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Jennifer BYRNE I finally feel that In a candid interview, Mastermind host Jennifer Byrne talks to Juliet Rieden about the society scandal that rocked her childhood, her royal and rebel ancestors and the sunshineI’m son who convinced hisfree parents to wed. ennifer Byrne is full of beans. As she talks, Jennifer’s eyes sparkle: but Scrabble was handed on. The baton Just days ago she arrived back adventure travel is her passion, combine passed – which I think is lovely.” in Sydney from a mammoth it with maestro ‘Ran’ and you have the This tale gives some idea of the adventure on which she and trip of a lifetime and one that also feels brilliant and colourful family Jennifer her husband, TV host Andrew totally in keeping with the host of was born into. And while she’s always JDenton, travelled from Bergen to the brainiac TV quiz show Mastermind. been at pains to underplay her upper very tip of Norway and back again. In a few days Jennifer will start filming crust pedigree, after the shock discovery “It’s a bucket list thing of course, to Celebrity Mastermind, followed by a that she genuinely is descended from see the Northern Lights, which means second season of the SBS quiz show. medieval British royalty in the SBS TV travelling into the cold and dark of “I grew up watching it and I’ve played ancestry series Who Do You Think the northern winter. Though the real games since I was a kid, so it’s perfect You Are – which we’ll get to – she is lure for me was we’d be joined by the for me,” she quips. finally ready to lift the curtain on her ‘world’s greatest explorer’ Sir Ranulph “In fact, probably one of the noblest extraordinary childhood, much of Fiennes,” says Jennifer. “His feats are moments of my life was when I was which was spent scampering around too many to enumerate but include crowned celebrity Sale of the Century the hallowed corridors of ’s [being] the first man to circumnavigate (SOTC) champion on the . Government House. the earth via the two poles. He cut off For me, that was the acme. I was his own fingers to counter frostbite working at 60 Minutes and though Dad Fairytale and scandal and scaled Mount Everest at 64. was always proud of me, it wasn’t until “My parents met when my mother He’s my older-man crush,” she then that he paid any attention to my was the Governor’s daughter. The family adds mischievously. television work. He was a games nut too, came from England when she was about

“I saw him at the Opera House. This and this was his golden moment; his 20, and my father was the man in the trip was my chance to get closer. We went child was going to compete! This is when white uniform with the braid who was from six hours of light a day to just it was still a class act, right, so I was the ADC, the aide-de-camp. Traditionally 20 unearthly minutes, sailing past tiny playing against people like Gough the Governor chooses his ADC, and ports illuminated only by twinkling Whitlam, who was miffed I beat him. because my grandfather had been Christmas lights. And the joy! Ran – “Some years before the SOTC show the commander of the Royal Marines, as he introduces himself, offering his Dad and I were playing Scrabble as we he had one from the Royal Navy. He fingerless hand to shake – was every always did, and I won for the first time. picked my father. It was never explained bit the charming gentleman I’d hoped I would have been in my late 20s. He to me why. My father was playful and for. A baronet who joined the SAS, said, ‘Well done, darling’ and we never fun and bright and quick, but not the

PHOTOGRAPHY by ALANA LANDSBERRY • STYLING by JAMELA DUNCAN JOHNSON. NICOLA BY MAKE-UP AND HAIR PANTS. MARA MAX WEARS JENNIFER now 75 and still adventuring.” played again. We played other games, most obedient.” →

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Jennifer’s grandfather was Sir Reginald Mostly she remembers the fun was disgrace. The things people said to Alexander Dallas Brooks, Victoria’s she had there. “There was this huge me were pretty awful.” longest-serving Governor (from 1949 ballroom with thrones on either side The only warning that something was to 1963), while her grandmother was with crowns on the top. They were awry came to 10-year-old Jennifer when Lady Violet Brooks and dressed almost not for Granny and Grandpa, they she overheard her parents arguing. regally emanating from wealthy British didn’t sit there, they were for royalty. “They never argued and I remember stock. Jennifer says “Lady Vi” always “My brother Chris and I would take saying to my brother, ‘our parents may claimed, “I am the class in the family”. our pillows in and slide the length of not stay together’. I don’t remember Jennifer’s father, Robin Byrne, came this magnificent, beautiful polished what he said, but I know that about a out from England with Grandpa Dallas wooden floor from one end to the week and a half later we were removed, and then fell in love with his boss’s other. And yes, we played on the thrones taken up to the country to a place called daughter, Jeanette Brooks. They married even though we were always told not to. Harkaway Farm. Not so long after in 1952 when Jean was 22 and Robin Then we’d go down to the kitchens and I remember the phone ringing in 25, and from that moment on every pinch meringues. It sounds like some the middle of the night because my cough and sniff of their lives filled the hideous cross between Billy Bunter and grandfather had died. He’d had a bad society columns of the newspapers. Enid Blyton, and it was quite odd.” heart.” By that time Dallas was retired After they married, Jennifer’s Away from the big house, as time and living in Frankston. “It was parents moved to a house 10 minutes’ went on, she says, “it became something suggested publicly that it was Mum’s walk from Government House but that I really tried to conceal. I just fault, she’d killed him by running off.” Jennifer and her two siblings – older wanted to fit in with everyone else.” Jennifer was especially concerned brother Christopher and younger Then one day everything came about her father. “He had all the sister Belinda – still spent much of crashing down. Jennifer’s eyes fill with humiliation and he had been publicly – their time at the vice-regal dwelling. tears as she talks about probably the in the old days you’d have called it “It was a different world and a different most damaging and formative period of ‘cuckolded’. It was all over the papers. time and a different land. The house is a her life, when her mother left her father Even though I didn’t understand what it giant wedding cake of a place with endless for another woman, Zita West. meant, I understood he was incredibly staff, whom my grandmother called “It was all very mysterious. I didn’t vulnerable. It’s a very great privilege as a ‘servants’ because that was the word of really understand and no one told me child or young person to see your father the time. It was incredibly antique, remote what was happening,” says Jennifer. vulnerable because most of us never do from an Australian world, with these “I know there were reports in the until they get old or sick, but he was a endless lawns on which there would be newspapers. The Truth [a scandal sheet man in the prime of his life and I didn’t “We lived garden parties. The Queen and other royals of the day] was very strong. I remember understand all the complexities. I just would come and stay because that was my granny used to have a special knew something Mummy had done a fairytale, their house when they were in Victoria.” drawer she kept all the papers in, and was scandalous and terrible and my Jennifer has a distant recollection of I’d sometimes go and look because grandfather had died. But my father strange meeting the Queen Mother as a cheeky I knew they were tucked away. I wanted never said one bad word about my three-year-old. She was made to spend to find out what was happening. mother. Not once.” existence.” weeks practising to curtsey before Her I would read – this is reflecting the times Jennifer’s mother stayed with Zita Majesty arrived. “There’s a picture – and they didn’t ever say ‘lesbian’ or for 19 years and though Jennifer didn’t of me doing an incredibly giraffe-like ‘gay’. It was ‘an unmarried friend’.” like her mother’s partner, looking back curtsey, where one of my back legs While vitriolic, reports were deliberately she has come to understand what her is sticking out,” she chuckles. oblique which made it even more mum may have been feeling. “We had our own bedrooms and confusing. For example, The Mirror “Slowly as time went on Mum would spent Christmas and the like there, but reported that Jeanette “dresses sensibly tell me things. She was bright. She’d we didn’t stay overnight when the for the farm in slacks and shirt”. been encouraged by one of her school royals were there. I remember thinking Jennifer had just finished primary teachers to sit the Oxford entry exams. the Queen Mother was a bit grumpy. school, which looking back she thinks But when she told her father he said, “It was a fairytale. We wore fairytale may have been a deliberate moment that’s not going to happen. No man is clothes and we lived a fairytale, strange chosen by her parents to enact the going to marry a bluestocking, and she existence. When you look at The Crown, transition. “My sister had finished was sent to a Swiss boarding school. She I think that GH, as it used to be called pre-school, my brother was at always joked when making the bed that in the family, was absolutely designed secondary school, but nothing was she could do a perfect hospital corner! on the great houses of England. Those explained. It’s really hard to imagine “Grandpa was the maximum male scenes are completely familiar to me, how people can not tell you, but this that you could have – it didn’t worry me; that big central stairwell, the way it was a different era and in the world I I loved it. He was my grandad. But if he curls around, that is exactly what came from it was a question I couldn’t was your father-in-law or your father

Government House is like.” bring myself to ask, because I knew there it was different. Maybe Zita was the → BLATT. MATT FROM CHAIR BANGLE. DESIGNS DINOSAUR AND DRESS SMART & GINGER WEARS JENNIFER

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escape. It was her chance to break away After a long illness, Jennifer’s father The result of her journey with the is done by machine. When I went in he from an incredibly restrictive life.” died in January 2016 and Jean died show was cataclysmic. In short, Jennifer was this horrible colour. He was in the It has taken decades for Jennifer to in November the same year. She is discovered she’s the descendant of Underworld ... So I sang. Songs we sing overcome her “intense dislike for this philosophical about the circle of life, three royal dynasties and of Sir Edward together. Songs we’d sung to Connor. woman who blew up my life” and but it was undeniably hard to bear and Neville, one of King Henry VIII’s And he came back. It was the miracle appreciate her mother’s situation, and is still something she’s struggling with. courtiers who was beheaded as a traitor; of medicine, but I sang him to life.” I sense a lot of the pain is still very raw. But one of the positive outcomes was his head put on a spike. Amid the Since Andrew’s brush with death, After a couple of years Jennifer was that Jennifer agreed to go on the Who powerful men were equally impressive I note the couple has embraced sent away to boarding school for four Do You Think You Are TV series to women, who seized control of their travelling and tried to scale back years, which she loathed. “It was nothing investigate her family history. She had lives in difficult circumstances. work. Is this Jennifer’s way of like Malory Towers,” she jokes. Her no idea of where she came from beyond grabbing on to life while she can? golden days were the summer holidays her parents move from England and her My formidable family “No, I truly don’t think that way,” she with her father. “I think a girl who has father’s childhood in China, and admits In 2017, niggling indigestion resulted replies. “I feel incredibly grateful about the unreserved, unquestioned love of it was definitely a way to reconnect in a diagnosis of advanced heart disease having – though it was painful – this her father is blessed indeed. I did.” with her parents, but says it was also for Andrew. It came out of the blue and long track which began when I was in Robin later remarried and retired “at something she would never have felt the subsequent operation was a big one my single figures of what looked like a 59 and a quarter years of age,” Jennifer free to do when they were alive. – quadruple heart bypass surgery which jewelled life and of course wasn’t. That’s says. “He lived another 28 years. He ended up being quintuple. the race and what happened when my couldn’t wait to be with his games, jigsaws, In the lead-up, Andrew and Connor parents went is that I don’t feel driven garden and tennis. He was the happiest were resolutely positive but Jennifer was anymore. I just feel free. I think anyone retiree I’ve ever known. Andrew used to terrified. After the operation she rushed who’s lost a parent would know the say he’s a bit like Winnie the Pooh. To be in to check on her husband. “I made a deep grief and the sense of the layer around him made you happy because he mistake and went in too early. They say above you in the universe, gone; but was undemanding, endlessly interested you should wait till they come out of would also recognise there’s freedom.” and didn’t try to turn you into something the deep – they basically kill you; they Jennifer is about to own that freedom better. He was a really gentle soul in a turn off all your vital organs so everything with her next project, what she’s calling pretty tough world.” “a bit of a memoir”. It’s going to investigate her newly discovered Flying high relatives, Katherine Swynford and her Jennifer was a smart student and sat her daughter, Lady Joan Beaufort, with HSC – or Matric as it was then – early. whom she now feels an affinity through She ended up two years ahead of her 1986 she replaced George Negus on when we did decide to get married our their shared experiences of scandal, love peers and won a place in university. 60 Minutes and the rest is history. “It neighbour, who has remained really of literature and a belief women can Her mother thought she was too young was fun to take over from George. I was good friends and is much handier than I shape their own destiny. “It was the to go at 16, so as a fill-in she applied for conspicuously different in everything am, made us the red velvet cushion. I’ve publisher’s idea; someone from a journalism cadetship at from hair quantity to experience. It was got fabulous photographs of the ring on outside saw it and said, ‘you’ve always newspaper. “I don’t know why [editor] big. But by that time I’d had a really the red velvet cushion being held by our Clockwise from above: Lady had that singing family, you always Violet Brooks; Jennifer with Graham Perkin took on a 16-year-old good stint at Sunday, so I was ready.” son with a smile like sunshine. He knew her dad Robin and son Connor; were bookish people, you always were cadet, but I think it was partly because it Jennifer has never been one to stay he’d made the whole thing happen.” on assignment; Connor on women who ran rather than sat.’ was the beginning of ’70s feminism, he still and her impressive career has seen Time healed her parents’ rift and they Jennifer and Andrew’s wedding “It’s still sinking in. I’ve been alone a wanted women in the newsroom.” She her move from TV to book publishing ended up living a stone’s throw from day; Jennifer and Andrew; long time. There was something thrilling was paid $40 a week – as were men and back to TV. On the way she married each other in Melbourne with their new Jennifer hugging mum Jean. about finding I come from a coherent – and loved it. Jennifer’s print journalism and broke up with her first husband, spouses – when Zita left, following years line, people you can respect and want to career took her to Melbourne, San journalist David Margan, and in 1990 on her own, Jean married Jennifer’s emulate. One gave birth to two royal Francisco and London’s Fleet Street. just two weeks after that split, met her godfather, who had also been the best dynasties and her mother, who She gave up her university place and soulmate Andrew Denton. “It was not man at Jean’s first wedding. The two survived scandal and sneering, embraced work. With the benefit of sought, not expected, but that is an couples became the best of friends, in prevailed. I’ve got to live up to them. hindsight she sees she was “running almost unbelievable 30 years ago.” and out of each other’s houses. Jennifer It’s easy to be the one in the 21st away from the fractures and running Their son, Connor, born in 1994, was too realised “the amazingness” of her century who has the voice and the towards the perceived solutions and the the catalyst for the couple to tie the knot mum, who went to university to study pen. I’m so proud that I’ve got to be determination to grow up incredibly nine years later. “He really wanted it. anthropology in her later years. as formidable as they were.” AWW fast”, but admits The Age “saved” her He had this romantic idea, and a very Then when Jean turned 79, she at a time when she was lost. particular vision, in which he would was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Celebrity Mastermind airs Ten years on when the Nine Network be the one who carried the ring on a “It was beyond terrible. It didn’t Saturdays on SBS from February called to offer a position on the new red velvet cushion as his parents got happen quickly and my sister did 15 to March 21. Mastermind Sunday show, Jennifer took the leap married. He mentioned it several times absolutely the lion’s share because returns weeknights on SBS from

into TV and moved to Sydney. Then in over the years and he never nagged, and she was in Melbourne.” WEARS JENNIFER IMAGES. GETTY NETWORK. NINE THE OF COURTESY BLATT. MATT FROM CHAIR BANGLES. DESIGNS DINOSAUR AND PANTS MARA MAX TOP, WITCHERY February 24.

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