Jennifer Byrne

Exclusive N W O M I A E L N ’ A S R SYDNEY W T S E U E A NSW K L E Y H • T 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 Melbourne’s [being] the first man to circumnavigate (SOTC) champion on the Nine Network. 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.” → 54 The Australian Women’s Weekly | FEBRUARY 2020 FEBRUARY 2020 | The Australian Women’s Weekly 55 Exclusive 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.

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