. I would have kept bailing the
boat out. But these days it's not quite like that.
You know, when search and rescue find out that you're
in trouble, it's a red flag and they want to
save you, you know. So a three hundred meter container
ship turned up diverted unfortunately and for them, and you know,
(30:10):
Lord of the Sea came and saved me. And I
had to get onto that in the in the night,
and it was just up to me to get on board.
So I had to get my sailing boat alongside. And
there was a big sea running and the boat, you know,
it's a ply withoud little plywood boat, you know, sheathed
and fiberglass, but that's not not doesn't make much difference,
(30:31):
and the boat was like being thrown against the side
of this steel containership like a tennis.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Ball, because there was quite a big sea store running.
Speaker 7 (30:39):
So it was very difficult and I had to basically
the crew were English as a second language, so the
communication was difficult and I had to essentially just leap
for a rope ladder that was dangling down the side
of this ship.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
Just picked my moment and make sure I held on
and held on.
Speaker 7 (30:57):
So that was you know that that was quite a
challenge really at the time.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Andrew is swearly replaceable? Will you would you like to
give this another guy?
Speaker 7 (31:06):
I'd like to give it another go. But I looked into,
you know, replacing the boat. But it's very expensive, you know.
I think, you know, if I, if I, if I
had a wish list or you know, one lotto, I'd
probably get an aluminium version made, you know, but it's
a it's at least seventy thousand dollars, you know. And
then I started it makes you think, well, you know,
(31:26):
why was I doing you would you want to do
it in that boat again? And I was really only
doing it in that boat because that's the boat I've had,
you know for thirty seven years and done a lot
of sailing in New and yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
I loved Hey, look really quickly before you go.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I know that you've been working a lot sort of
as a as a commercial master captain and things like that.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Is that the world that you're in these days? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (31:48):
Yeah, I'm a marine, Yeah, I work in marine. What
do you call it marine construction. I work on tugs
and things, and we tow barges up and down the coast,
that kind of stuff, and I do all sorts of
roles really, you know a lot of deck work too.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
No, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And of course you'd worked on pitt Can Island as well,
making the supply ships and tourist ships up there, and
that's also in this book as well, which adds another
whole dimension to the story. Hey, thank you so much
for joining us. It's an incredible tale and it's beautifully told.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday session. Great
chats with Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks
at b.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
SO Adventure Sailing. I think it's for you.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I know that Andrew Fagan is known to many as
a musician and the lead singer for the Mockers, but
I really enjoyed getting to know another side to Andrew Fagan.
He is also a beautiful writer and you don't have
to love sailing to enjoy his books. So check them out.
And now for something different. Award winning author Maureen Callahan
(32:54):
wrote one of the most contentious Books of the Year.
It's called Ask Not the Kennedy's and the Women They Destroyed.
We talked about the Kennedy legacy and where the family
now in the political arena. Please note this chat took
place before Trump was elected and Robert F. Kennedy nominated
to be his Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
(33:16):
We started by talking about how difficult it is to
write about the Kennedy family. You speak about how the
Kennedys have been able to assert their influence in order
to control their own narrative, to control their own story,
and over the decades they have definitely tried to quieten
those who offer a different perspective. So my first question
(33:40):
to you is did anyone try to influence you or
or stop for this book.
Speaker 9 (33:46):
Well, not in the way you might think.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
I actually had trouble with my publisher. My previous book
had done very very well for them, it actually still
does very well for them, and they said to me,
whatever you want to do next, we're going to publish it.
I said, great, here's what I'm going to do next,
and they vanished. They went quiet. We later found out
(34:12):
they were cutting a backroom deal with Kennedy cousin Maria
Shriver to give her her own imprint. Flash forward to now,
and I've been told that major American news networks, outlets,
what have.
Speaker 9 (34:29):
You, will not be touching this book.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
They don't want to upset the Kennedys, or they employ Kennedy's,
or they don't want to have a hand in what
they would see as ratifying a book like this that
is actually telling the truth about these women and what
was done to them. But nonetheless, the book has really thrived,
and I think that is a testament to the stories
(34:54):
of these women and their power and the resonance they're having.
I'm hearing from readers all the time and it's just
having a life, which is great.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
People open to talking to you about the Kennedy women
and men for that matter. It was there were a
bit of a sense amongst people who know them or
knew them that actually, now is the time to tell
these stories.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
Yeah, for the most part, Yes, Carolyn Bessett's friends, who
had long had like this cone of silence, decided now
was time to talk. Uh, let's see Mary Jokapackney's family
spoke with me. Martha Maxley's Mary Richardson, who committed suicide.
(35:41):
She was married to Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Her lawyer
spoke to me, her psychotherapist spoke to me, a very
good friend spoke to me, and they all said they
felt it was very important that the American people know
who they were dealing with when it came to RFK Junior.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
And look, I'll touch on that now because I and
the last story I heard Maureen was some crazy story
about finding a beer cab on the side of the road,
bringing it to New York, putting it in Central Park
under a bicycle. And I was sort of listening to this, going, oh,
my goodness, this is just crazy, and I was thinking
to myself, how far have the Kennedy's fallen?
Speaker 9 (36:23):
How far? Indeed? But this is the thing, Francesca.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
People have been rightly very upset and disturbed by RFK
Junior's treatment of wild animals, which is I think quite sick.
But when it comes to the wife who he gaslet, tormented,
drove to suicide, in my opinion, buried with great fanfare
(36:49):
up in the Kennedy family plot, and then one week later,
secretly and without the proper permitting, had her coffin disinterred
in the middle of the night and had her coffin
reburied seven hundred feet away on the side of a
hill alone. He's still is unbothered by questions about what
(37:09):
he did to his ex wife and what it is
he really.
Speaker 9 (37:11):
Thinks of women.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Since we're talking about Mary Richardson Kennedy, it's a good time,
I think to ask the question, what does it mean
to be a Kennedy wife? And what is expected of them?
And I suppose what happens to them if they can't fulfill.
Speaker 6 (37:28):
Oh, it's such a great question, Francesca, and it's frankly,
it's brutal. I wrote ask not like a novel, because
these women. I wanted the readers to be in their
heads and their hearts as they go through these relationships
and experiences. One of my favorite examples of this, and
(37:50):
is the most one of the more recent ones, is
Carolyn Bassett, who when she married JFK. Junior, the entire
world coronated her as America's next Princess. She had won
the prize, she had landed the white whale of Bachelor's
and she gets behind the curtain and it's a freaking misery.
(38:14):
Not only is he lazy, not bright, entitled, never coming
home when he says he's coming home. But this guy
has a death wish that I can't think of anybody
else who comes to mind. Who is that prominent who
nearly not only lost his life multiple times, but had
a habit of bullying the women in his life to
(38:36):
come along with him on these reckless adventures. Just a
little tidbit for your audience, and a hint of just
the level of detail that is in us.
Speaker 9 (38:47):
Not on the night JFK Junior crashed that.
Speaker 6 (38:51):
Flight, that plane, killing him, his wife and her sister,
he almost crashed into a packed American Airlines commercial jetliner
making its descent to JFK International Airport in New York.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
You know, you have to ask yourself the question. It
was a misery for so many of them, so why
did they stay?
Speaker 6 (39:14):
You know, it's like golden handcuffs, you know, the jobs
that people You get a nice paycheck and you're miserable,
but you can't break free of it. These women find
themselves living in an alternate reality. And Jackie would often
say this, like she would look at the coverage of
herself in tabloids and say, like, let's see what she's
(39:37):
up to today because that wasn't her. But there's something
that is conferred upon you when you marry in Alpha Kennedy.
You must be the most beautiful, the smartest, the most charismatic.
And often these women are indeed that. But what the
Kennedy men and the Kennedy machine like to do is
(40:00):
strip the women of their power, of their greatness. It
seems too evoke a seething resentment in them. You know,
it's it is. It is a lonely club, that of
the Kennedy wives.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
When it comes to how they treated the women, I
thought you came up with a really simple but very
good description of it. And you see that they just
after thoughts. They just treated them like afterthoughts.
Speaker 9 (40:29):
They really did.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
They unless you need them for campaigning or you know,
like one of the great things I learned about the
Kennedy men, especially in the middle of the last American century,
was how much they relied on women's mass media to
domesticate themselves for the female voter. It's like, so, so
(40:51):
the wives are are really important, they're they're key players.
But when they begin to assert their own needs and
wants or maybe even their own independence, that's when they
become inconvenient, and that's when they have to be done
a way.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
With a lot of names that we will know in
this book and be very familiar with, but there are
also a few that might not be so familiar.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Wondering if you can tell us a little bit about
Mimi and Diana.
Speaker 9 (41:19):
Oh, my God, Mimi and Diana.
Speaker 6 (41:22):
Well, Mimi was a nineteen year old virgin when she
started working in the secretarial pool of JFK's White House,
and at the end of her first day, she finds
herself invited up to the private residence where she served
a bunch of dakris. The President of the United States
(41:42):
appears at her side, invites her for a tour, throws
her down on Jackie's bed. Jackie's away. Within three minutes,
he's taken her virginity. She still does not know how
to describe this. I would describe it as rape. Three
days later, she's back in the White House and is
(42:03):
now invited to join the President for one of his
afternoon and swims in the White House pool, at which
point JFK says to Mimi, you need to go relax,
my aid sitting at the lip of the pool and
Mimi knows what this means, and to her great shame,
she goes and performs oral sex on this guy while
JFK silently watches. This stuff needs to be part of
(42:28):
our reconsideration of JFK's presidency and the family on the whole.
Speaker 9 (42:34):
I strongly believe.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
You actually begin to wonder morrying when he got any
work done? In between the swims and the sex, and
the holidays and the sleeps and everything.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
You got left going? Did he do any work?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
The book doesn't just give voice to the women in
these men's lives, but it speaks to the character of
these Kennedy men, and there have been so many myths
and so many sort of generalized perceptions about them. I
think over the years, did you discover anything new or
reveal you know? Were you surprised by what you sort
of who will discover it?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
About the mean?
Speaker 6 (43:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (43:11):
I was, I was. I was.
Speaker 6 (43:14):
I was surprised by JFK Junior's callousness and his what
I really think was a level of rage towards women.
Speaker 9 (43:24):
I was.
Speaker 6 (43:25):
I was surprised by the sadism frankly exhibited by both
JFK and his brother Robert F.
Speaker 9 (43:33):
Kennedy. And that really is most visible in the Marilyn
Monroe chapters.
Speaker 6 (43:40):
They treated her, they were they basically were out to
destroy her. They were both involved with her sexually. At
the same time. In writing the chapters about Joan Kennedy
and Mary, Jocobe Peckney the Kennedy man who links them
as Ted.
Speaker 9 (43:57):
And you know, while I was writing.
Speaker 6 (43:59):
This book, these doorstopper biographies were coming out in America
about Ted Kennedy, with these hyperbolic titles like catching the
wind against the wind, I'm sorry, this is a man
who left a twenty nine year old woman to die
in three feet of water. She died a slow, agonizing,
wholly preventable death. She could have been saved. In the book,
(44:21):
there is also a very vivid scene of Ted violently
sexually assaulting a waitress at a very popular DC establishment
in broad daylight.
Speaker 9 (44:31):
And we are lionizing this man to this day. Are
you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (44:36):
What is the Kennedy legacy now? Has it changed over time?
Is the family still thought of as a sort of
a political pass center in America?
Speaker 9 (44:48):
You know, when I began writing this book, I did
think so.
Speaker 6 (44:51):
And I think there's a very interesting confluence happening right now,
and I'm very humble and proud to be a part
of it. This book which is opening up a lot
of eyes, and this sad, sham bolic, depressing presidential campaign
being run by Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who was putting
(45:14):
that it couldn't happen to a better legacy. It's being
eaten by its own tail, putting the nail in the
coffin of this supposed greatness. We are now seeing fully
this family getting it's just desserts.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
I also just want to mention before we finished, Maureene,
you know, the one thing I really enjoyed about the
book is that you make the point there is no
perfect victim, Like you're not painting, you're not trying to
portray the women in anything more than who they really were,
and that's not necessarily always a victim will always positive.
And I appreciated that there was a great balance to
the book.
Speaker 9 (45:51):
Thanks Francesca. I mean, I'll say it was really helped.
Speaker 6 (45:54):
By weirdly, or maybe not, when Harvey Weinstein was convicted
of rape in New York. That was a really bracing
moment because he was found guilty by a jury was
composed of more men than women by a jury that
heard very complicated testimony from women who were alleging brutal
(46:14):
rate and then admitting that afterward they had maintained friendly
relationships with Harvey. And I thought, oh my God, like
the culture, we have grown up, we are mature, we
are ready for these stories of these women. And they
get to be complicated and messy and sometimes unlikable. They
get to be greedy and to want fame and money,
(46:36):
but that doesn't mean that they deserved any of what
happened to them.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
The best guess from the Sunday session Great Jazz with
Francisca Rudget on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks It'd.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Be That was Maureen Callaghan, author of the book Ask
Not the Kennedys and the women they destroyed. It's going
to be very interesting moving forward to see how Robert F.
Kennedy contributes to this legacy. Hey, thanks for joining me
on this News Talks it'd Be podcast. Please feel free
to share these chats and if you like the podcast,
to make sure you follow us on iHeart. If you
get your podcasts, don't forget. We're releasing two new ips
(47:09):
a week Mondays and Fridays throughout summer. O k T
next time on Great Chests.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB. The big names, the fascinating guests,
the thoughtful conversations, bringing you the best interviews from the
Sunday Session. This is Great Chats with Francesca Rudkin, empowered
(00:27):
by News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Hello and welcome to the summer edition of Great Chats.
I'm Francesca Rudkin, and in this podcast we bring you
some of the best feature interviews from the Sunday Session
on News Talks V throughout twenty twenty four. Now we
ended the year on a bit of a high. On
the Sunday Session. One of my final interviews was with
superstar Robbie Williams. Love him or hate him, there is
no doubt he was is one of the biggest pop
(00:50):
stars in the world, and we got together to talk
about the film Better Man, based on his life, which
has just been released and I absolutely loved it, so surprise, surprise,
I started off the chat with gushing this is Angels
by the one and only Robbie Williams. You know, there
was a time of my life I didn't want to
ever hear this song again.
Speaker 3 (01:09):
It just seemed to be.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Absolutely everywhere, and I sat in this film. This version
of the song is from Robbie's new film, and I
sat watching this film and I sung every word anyway.
The movie sees Robbie played by a Cgichimp. It tells
his life story from his childhoods through to take that
and his solo career, and it doesn't shy away from
the dark side of fame. It's brutally honest, including his
(01:33):
use of drugs and his bad star behavior. The film
it's called Better Man.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
I'm Robbie Williams.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
I'm one of the biggest pop stars in the world.
This is my story, but I'm not going to tell
it in an ordinary way because I don't see my
self holt of the semi in the next two hours.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Your house is life, to be honest, I've always been
a little lass Stivolt of rags. So let's take it
from the top, shall we. I am absolutely delighted to
have Robbie with me. Robbie Williams, good morning.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
Good morning, Donnin How are you.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
I'm very good, thank you. You could tell why.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
The trailer of this film and the artwork that it
was going to be a little bit different, but I
really did not know what to expect and whether it
would work. But I loved it. I laughed, I cried.
I left the cinema with this huge smile on my face.
Are you happy with it?
Speaker 4 (02:35):
I am over the moon. I can't believe.
Speaker 5 (02:40):
I mean, I can't believe the final finished thing. And
I am overwhelmed by the response that it's having.
Speaker 4 (02:49):
Because the first.
Speaker 5 (02:50):
Time I saw it, I was like, this is mind blowing.
It's absolutely incredible. But then I was like, oh, well,
I'm gone because I am prone to ego and narcissism.
Maybe I just think it's the best thing I've ever
seen because it's about me. And then and then I
was like, oh no, what if it's a turd?
Speaker 4 (03:12):
And I just don't know.
Speaker 5 (03:14):
But then you know, people like your good self have
been to see it and saying really positive things about it,
And then lots of people are going back to watch
it for a second and third time.
Speaker 4 (03:24):
It's not even out yet.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
I need to go back and watch it again. Because
of course, we saw it as an advanced screening in
order to talk to you, And there were five of
us in the cinema and all of us we're trying
to hold back, just sort of singing along and getting involved.
I think it'll be a fantastic experience with it with
a big crowd.
Speaker 5 (03:42):
Yeah, I especially in the rock DJ sequence. When I've
watched it. I think I've seen the film like ten
times now because of premieres and screeners with people and
showing people like your good self. And I do notice
that when rock DJ's on, I'm rocking out in the chair,
(04:05):
and then I look around the city and I seem
to be the only person that's rocking out this much.
Once again, narcissism.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Have you stopped crying when you watch it?
Speaker 4 (04:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (04:18):
Yeah, yeah, But that doesn't mean that the tears have
stopped stopped. They could reappear, and I'm sure that they
will at any time. I'm now on a whistle stop
tour of different countries doing premieres, and I did notice
that in Canada. I started to cry at TIFF the
(04:40):
Toronto International Film Festival at the end of the movie,
and then I had to do a Q and A
and I couldn't do the Q and A because I
couldn't talk.
Speaker 4 (04:49):
And then I thought to myself, oh no, I.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Can't do this at every screening and every premiere, I
can't be broken man crying at own life story like
but like in that one particular moment, paramount in particular.
More tears, more tears. Promote the film, Promote the film.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
How did how did Sorry Robbie? How did the project
come to be? How did you meet Michael Gracie?
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I met Michael Gracie at a party of a mutual
friend of ours, and instantly that loved him, got on
with him really well, and he was just like wow,
he pitched me a movie, not for me to do
anything to it, but it was just telling me the
movie that he was.
Speaker 6 (05:39):
Doing.
Speaker 5 (05:40):
And he pitched it so well and told the stories
so well that I instantly wanted to see the movie
as soon as the last sentence of his stopped. And
then he asked me for a favor. And he came
round to my house and he said, I need a
favor from you, and I'm like anything, mate, And he said,
(06:01):
I'm doing this film. It's called the Greatest Showman. And instantly,
because of narcissism, I think he's going to ask me
to be the lead in it. And he plays me
one song and it's mind blowing. This is me, and
then he plays me another song and I'm just I'm.
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Just like, oh my god, Oh my god.
Speaker 5 (06:20):
And then he shows me the the hand drawn sequences
of the film and I'm like, yes, yes, big break
in Hollywood here I come.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
Just ask me. I'm in.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
And he goes and here's the favor And I say,
what anything, mate, And he goes, will you ring Hugh
Jackman and convince him to be the lead in the
movie Restfallen?
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Yeah, and you did it.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Yeah, I did it.
Speaker 5 (06:45):
I did it, and I helped to make that movie
a reality.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
So he's very kindly come the circle has been completed.
Speaker 4 (06:55):
Oh he's made it up.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah. Whose idea was it?
Speaker 2 (06:58):
To have you portrayed as a CDI monkey throughout the film?
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Michael's idea. Michael's brilliant idea. I think the thing is
with biopics. Now we've seen them, we know the format,
it's long, we're getting a bit bored. And he understood
that we needed a usp a unique selling point.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
And boy did he come up with one.
Speaker 5 (07:26):
Then he needed to convince people with money to put
money behind this idea, and my god, they are insane,
and God bless them that there is still people on
the planet that exist that go, yeah, let's do this.
Whoever they are, I wish i'd have parted with them
in the nineties.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I think we'd have had fun.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
So did that idea resonate with you that you were
sort of this performing monkey, you know, throughout part of
your career, which is is that why it resonated with you?
Speaker 4 (07:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (07:59):
Yeah, it just resonated as an idea because it's surreal
and eccentric and unusual. And go going forward, I want
that to be my m O. I want to be unusual.
I want to do unusual things because I've kind of
been chasing the past for the last ten years, and
in chasing the past, I've become.
Speaker 4 (08:19):
A bit vanilla. And I never was, you know, I
never was.
Speaker 5 (08:22):
I had I had ideas that were unusual, and you
know they're they're they're like the rock DJ video or whatever.
The way I say things or the way I present myself.
And yeah, and the documentary me in bed in my underpants.
I don't know if anybody's seen it, but I did
a documentary I was in bed in my underpants unusual.
(08:43):
Going forward, I'd like to carry on with this trait.
And this is a huge, grandiose, unusual swing that we're having,
and so far, so good, but it's.
Speaker 4 (08:54):
Not out yet.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
We all know you as the great entertainer, the singer
songwriter who's got it, and you talk about that it
a little bit in the film. But this sort of
takes you behind the person, doesn't it. It shows a
vulnerable young man, an insecure young man who was world
famous at twenty one, as you say, raging alcoholic and
addicted to coke.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
How important was you to you? The story was told?
Speaker 4 (09:20):
So?
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Honestly, I try my best to live a very authentic
life with and shine the light hopefully on my best bits,
and shine the lights on my worst bits too. People
seem to respond to authenticity, and I know that I
(09:42):
can wind people up as well, just by false bravado
or arrogance or you know, I think people can get
wound up by That's the thing is about it. You
have to shine it and believe that you have it
somewhere in you to transcend and project it. And when
(10:05):
you are projecting it's lots of people, including myself.
Speaker 4 (10:09):
If I wasn't me would be going turn it off
now bed. Were you all get it? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Were you all it'd all worried about being judged by
being so honest. I mean, I love it. If you weren't,
it wouldn't work. This thing wouldn't work.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
So I've been judged well, I've been judged well, so
not so much in the nineties and early two thousands.
You can't say I'm I'm mentally ill in ninety In
nineteen ninety nine or two thousand and three, you can't
say that I'm on antidepressants, because what on earth have
you got to be sad for, you know? And that
(10:47):
was a moment that I went further into my shell
and felt shame and felt isolated. But you know, it
wasn't It wasn't momentary sadness. This was a genetic mental
illness that has been passed down probably for centuries. And
(11:12):
now I am lauded for things, for saying things that
I used to be derided for. But it also happens
to be I'm at the other end of the arc.
I'm at the other end of the story. I'm talking
about what was and not what is, and I think
that helps.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
You're talking the film about how you lost yourself, and
I'm quite intrigued talking to people about this because fame
is a mystery to most of us.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
How does that happen? What is it about?
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Is it about that you're suddenly treated differently, that people
expect you to perform a certain way or be a
certain way, or how do you what does it feel
like to kind.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Of lose yourself?
Speaker 5 (12:01):
I I I do you know what? I'm as baffled.
I'm as baffled. I wrote this thing the other day.
I'm as baffled about what fame is myself. Suppose I'm
going to be asked what it is that makes the
boys in the band sick?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
Or maybe I won't.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
I guess we all think, well, it's all the things,
isn't it, without understanding what the things are? To be honest,
I'm not sure I totally understand what it is either,
and I was there. I'd really like a scientific breakdown
for the layman. Why do we become fractured when introduced
to fame? We all have these theories based on presumptions
(12:41):
that we don't really know are true. Overbearing workload, that's
a given, no one there to say no for you,
and no one to fully understand when no should be
the answer. Also a given, no one asking if you're okay,
and often no one listening when you're trying to say
you're not okay, and you yourself not recognizing you are
not okay. But what about all the other things? What
(13:03):
about friends, family, and the people locally who have become
a custom to you not being something big on the tally?
And then I go on and on and on. I
don't understand what it is myself. I just know that
you it's look, I took acid when I was fifteen.
I shouldn't have taken acid when I was fifteen. Fame
(13:24):
is very much like acid. It's like a drug. And
I don't mean addictive, like ooh, I've got to have more.
I mean like a psychedelic experience without the good bits.
It is a psychedelic experience that you don't know that
you're having because you haven't ingested anything or snorted anything.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
You're just on the tally.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
No, it's fascinating, isn't it. I think you do some
of that beautifully. I just want to touch on something
else that was in the film, which I was intrigued
by Guy Chambers, is that films, sorry, that songs.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
Are only valuable if they cost you something. What did
he mean?
Speaker 4 (14:07):
By that it's just a line in the movie.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
It's a good one, no way, it really is.
Speaker 4 (14:14):
It really is.
Speaker 5 (14:15):
And yeah, I can only speak from experience of what
I want to do when I when I'm trying to
write a song, I guess I'm exercising demons or was
And I wanted to explain myself when Michael Gracie says,
(14:37):
you know, in musicals we sing when words won't suffice,
And I guess that I needed to sing because words
had stopped having meaning and they weren't fixing anything. So
I guess, you know, my songs have cost me something.
(14:59):
I guess. I guess the adage is right. But it's
just a it's just a great line in the movie.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
It's a good line, Robert.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Just to finish up, this is very much a family
drama as well that documents the beautiful relationship you head
with your grandmother and your mother and the complex relationship
you head with your father. Has it been easy to
share that? Has it been quite a cathartic experience having
this sort of portraying on the film.
Speaker 5 (15:23):
No, not really, because I think my dad gets a
rough ride in the movie, and in many ways, I
don't think that's fair, but I can't argue with the
film as a piece. I'd like him to not watch it.
He hasn't yet. It's uncomfortable because there's lots of bits
(15:46):
of our history that we haven't talked about that and
right now, you know, with him having Parkinson's and not
being very well, it's all good.
Speaker 4 (15:56):
I love my dad. I just love my dad.
Speaker 5 (16:01):
I have no ill feeling towards him, and he was
better farther than how he's depicted in the film. Bob.
You know, feelings are how they felt, and it's not
his fault that, you know, his partner gave birth to
a son that was dramatically oversensitive.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
Thank you so much for your time and for the
movie is in absolute blast. I loved it.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Thank you, Francesca.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
The biggest names from the Sunday session great chats with
Franciska Rudkins on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks, it'd be.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
That was Robbie Williams.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
As you can imagine, it's quite hard to get access
to Robbie Williams, but we did. I did have to
be at work at two a m. To record the interview.
It was a pre record. I'm going to be honest,
I was sitting here in the dark inclosed that could
be mistaken for sleepwear, and I did think myself, oh
my gosh.
Speaker 3 (16:59):
This has a better be good.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
But it's Robbie Williams and he's a performer and he
was a delight and he didn't disappoint. If you haven't
seen the film Better Man, please do. It really is
a blast. It's a good time now. One of the
most enjoyable interviews I did this year was with Andrew Fagan.
I am endlessly fascinated by adventurers. In twenty twenty two,
(17:22):
Andrew Fagan set off in his five point one meter
sloop to attempt to set the record for the smallest
boat to sail around the world solo via the capes.
Here's my chat with Andrew. This is quite an adventure
and you have done quite a lot of solo sailing
before you headed off on this. But was it a
big leap to go from sailing back and forward to
(17:43):
Australia or to the sub antactic Auckland Islands. Was it
a big leap to go from that to circumnavigating the globe?
I imagine the Southern Ocean kind of prepared you a
bit for this.
Speaker 7 (17:56):
Yeah, it was a big leap, but it was also
something that I felt prepared for, you know, because I've
had the boat for thirty seven years. I've done a
lot of offshore sailing in it, you know, like you said,
Australia and down the sub aantactic organ island. So I
felt in my own mind that this was just a
logical step, and apart from the amount of time it
was going to take, which I thought was about, you know,
(18:18):
twelve a year. Really, you know, I had food and water,
food for fourteen months. But yeah, it was I felt
I was ready for it, and you know that I
aspired to sailing around the world, you know, since I
was a teenager.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I mean I was quite taken back at how compact
thrilling world is. I mean, it's amazing what you managed
to pack into it. She's a five point one meter
sleep Yeah, so that's.
Speaker 7 (18:43):
An imperial that's just under seventeen feet. Yeah, so it's tiny.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
Cozy.
Speaker 8 (18:48):
Cozy is a nice way to put it.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Francesca, how do you prepare for a journey like that?
Speaker 7 (18:54):
Well, it was about five years of accumulating everything. You know,
you have to mitigate for all sorts of possibilities.
Speaker 8 (19:01):
So it's a lot.
Speaker 7 (19:02):
It was expensive, you know, well it was expensive to
me about thirty thousand dollars worth of stuff that was
on board, you know, life rafts, a lot of freeze
dried food because weight's a big issue, you know, you
can't take canned food or normal stuff no refrigeration.
Speaker 8 (19:18):
So and water.
Speaker 7 (19:20):
I had to take a water maker with me because
you get the weight of water. You can't act fresh water.
You can't actually have enough, you know, to start with.
Although I had two hundred liters on board, but that's
not going to get you around the world, you know.
So there was a lot of preparation, you know, a
spear kitset mast, basically every eventuality you know, you had
(19:41):
to think about. Then you've got you know, your vitamin pills.
You've got am I going to get toothache?
Speaker 8 (19:46):
You know?
Speaker 7 (19:47):
Have I got enough toothpaste? Am I bringing enough toothbrushes?
You know, sun block? You know, toilet paper.
Speaker 3 (19:53):
There's quite a lot to think about, it is.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
I noticed that Country Cuisine provided you with fourteen months
of free drive food. I mean, that's that's just that
takes up a lot of space, doesn't it.
Speaker 8 (20:05):
It sure does.
Speaker 7 (20:05):
Yeah, at cost I made. Yeah, it's amazing how you
can pack it down. Yeah, basically one month packed down
into about the size of a pillowcase.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
That's pretty good.
Speaker 7 (20:18):
Well, because I absolutely, you know, strap it all up
in plastic. You know, it looks that, you know, it
looks like a big bale of contraband. Really, but I
had fourteen of those on board, so you know, it
was she was The boat was absolutely choker.
Speaker 8 (20:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:32):
What did it feel like to sail out of Auckland,
or maybe what did it feel like to sort of
see the the East Cape disappear in the distance.
Speaker 7 (20:41):
Yeah, a bit melancholy when you know that your ambition
is to go away and you know, for such a
long time to start with, you know, sort of waving
goodbye to friends who were up on north Head there,
sort of watch on a nice hot summer's afternoon watching
watching you go. I sort of felt it from their perspective,
you know. But I was excited because this was the
(21:03):
culmination of a lot of planning, you know, and I
was totally fixated on just sailing east and keep going
east east east, you know, for a year.
Speaker 3 (21:13):
So how do you pass the time?
Speaker 7 (21:15):
Well, most of the time you're occupied with focusing on sailing.
So because you haven't got you know, an engine that
you're allowed to use, because it was about a sailing record,
you've just got to keep that boat moving fast, as
fast as possible, and of course, you know, being that small,
you know, fast as six knots, but average is about
(21:37):
three or four knots, you know, in reality. So I
was doing about ninety miles a day, which was really
good going because the wind was behind me and it
was you know, I was quite pleased about that. But
most of the time the boat's sailing itself, so it's
got a wind vane self steering system. So a lot
of the time I'd just be lying in bed. It's
not really a bed, is it, But I'm inside reading
(21:58):
my kindle or you know, at night you could get
radio reception and I used to, you know, listen to
Bruce Russell. He was there in the evening sometimes when
I had radio reception. And then the further away you
get from New Zealand, obviously you start picking up other
countries radios. But you know, really your whole focus is
on the speed of the boat.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
How long does it sort of take you to get
into that rhythm, Andrew, because I imagine it becomes quite repetitive.
But I imagine you sort of just have to take it.
Speaker 7 (22:27):
Takes a few days, and also I get seasick, you
know when I start okay, Like you've got to get
used to the motion. It takes a few days, but
then after about a week it just becomes timeless because
you know, there's there's there aren't the normal reference points
that you have in your life on land, you know.
So it's all about and you're also because you're by
yourself all the time, you're just and you're tuned into
(22:50):
what the wind's doing and how and you can hear
by the sound of the water outside how fast you're going,
you know, and so you're just trying to keep that
boat sailing as quickly as possible. So you know, you
are occupied, you know, but just in a in a
different way.
Speaker 3 (23:06):
What does the solitude do to a person.
Speaker 7 (23:10):
It depends on who the person is. I like it,
you know, I don't have any issue with it. Whatso
we have and solitude is the right word. It's not loneliness.
It is solitude. But I you know, i'd be there
right now, Francesca if I could by myself out in
the middle of nowhere. It's just something that some people
gravitate towards. And again it's because of the sailing. I
(23:30):
wouldn't want to be motoring, you know, having which I
do in my professional life a lot. Now, you know,
it's the sound of engine noise and all that sort
of stuff, But when you're sailing, it's it's it's it's
a different frequencies that you're listening to, and it's a
different feeling.
Speaker 8 (23:46):
You know.
Speaker 7 (23:46):
It's like when a boat is sailing itself. It's quite
a magnificent feeling just being inside or being on deck
and watching the boat sailing itself.
Speaker 4 (23:55):
You know.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Is that essentially what you love about endurance sailing?
Speaker 8 (23:58):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (23:58):
Absolutely, yeah, And endurance sailing is the correct well done.
Speaker 3 (24:01):
I read the book, I learned a lot.
Speaker 2 (24:05):
Look, you were experienced some heavy gales and that led
to the really the end of the bedroom sailing, didn't it.
Can you tell us what happened to the boat in
those gales?
Speaker 8 (24:15):
Yeah, So essentially.
Speaker 7 (24:17):
The boat got beaten up quite badly, but it was
nothing that I wasn't expecting, except we did have quite
a bad run. So I got halfway to South America
Cape Horn, which is about two and a half thousand
miles across the Pacific, and on the way there we
had gale after gale, you know, storm, you know, big big,
(24:38):
you know, eight meter sometimes ten meter breaking waves. But
it was again, it was anticipated, and that was part
of the excitement that I was looking for. And also
just to have a look at what it's like down there.
You know, we're talking the northern edge of the Southern
Ocean around about forty two degrees south, you know, so
that's only sort of like christ Church sort of timrou
that's latitude, you know.
Speaker 8 (25:00):
So yeah, it's it's great.
Speaker 7 (25:03):
What was a question again, Oh what happened to the boat?
Oh yeah, okay, damage, Yeah, we got damaged. We got
damaged big time. Basically the boat kept getting smashed by
these big breaking cross seas. So what happens is that
the wind always shifts. It's exactly the same as here
we are in New Zealand, where a gale, a depression
as we call them, a low pressure system traveling around
(25:25):
the globe in the Southern Ocean will the leading edge
will come in with a northwesterly wind. That wind will
back to the west and then to the southwest, and
as it backs you get a leftover cross swell, and
the leftover cross wells keeped on smashing into the boat
and filling up the copit. But you know, big, heavy,
substantial blows, and because the boat was so heavy, because
(25:47):
it was full of you know, fourteen months with float,
a lot of food and everything else, and it basically
cracked what we call the ski the boat. Underneath the boat,
you've got a keel, and you've got a rudder, and
this boat has a or had a skek, which is
which provides what we call directional stability, keeps it sort
of tracking in a straight line. So the glue line
(26:09):
on the skeg, at some stage, quite a few weeks
I think, before it came off, it broke and then
the skeg worked and I could hear these sort of
grunching noises. But I was being a bit delusional, thinking
that everything was okay, might just go away, yeah, and
I didn't. So this gg broke off, and then the
boat was incapacitated.
Speaker 8 (26:28):
And I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
Yeah, and you're in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 8 (26:32):
Yeah, pretty much?
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Is that overwhelming?
Speaker 7 (26:35):
Not really, because I was still floating so the boat
started taking on water, you know, sort of ten to
fifteen liters a day, you know, which isn't bad because
I'm still there. So I'm sponging it out, I'm bucketing
it out over the side, so I'm still I still
felt in control. But once the boat wouldn't steer itself,
I knew I couldn't carry on and I had to
(26:56):
go somewhere else to make a new skig to repair it.
So the nearest land was one thousand miles north of me,
which was Pitcairn Pitkern Island, and so I decided to
sail up there, aim for there. So until you know,
so without a skig, the boat's still floating and you're
still functioning, but you have to handsteer all the time,
(27:17):
which when you're by yourself, you know, it's not a
very good option.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
You used an interesting expression in the book called you
know that you were now sort of negative sailing?
Speaker 8 (27:28):
Yeah? Was it negative attitudes?
Speaker 4 (27:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (27:30):
Yeah, it just it was a great way of sort
of summing it up where all of a sudden it
had I presume your minds being challenged as to how
to deal with the situation and stay positive.
Speaker 7 (27:41):
And I think, yeah, what I what I enjoyed or
not what I didn't enjoy it at all. But what
I found within myself was that one has a capacity
to cope, you know, when things go wrong like that.
To me, it was I just had to look at
what was the next thing I had to do to
achieve my objective, you know. So it wasn't really about
(28:02):
freaking out. It was just about adapting to a new
set of circumstance answers, you know, another form of.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
Bad Andrew it wasn't a good outcome, No, you had
to abandon an unfortunate outcome. And it was an unfortunate outcome.
You had to abandon swearly. And I mean, these are
amazing chapters in the book. You're just going to love
reading the story. But by this stage when it comes
to abandoning having to make that decision, as a reader,
(28:29):
I was really invested in this journey and also really
invested in this yacht that you'd had for thirty seven years.
I mean I was devastated reading this process that you
had to go through and everything. What was it like
for you to abandon Swoarly.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
Well again, at the time and the heat of the moment,
it came down to self preservation. So I sort of
put to one side the melancholy feelings and just had
to get on with what was the next problem I
had to solve, essentially, And it didn't really kind of
dawn on me the normalmity of it until I had
(29:08):
been inverted commas rescued.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, so how easy is it to be plucked out
of the ocean by a container ship?
Speaker 8 (29:15):
Yeah, well it wasn't good. Yeah it was.
Speaker 7 (29:17):
It was the most dangerous part of the whole voyage.
And I mean, you know it was it was It
wasn't a foregone conclusion that I would get away with it.
Speaker 8 (29:26):
Put it that way, you know.
Speaker 7 (29:27):
So, so essentially what happened after the skig broke off,
I was trying to sail to pick Ken Island and
then then the rudders snapped off because that must have
got fatigued as well, So then I was completely incapacitated.
And then it was like, well, what are you going
to do? Well in the old days if you weren't
talking to anyone, because I was talking because I had
a satellite text, you know, thing, letting people know what's
going on. If you weren't talking to people, you just
(29:48):
would have drifted for three months until you hit South America.
And I could have done that because I had all
the food and water. I would have kept bailing the
boat out. But these days it's not quite like that.
You know, when search and rescue find out that you're
in trouble, it's a red flag and they want to
save you, you know. So a three hundred meter container
ship turned up diverted unfortunately and for them, and you know,
(30:10):
Lord of the Sea came and saved me. And I
had to get onto that in the in the night,
and it was just up to me to get on board.
So I had to get my sailing boat alongside. And
there was a big sea running and the boat, you know,
it's a ply withoud little plywood boat, you know, sheathed
and fiberglass, but that's not not doesn't make much difference,
(30:31):
and the boat was like being thrown against the side
of this steel containership like a tennis.
Speaker 8 (30:36):
Ball, because there was quite a big sea store running.
Speaker 7 (30:39):
So it was very difficult and I had to basically
the crew were English as a second language, so the
communication was difficult and I had to essentially just leap
for a rope ladder that was dangling down the side
of this ship.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
Just picked my moment and make sure I held on
and held on.
Speaker 7 (30:57):
So that was you know that that was quite a
challenge really at the time.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Andrew is swearly replaceable? Will you would you like to
give this another guy?
Speaker 7 (31:06):
I'd like to give it another go. But I looked into,
you know, replacing the boat. But it's very expensive, you know.
I think, you know, if I, if I, if I
had a wish list or you know, one lotto, I'd
probably get an aluminium version made, you know, but it's
a it's at least seventy thousand dollars, you know. And
then I started it makes you think, well, you know,
(31:26):
why was I doing you would you want to do
it in that boat again? And I was really only
doing it in that boat because that's the boat I've had,
you know for thirty seven years and done a lot
of sailing in New and yeah, you know.
Speaker 3 (31:36):
I loved Hey, look really quickly before you go.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
I know that you've been working a lot sort of
as a as a commercial master captain and things like that.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
Is that the world that you're in these days? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (31:48):
Yeah, I'm a marine, Yeah, I work in marine. What
do you call it marine construction. I work on tugs
and things, and we tow barges up and down the coast,
that kind of stuff, and I do all sorts of
roles really, you know a lot of deck work too.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
No, it's fascinating.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
And of course you'd worked on pitt Can Island as well,
making the supply ships and tourist ships up there, and
that's also in this book as well, which adds another
whole dimension to the story. Hey, thank you so much
for joining us. It's an incredible tale and it's beautifully told.
Speaker 8 (32:18):
Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Bringing you the best interviews from the Sunday session. Great
chats with Francesca Rudkin on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks
at b.
Speaker 3 (32:29):
SO Adventure Sailing. I think it's for you.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
I know that Andrew Fagan is known to many as
a musician and the lead singer for the Mockers, but
I really enjoyed getting to know another side to Andrew Fagan.
He is also a beautiful writer and you don't have
to love sailing to enjoy his books. So check them out.
And now for something different. Award winning author Maureen Callahan
(32:54):
wrote one of the most contentious Books of the Year.
It's called Ask Not the Kennedy's and the Women They Destroyed.
We talked about the Kennedy legacy and where the family
now in the political arena. Please note this chat took
place before Trump was elected and Robert F. Kennedy nominated
to be his Department of Health and Human Services secretary.
(33:16):
We started by talking about how difficult it is to
write about the Kennedy family. You speak about how the
Kennedys have been able to assert their influence in order
to control their own narrative, to control their own story,
and over the decades they have definitely tried to quieten
those who offer a different perspective. So my first question
(33:40):
to you is did anyone try to influence you or
or stop for this book.
Speaker 9 (33:46):
Well, not in the way you might think.
Speaker 6 (33:50):
I actually had trouble with my publisher. My previous book
had done very very well for them, it actually still
does very well for them, and they said to me,
whatever you want to do next, we're going to publish it.
I said, great, here's what I'm going to do next,
and they vanished. They went quiet. We later found out
(34:12):
they were cutting a backroom deal with Kennedy cousin Maria
Shriver to give her her own imprint. Flash forward to now,
and I've been told that major American news networks, outlets,
what have.
Speaker 9 (34:29):
You, will not be touching this book.
Speaker 6 (34:31):
They don't want to upset the Kennedys, or they employ Kennedy's,
or they don't want to have a hand in what
they would see as ratifying a book like this that
is actually telling the truth about these women and what
was done to them. But nonetheless, the book has really thrived,
and I think that is a testament to the stories
(34:54):
of these women and their power and the resonance they're having.
I'm hearing from readers all the time and it's just
having a life, which is great.
Speaker 2 (35:06):
People open to talking to you about the Kennedy women
and men for that matter. It was there were a
bit of a sense amongst people who know them or
knew them that actually, now is the time to tell
these stories.
Speaker 6 (35:19):
Yeah, for the most part, Yes, Carolyn Bessett's friends, who
had long had like this cone of silence, decided now
was time to talk. Uh, let's see Mary Jokapackney's family
spoke with me. Martha Maxley's Mary Richardson, who committed suicide.
(35:41):
She was married to Robert F. Kennedy Junior. Her lawyer
spoke to me, her psychotherapist spoke to me, a very
good friend spoke to me, and they all said they
felt it was very important that the American people know
who they were dealing with when it came to RFK Junior.
Speaker 2 (36:01):
And look, I'll touch on that now because I and
the last story I heard Maureen was some crazy story
about finding a beer cab on the side of the road,
bringing it to New York, putting it in Central Park
under a bicycle. And I was sort of listening to this, going, oh,
my goodness, this is just crazy, and I was thinking
to myself, how far have the Kennedy's fallen?
Speaker 9 (36:23):
How far? Indeed? But this is the thing, Francesca.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
People have been rightly very upset and disturbed by RFK
Junior's treatment of wild animals, which is I think quite sick.
But when it comes to the wife who he gaslet, tormented,
drove to suicide, in my opinion, buried with great fanfare
(36:49):
up in the Kennedy family plot, and then one week later,
secretly and without the proper permitting, had her coffin disinterred
in the middle of the night and had her coffin
reburied seven hundred feet away on the side of a
hill alone. He's still is unbothered by questions about what
(37:09):
he did to his ex wife and what it is
he really.
Speaker 9 (37:11):
Thinks of women.
Speaker 2 (37:14):
Since we're talking about Mary Richardson Kennedy, it's a good time,
I think to ask the question, what does it mean
to be a Kennedy wife? And what is expected of them?
And I suppose what happens to them if they can't fulfill.
Speaker 6 (37:28):
Oh, it's such a great question, Francesca, and it's frankly,
it's brutal. I wrote ask not like a novel, because
these women. I wanted the readers to be in their
heads and their hearts as they go through these relationships
and experiences. One of my favorite examples of this, and
(37:50):
is the most one of the more recent ones, is
Carolyn Bassett, who when she married JFK. Junior, the entire
world coronated her as America's next Princess. She had won
the prize, she had landed the white whale of Bachelor's
and she gets behind the curtain and it's a freaking misery.
(38:14):
Not only is he lazy, not bright, entitled, never coming
home when he says he's coming home. But this guy
has a death wish that I can't think of anybody
else who comes to mind. Who is that prominent who
nearly not only lost his life multiple times, but had
a habit of bullying the women in his life to
(38:36):
come along with him on these reckless adventures. Just a
little tidbit for your audience, and a hint of just
the level of detail that is in us.
Speaker 9 (38:47):
Not on the night JFK Junior crashed that.
Speaker 6 (38:51):
Flight, that plane, killing him, his wife and her sister,
he almost crashed into a packed American Airlines commercial jetliner
making its descent to JFK International Airport in New York.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
You know, you have to ask yourself the question. It
was a misery for so many of them, so why
did they stay?
Speaker 6 (39:14):
You know, it's like golden handcuffs, you know, the jobs
that people You get a nice paycheck and you're miserable,
but you can't break free of it. These women find
themselves living in an alternate reality. And Jackie would often
say this, like she would look at the coverage of
herself in tabloids and say, like, let's see what she's
(39:37):
up to today because that wasn't her. But there's something
that is conferred upon you when you marry in Alpha Kennedy.
You must be the most beautiful, the smartest, the most charismatic.
And often these women are indeed that. But what the
Kennedy men and the Kennedy machine like to do is
(40:00):
strip the women of their power, of their greatness. It
seems too evoke a seething resentment in them. You know,
it's it is. It is a lonely club, that of
the Kennedy wives.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
When it comes to how they treated the women, I
thought you came up with a really simple but very
good description of it. And you see that they just
after thoughts. They just treated them like afterthoughts.
Speaker 9 (40:29):
They really did.
Speaker 6 (40:30):
They unless you need them for campaigning or you know,
like one of the great things I learned about the
Kennedy men, especially in the middle of the last American century,
was how much they relied on women's mass media to
domesticate themselves for the female voter. It's like, so, so
(40:51):
the wives are are really important, they're they're key players.
But when they begin to assert their own needs and
wants or maybe even their own independence, that's when they
become inconvenient, and that's when they have to be done
a way.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
With a lot of names that we will know in
this book and be very familiar with, but there are
also a few that might not be so familiar.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
Wondering if you can tell us a little bit about
Mimi and Diana.
Speaker 9 (41:19):
Oh, my God, Mimi and Diana.
Speaker 6 (41:22):
Well, Mimi was a nineteen year old virgin when she
started working in the secretarial pool of JFK's White House,
and at the end of her first day, she finds
herself invited up to the private residence where she served
a bunch of dakris. The President of the United States
(41:42):
appears at her side, invites her for a tour, throws
her down on Jackie's bed. Jackie's away. Within three minutes,
he's taken her virginity. She still does not know how
to describe this. I would describe it as rape. Three
days later, she's back in the White House and is
(42:03):
now invited to join the President for one of his
afternoon and swims in the White House pool, at which
point JFK says to Mimi, you need to go relax,
my aid sitting at the lip of the pool and
Mimi knows what this means, and to her great shame,
she goes and performs oral sex on this guy while
JFK silently watches. This stuff needs to be part of
(42:28):
our reconsideration of JFK's presidency and the family on the whole.
Speaker 9 (42:34):
I strongly believe.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
You actually begin to wonder morrying when he got any
work done? In between the swims and the sex, and
the holidays and the sleeps and everything.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
You got left going? Did he do any work?
Speaker 2 (42:47):
The book doesn't just give voice to the women in
these men's lives, but it speaks to the character of
these Kennedy men, and there have been so many myths
and so many sort of generalized perceptions about them. I
think over the years, did you discover anything new or
reveal you know? Were you surprised by what you sort
of who will discover it?
Speaker 3 (43:07):
About the mean?
Speaker 6 (43:11):
Yeah?
Speaker 9 (43:11):
I was, I was. I was.
Speaker 6 (43:14):
I was surprised by JFK Junior's callousness and his what
I really think was a level of rage towards women.
Speaker 9 (43:24):
I was.
Speaker 6 (43:25):
I was surprised by the sadism frankly exhibited by both
JFK and his brother Robert F.
Speaker 9 (43:33):
Kennedy. And that really is most visible in the Marilyn
Monroe chapters.
Speaker 6 (43:40):
They treated her, they were they basically were out to
destroy her. They were both involved with her sexually. At
the same time. In writing the chapters about Joan Kennedy
and Mary, Jocobe Peckney the Kennedy man who links them
as Ted.
Speaker 9 (43:57):
And you know, while I was writing.
Speaker 6 (43:59):
This book, these doorstopper biographies were coming out in America
about Ted Kennedy, with these hyperbolic titles like catching the
wind against the wind, I'm sorry, this is a man
who left a twenty nine year old woman to die
in three feet of water. She died a slow, agonizing,
wholly preventable death. She could have been saved. In the book,
(44:21):
there is also a very vivid scene of Ted violently
sexually assaulting a waitress at a very popular DC establishment
in broad daylight.
Speaker 9 (44:31):
And we are lionizing this man to this day. Are
you kidding me?
Speaker 2 (44:36):
What is the Kennedy legacy now? Has it changed over time?
Is the family still thought of as a sort of
a political pass center in America?
Speaker 9 (44:48):
You know, when I began writing this book, I did
think so.
Speaker 6 (44:51):
And I think there's a very interesting confluence happening right now,
and I'm very humble and proud to be a part
of it. This book which is opening up a lot
of eyes, and this sad, sham bolic, depressing presidential campaign
being run by Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who was putting
(45:14):
that it couldn't happen to a better legacy. It's being
eaten by its own tail, putting the nail in the
coffin of this supposed greatness. We are now seeing fully
this family getting it's just desserts.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
I also just want to mention before we finished, Maureene,
you know, the one thing I really enjoyed about the
book is that you make the point there is no
perfect victim, Like you're not painting, you're not trying to
portray the women in anything more than who they really were,
and that's not necessarily always a victim will always positive.
And I appreciated that there was a great balance to
the book.
Speaker 9 (45:51):
Thanks Francesca. I mean, I'll say it was really helped.
Speaker 6 (45:54):
By weirdly, or maybe not, when Harvey Weinstein was convicted
of rape in New York. That was a really bracing
moment because he was found guilty by a jury was
composed of more men than women by a jury that
heard very complicated testimony from women who were alleging brutal
(46:14):
rate and then admitting that afterward they had maintained friendly
relationships with Harvey. And I thought, oh my God, like
the culture, we have grown up, we are mature, we
are ready for these stories of these women. And they
get to be complicated and messy and sometimes unlikable. They
get to be greedy and to want fame and money,
(46:36):
but that doesn't mean that they deserved any of what
happened to them.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
The best guess from the Sunday session Great Jazz with
Francisca Rudget on iHeartRadio powered by News Talks It'd.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Be That was Maureen Callaghan, author of the book Ask
Not the Kennedys and the women they destroyed. It's going
to be very interesting moving forward to see how Robert F.
Kennedy contributes to this legacy. Hey, thanks for joining me
on this News Talks it'd Be podcast. Please feel free
to share these chats and if you like the podcast,
to make sure you follow us on iHeart. If you
get your podcasts, don't forget. We're releasing two new ips
(47:09):
a week Mondays and Fridays throughout summer. O k T
next time on Great Chests.
Speaker 1 (47:15):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio
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