CHARLES WOOLEY: The truth about the storm of criticism over my Bob Hawke ‘sex’ question

“When did sex start?”

I never said those five words to Bob Hawke and Blanche d’Alpuget as fluently as when I saw them on the air, but more about that later.

My introduction to the pitfalls of primetime commercial television dates back to the mid-1990s and this 60 Minutes interview with the recently divorced former prime minister and his bride-to-be.

Me: ‘Blanche, tell me about the first time you met him.’

D’Alpuget: ‘It was at a party in Jakarta. I had been living outside Australia for a while and I didn’t know who he was. But I was mostly impressed because we had a lot of fun that night and the party went on until four in the morning.’

Me: ‘Bob, how do you remember your first meeting with Blanche?’

Hawke: ‘It was 1970. I was visiting Indonesia and having a drink in the Australian embassy when this young lady walked around the corner. I remember her white dress and being struck by her physical attractiveness and also her vivacity.’

Twenty long years passed. The couple remained in different orbits, but the relentless gravitational pull of planetary attraction somehow destined them to eventually become worlds at odds.

Charles Wooley was a reporter for 60 Minutes when he asked recently divorced former Prime Minister Bob Hawke and his future bride Blanche d’Alpuget, “When did the sex start?” (above)

Neither Hawke nor d’Alpuget answered Wooley’s question about when they first had sex. “What mattered was the publicity frenzy those five words generated,” Wooley says

And $200,000 from Kerry Packer gave me exclusive access to the fireworks when the passion erupted.

I always hesitated to join 60 Minutes because of what I perceived as the tabloid nature of the popular program during my youth on ABC.

But ‘lust’ was not in the vocabulary of the legendary Peter Meakin, the master of twisting lies and boosting ratings at Channel Nine.

He reassured me, “Mom, travel the world at the front of the plane. Enjoy the money, and remember you can always take a shower after the show.”

“Oh s**t,” I said to my producer. “Do I really have to ask them when the first time they had sex was?

“I know we’re paying, but Bob will just tell me to fuck off and you can’t blame him. God, sometimes I hate this job.”

“Don’t be so ABC-ish with me,” she replied. “You’re in the commercial world now. We don’t make ‘television programs’, we sell Toyotas.”

“I was told not to ‘go all ABC’ with my superiors by refusing to ask the former prime minister the sex question,” Wooley says. Above, Hawke and D’Alpuget at Sussex Inlet, on the NSW south coast, in December 1994

I learned that in the world of commercial television producers, as so often in nature, the female is the deadliest of the species.

We had placed the loved-up couple in a secluded retreat on Scotland Island in Sydney’s Pittwater district, far from the prying eyes of all the other jealous media we had outbid for our exclusive interview.

Slowly and sensually Blanche spread sunscreen on Bob’s body. She started giggling and collapsed.

Bob, who was completely in love with his parakeet smugglers, told our camera: ‘She’s crazy, of course, very crazy.’

They hugged, kissed, caressed and laughed. It was obvious that they were in love. But for me, there was a huge dark cloud hanging in the warm, clear sky.

Blanche D’Apluget tenderly anoints Hawke, above, with lotion during the segment in question

The difficult question I had to ask myself was whether the physical relationship had already begun before Bob left his wife Hazel, a woman much loved by the Australian public and our viewers.

My deadly producer was adamant. ‘Every woman in Australia wants to know. Don’t be a wimp.’

Then she relented, not entirely unaffected by my excitement. ‘Look, just ask the question. It doesn’t matter how they answer it. What we paid for are those pictures of Blanche that Amber Soleil between Bob’s legs.’

So I asked the most roundabout question in the history of unedited television, with rambling statements like ‘look, it’s open speculation in Australia’ and ‘shouldn’t it be clarified’ and ‘I’ll be accused of being cautious’ (unfortunate choice of words), ‘but what most people want to know and I have to ask’ and ‘did you fall in love and you know, can you tell us when, at what stage in your relationship did you reach the physical stage of love, when did the sex start?’

Wooley had always been reluctant to join 60 Minutes. From left to right are former and current 60 Minutes reporters Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Wooley and Jeff McMullen

From that chaos, my producer and her editor pieced together a concise, five-word summary of my embarrassing babble.

Mark Day, a wise and experienced columnist at the time, wrote sympathetically that I would have been fired if I hadn’t asked.

He said, “When did sex start?” would be “the question of the year” and I would “may have to live in its shadow for the rest of my life.”

For the sake of completeness, neither Bob nor Blanche answered the question. But my producer was right.

What mattered was the publicity these five words generated.

In retrospect, it was an innocent time. Nowadays, the sitting prime minister is asked on morning television whether he takes his clothes off for his dog. There is no fuss, because hardly anyone watches commercial television anymore.

I wonder how that happened.

Charles Wooley has traveled the world his entire life. After 25 years and more than 100 countries during the heyday of 60 Minutes, he now lives and writes in Tasmania. He is the deputy mayor of the seaside Shire of Sorell and an avid fly fisherman.