Jack Darmody: Legendary Sydney Journalist

JACK DARMODY: LEGENDARY SYDNEY JOURNALIST

BY JOHN STAPLETON

One of the last of the old breed of journalists was Jack Darmody, who died in March of 2006, his wake being held at The Shakespeare, a hotel up the hill from News Limited’s headquarters.

There was a good roll-up at his funeral. Jack was a legend of Australian journalism from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, when he worked as a police reporter on some of the country's leading tabloids, including the defunct Daily Mirror in Sydney and that legendary tabloid The Truth in Melbourne.

Jack broke the story that Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs was hiding out in Australia.

Jack was of the old school, when journalists were expected to be drunks and misfits. While mineral water became freely available at press conferences, and alcohol not even served if the event was before midday, in Jack's day if you didn't feel like a beer it was only because you wanted a Scotch.

Jack died in St Vincent's Hospital's Sacred Heart Hospice with a flask of rum beside his bed.

If not kind to himself, Jack was often kind to others; and adored by generations of cadet journalists for the world he introduced them to.

Jack would never have lasted in later decades. He would have been sacked for being drunk on the job.

Jack lee a trail of ex-wives and broken relationships.

At the funeral and the wake afterwards I took particular note of the sad face of his son; who had no doubt had a hard time of it all.

Jack was known across the pubs of Sydney. For a long time he lived upstairs from the Darlo Bar in Darlinghurst. After he fell and ended in a wheelchair, the Housing Department found him a place where he could get in and out, but it was at Ultimo, on the perimeter of his natural drinking grounds.

Even then, in his dying days, he was always at the bar early, smoking unfiltered Camel cigarettes, sipping Scotch. He had at once a melancholy and jovial air; always good company if nothing else, always happy to catch up on newspaper gossip and rail against the incumbents running either the country or the media.

Jack never had any intention of stopping drinking.

The rest of us might bounce in and out of detoxification centers or seek help in counseling or self-help programs, but none of this was for Jack.

As sports writer Peter Kogoy said in his eulogy, quoting Walt Whitman: “I am large, I contain multitudes.”

The line perfectly summed Jack up. Darmody was bigger than himself. He had one of those faces which seemed to take up the whole room.

As one barmaid who went to his funeral, a woman who had spent many hours talking with him at the Darlo during the periods when there were no other customers, said: “Of all the many barflies I have known, he was the one with the most perceptive intellect.”

I was working as a reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald when Jack latched on to me as someone who might be sympathetic to a story he was flogging.

The government was not renewing funding for an inner-city gym on a troubled housing estate, one of Jack’s pet projects, and he was trying to bring as much attention to the issue as possible.

Jack was himself an old boxer – as an amateur he had been known as The Mooretown Mauler. On a memorial brochure that was passed around at the wake after the funeral there was a picture of him as a strapping, fit young fighter kicked out and ready for a brawl.

The athlete in boxing gloves bore no resemblance to the old man I had known.

I went down to the gym with photographer in tow to do the story; which was a natural fit for The Sydney Morning Herald.

In any case Jack had also been besieging the News Editor, who knew the best way to get Darmody off his back was to relent and at least send a reporter down to see what he was up to.

The Liberal government of the day, or at least its Housing Department, had decided to cut funding for the boxing ring on the tough inner-city Glebe Housing Estate.

Boxing was a male working class tradition and as such was completely out of fashion with the bureaucrats whose own tertiary acquired feminist agendas bore little resemblance to the concerns of those they purported to represent.

The bureaucrats had probably calculated that the cut would be painless and the victims powerless.

They hadn’t counted on Jack Darmody.

Boxing was known by old hands as a way of pulling into line testosterone fueled criminals in the making. The gym was one of the few remaining places where young men could club together, get their angst out in sound and sweat, be mentored by some of the areas tougher characters, get a bit of exercise and learn to defend themselves.

The Glebe Boxing Gym, unrenovated and unpainted, had played an important role in the lives of the adolescents on the estate. Their parents were often enough drunk, disabled, derelict or dead.

The first thing Jack tried to do was put a can of beer into our hands. His idea of being a public relations expert was to buy as many crates of alcohol as the budget would withstand and proceed to pour it down the gullets of as many journalists as possible. Everything else would take care of itself.

Once he had done with the grin and grip Jack settled himself down next to a large green garbage bucket filled with ice and beer. Several cartons of the amber fluid, stashed conspicuously to the side of the bin, showed that Jack was in for the long haul.

As a sign of just how glorious life could get, there were bottles of Scotch floating in with the beer. Jack Darmody was in paradise.

When I tried to refuse a drink, Jack would not take no for an answer.

As far as he was concerned, “I'm working” was simply not an excuse.

It was late in the day, about four o'clock, with some of the kids starting to come in after school, the place large and poorly lit, pungent with the smell of sweat. In the ring, an Aboriginal boxer of some local renown was warming up.

The photographs were beautiful and the story got a run.

Unlike the cool PR princes and princesses of today, Jack rang up the next day and was fulsome in his gratitude.

Former footballer John Fahey was Premier at the time. Fahey took one look at the story and promptly stepped in. He not only reversed the bureaucrats' decision but gave the gym extra money and resources to ensure its survival.

In typical Fahey-style he did it without fanfare or self-serving announcements.

As for Jack Darmody, he garnered many tributes.

Mark Morri, crime editor at Sydney’s leading tabloid The Daily Telegraph, wrote: “As a storyteller he could write and tell a yarn with the best of them. He could be poignant, witty or straight-to-the-point with a simplicity that could be brutal. But it's more the stories about Jack Darmody, rather than by Jack Darmody, that he will be remembered for.

“A big man physically, he could fill a bar with his laughter or empty it just as quickly with a growl. To make him laugh was a joy. To make him angry was akin to a death sentence. Many a cadet reporter learnt more about journalism – and life – from Darmody in the Shakespeare Hotel than in a newsroom.

“Darmody didn't chase fame, just a story or mate who needed help. He fought for those doing it tough. It was in a Glebe early opener one morning I asked him if he wasn't worried about the toll that drinking 15 schooners, a dozen rums and smoking 80 Camel a day was having on his health. He replied: ‘I'm 48, I've been married three times, once for a week. I have done two tours of Vietnam. I know prime ministers and murderers by their first names. If I go tomorrow, I think I've done enough.’ "

Media commentator Mark Day wrote:

“Jack is a reporters' reporter if ever there was one, up there with the best of our times. Built like a side of beef, he was a boxing champion in his youth and he knew his way around a ring before he knew life on the other side of the ropes. His appearance could be highly intimidating if he wanted to convey the message that he was not to be trifled with – a man mountain given to scowls, gravel-voiced growls, and body language reminiscent of a bull pawing the ground before charging. But it was mostly an act. He preferred to use words as his fists and he was very handy at it. He wrote like a poet, always on the side of the angels; always in search of dignity for those who had precious little of it.

“Not everyone got it with Jack. They saw a barrel-shaped man, utterly devoid of dress sense, with rarely-combed hair and endless Camel cigarettes poking out from a singed but formidable moustache; they heard him demand the facts, the truth, or just the story, and they registered rejection, puzzlement or fear. But those who knew him – particularly women – found a kind, caring man who would shift heaven and earth to help and protect them. His body had to be so big to hold his heart.”