Latest / Rusty's Garage / Leigh Diffey (Part 1)

Transcript

Leigh Diffey (Part 1) · Rusty's Garage

0:02
A listener production.
0:10
I'm automotive commentator and journalist Greg Rust, and this is Rusty's Garage.
0:26
It's not often you get to do an episode with a close mate.
0:29
There's been a few, but today is a special one for me.
0:33
Lee Diffie and I walked similar roads in the early part of our careers, but he spread his wings and he's gone on to tick just about every box in motorsport broadcasting globally.
0:43
And...
0:44
It is a great Aussie success story that really should be more widely celebrated.
0:49
From award-winning work in Australia, breaking into the BBC when you'd think British voices were almost a prerequisite, and making the United States a new home where he has wowed them, not just with the passion and connection to motor racing, but other sports too.
1:06
So for this ep, I'm at home, but wishing I was in Connecticut with him having a beer.
1:11
We cover lots in this conversation, from supercars to world superbikes, Formula One, and his current world-class commentary for IndyCar.
1:20
Now, he's also fronted the Dakar coverage, MotoGP, and even done some work in NASCAR and at the Pebble Beach concourse too.
1:28
Diff is one of the most infectiously fun people I know.
1:32
You always laugh when you're around him.
1:34
The gags and the stirring is non-stop.
1:36
Invariably, he is leading the charge, but he's been on the end of it too.
1:41
Like the time his radio buddy Dave Carlson got him on for a desperate and dateless segment, Disco Dave intro'd it saying, Hey girls, don't forget to phone in for your chance to win a date with Diffy the Stiffy, a nickname we still call him.
1:55
Lee's likeable nature is incredibly endearing, and it's no surprise he now counts people like the legendary Mario Andretti as a friend, and there's a great mutual respect with automotive and racing icon Roger Penske.
2:09
They're just two high-profile examples.
2:12
He's sure come a long way from the Sunshine State, Queensland, but you'll never take that out of him.
2:18
Yep, proud Brisbane boy, proud Queenslander, state of origin champs again.
2:22
I brought a state of origin jersey for you too.
2:28
I grew up in the southwestern suburbs of Brisbane in a suburb that's no longer called what it was when I grew up, which was called Carroll Park, which was a housing commission area on the fringe of an industrial estate, kind of, I guess you could say roughly halfway between Brisbane and Ipswich.
2:49
So, you know, working class suburb and, you know, no flash houses whatsoever, but memories of a childhood were really good.
2:56
You know, cricket with the neighbours and footy with the neighbours and we had a big park down the road a little bit.
3:03
We used to play golf.
3:03
We'd ride our motorbikes around there.
3:06
We had a vacant lot across the street, which we made our own BMX track and it was probably about two house lots.
3:13
We just, you know, we'd go over there with shovels and rakes and what have you and made our own BMX track.
3:17
And up the road, there was a council supplied BMX track.
3:21
So it certainly wasn't a flash area, but we had everything we needed as kids.
3:25
Mate, motorcycles and racing are in your family.
3:28
Your grandfather raced, didn't he?
3:30
Can you tell us a bit about that?
3:31
You know, Pop was a little bit of a rat bag, I guess you could say, going by what my dad tells me.
3:36
I didn't ever know him.
3:38
He passed away when I was about one.
3:40
And he just loved motorbikes, loved doing tricks on motorbikes, you know, get around.
3:45
You'd be able to fix the throttle in a set spot and he'd ride down the main street standing on the seat with his arms out, kind of like a
3:53
like a circus.
3:54
This is in country Victoria, in Wangaratta and Benalla and Shepparton and all around there in Everton.
4:03
So all these country areas.
4:04
So he was massively into bikes.
4:07
He was involved in the very early days of Winton.
4:10
Motor Raceway with some buddies.
4:13
Certainly not from an ownership stake, he didn't have any money to speak of.
4:18
But was around the people who founded it and rode at Winton in the very early days.
4:24
And for some reason, I don't know why he wouldn't let my dad do it.
4:28
Even when my dad earned his own money, he just wouldn't, even as a young fellow, he wouldn't let my dad ride or race bikes.
4:34
My dad
4:35
worked out a way to kind of get around that.
4:38
My dad worked at a Malvern Star Store and he and his mates would get out on bikes when they could.
4:44
But yeah, it was, so I think it was a source of frustration for my father that he couldn't do it.
4:49
So then he lived vicariously through my brother and myself.
4:52
Unfortunately, my sister Juanita, she didn't get to do it.
4:56
She was a forced spectator, so sadly.
4:59
I think one of the bikes that your pop had was it was it a Rudge Ulster mate?
5:03
Yeah, I've got a great picture upstairs in my office and a really cool old bike.
5:09
You know, and I grew up hearing my father talk about, you know, Matchless's and Vincent HRD's and, you know, Rudge Ulster's and BSA's.
5:19
And and my dad was a before my dad passed away over ten years ago now.
5:27
He left with me his childhood collection of Isle of Man TT books.
5:32
You know, there'll be little books like that or larger ones, maps of, you know, and just the early history of the Isle of Man TT.
5:40
And that was one of my great regrets.
5:42
I got to show my dad a lot of a lot of cool things overseas.
5:45
But we had plans to go to the Isle of Man TT and we never got there.
5:49
Very sad, mate.
5:50
He was a great supporter, your late dad, Pedro.
5:52
Your mum, incidentally, your lovely mum, still is a wonderful supporter.
5:56
Just for the sake of clarity, she's given me nothing for this.
6:00
I've tried to get some information out of her.
6:04
But she loves you dearly, mate, and all that you've achieved.
6:08
You talked about you and your brother racing there.
6:10
Cole was bloody good, mate, wasn't he, in terms of flat track racing.
6:13
What was your first motorbike, and where did you get the chance to unleash it for the first time?
6:19
Well, I vividly remember dad coming home and it was a Honda MR50 Elsinore and he came home with it in the boot of his car and that was allegedly 50% mine and 50% my sister Juanita.
6:34
And I think Juanita only got to ride it maybe once or twice.
6:37
It suddenly became my bike and I started racing at the Trailblazers Motorcycle Club at the age of six.
6:44
That was...
6:47
That was a couple of suburbs from home and my older brother had already started racing there.
6:52
And my first, this was very apropos.
6:57
This was the theme of things to come at my very first race as a six-year-old on this 50cc three-speed Honda, which, by the way, is in a lot of pieces just out here.
7:08
I'm talking to you from my basement in Connecticut.
7:10
Yeah.
7:11
But in the garage, it's out there, you know, several boxes all disassembled.
7:16
You have the bike.
7:17
I have the bike.
7:18
I have my very first motorcycle here.
7:20
And I've started doing the restoration of it with my sons.
7:24
Fantastic.
7:25
Because they ride Hondas.
7:27
They have...
7:29
you know, small CC Hondas at the moment.
7:32
And I'd love just to get that, you know, get it re-chromed, get, you know, re-upholstered seat, get the tank redone, everything, you know, get it looking nice.
7:40
And then they can, you know, I'll give it to them, make an arm wrestle over it in the future.
7:44
That's great, mate.
7:44
How did you track that down?
7:46
No, no, it never left the family.
7:47
Awesome.
7:47
It never left the family.
7:49
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
7:50
So my brother has the first bike he ever raced, which was an XR75, and I have my MR50.
7:56
And it stayed with mum and dad forever, and then my brother had it for a little while, and then...
8:03
I kind of had to, you know, I had to get my dad to coerce him a little bit to release it because I wanted to.
8:08
I wanted to.
8:09
And so it got packed up in a couple of boxes and got FedExed over to the US.
8:13
Just awesome.
8:14
That's a great story.
8:16
Have you had to source parts and things like that for it?
8:18
And how have you gone with a bit of that process?
8:19
Dad kept a lot, dad was really good.
8:22
He had a spare parts box, so there's old pistons, rings, old barrels.
8:27
There's actually some brand new stuff.
8:29
You know, look at the pistons are about that big, you know, look, they belong in a sewing machine.
8:34
But yes, so dad was awesome with keeping spare parts.
8:37
I'm sure I'm gonna have to go on eBay and buy different things.
8:41
But, I mean, you look at – you try and source some – like the whole bike, you know, people, especially out in California and, you know, big vintage motocross hotspots, they're expensive.
8:52
They're expensive when you get – you know, it's a 50cc Honda and, you know, what, it's more than – it's almost 50 years old.
9:01
And, you know, they go for thousands and thousands of dollars.
9:04
People have done a good job, you know, restoring them.
9:07
I love the fact that your dad kept it, mate.
9:10
He probably passed on a little something to you.
9:11
You're great with nicknames.
9:13
Am I right in saying he used to call you Bean?
9:15
And where did that come from?
9:17
Uh, he did, but I don't know.
9:19
I honestly don't know.
9:21
He called me Larry.
9:22
Yeah.
9:23
He called me Bean.
9:25
Larry came from when we were kids and we raced motor, sorry, we raced BMX in addition to racing motorcycles.
9:32
And there was a, um, there was a diamondback factory rider called Harry Leary.
9:38
And somehow my family, I guess, blended those two names because I had a Diamondback.
9:44
And so it became Larry.
9:45
My sister still calls me Larry to this day.
9:47
Somewhere in this phase of life, mate, you meet Darryl Beattie for the first time and it becomes a lifelong, close, very deep, close friendship.
9:56
He would go on to race at 500cc level, win Grand Prix, things like that.
10:01
How did that friendship come about?
10:02
And was he always kind of fast and the crazy wag that we know him to be today?
10:08
Oh, for sure.
10:09
The, the, the, you know, uh, I first met Darryl very easily because his mum, Wendy, was my preschool teacher.
10:15
Wow.
10:16
So, and, and Darryl's a year older than me.
10:18
And so Darryl was a big first grader and he'd come over to the preschool and we, you know, all those little preschool kids would look up to Darryl like, oh, you know, so nothing's changed in life.
10:28
We're all still in awe of Darryl, um, and his accomplishments, but.
10:31
Yeah, and he lived a few streets away.
10:34
He lived about four or five streets away from where we grew up.
10:37
And when he won his motorcycle from the Jackie Mac, the Jackie McDonald breakfast show with Agro, when he won his RM50 Suzuki, his dad, Paul, and his mum, Wendy, because my mum worked at the school where Wendy worked as well, Daryl's mum, you know, just everybody in the suburb where we grew up either played football or cricket or whatever they did, but the Diffies were the motorcycle family.
10:59
And everybody knew that.
11:01
And so Paul and Wendy said to my mum and dad, hey, where do the boys ride?
11:06
And they said, oh, we're members at Trailblazers Motorcycle Club.
11:08
And Darrell came out.
11:10
And the reason why his dad wanted him to do that is because he was, you know,
11:15
terrorizing the neighborhood and around through the industrial estate and getting chased by the cops.
11:20
And so they're like, you know, his dad's like, we've got to put a stop to this.
11:24
You know, he needs to go to a club.
11:25
And listen, from the very first race that Darrell had, it was lights out.
11:31
My brother is six years older than me and all of the guys who he raced with, they were five years older than Daryl.
11:39
And what a big deal it is when you're a kid, if you're racing in the 11, 12 age group or the 13, 14 age group, Daryl was racing these guys who were open class riders.
11:48
They were 17, 18 years old and Daryl was kicking their ass.
11:52
Crazy.
11:54
And he was 12.
11:55
He was meant to ride a bike.
11:57
He was unreal.
11:57
Yeah.
11:58
We've got to get him on the podcast.
11:59
He's ducking and diving there.
12:00
I'll probably wait till I'm 70 until that happens.
12:02
But anyway, he too has kept his first bike, which he's tracked it down, which I think is a great story in itself.
12:09
Did he?
12:09
Am I right in saying the family, his family, did they have a little bird back then and it would wander around and let the air out of the tyres on the family car?
12:18
Is that a bit of a BT family story?
12:20
Or maybe that was later on in life.
12:22
No, no, it wasn't a little bird.
12:23
It was a cockatoo.
12:24
His name was Champ.
12:25
Champy.
12:27
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
12:30
And Darryl had like drink a can of Coke and get down to the very bottom of the can, just leave a little bit in there.
12:36
And he put it in and Champy'd grab the thing and tilt his head back and drink some Coke.
12:44
Crazy.
12:45
Have you always been a talker, my friend?
12:47
I mean, you know, the early part of your life, we've both gone through a significant career change early in our adult life.
12:55
You know, I went from banking and finance to broadcasting.
12:58
You were actually a schoolteacher, mate, weren't you?
13:00
Yeah, so I guess maybe I was destined, you know, to do something like that.
13:04
My mum tells me that she felt it was, that it was serendipitous because when she came out of the school admin building when I was in grade one, I was six years old and she could hear my voice and she thought, what the?
13:20
bloody hell's going on?
13:21
And I would, she came around the corner and there I was kind of in this, like a forecourt area near the first grade buildings.
13:27
And I was up on this, up on a stage with a microphone in my hand.
13:30
And I was kind of hosting the grade one pet show.
13:37
Kids had brought their budgerigar and their dog and their cat and whatever to school and there I was.
13:43
I don't remember that, but mum does.
13:45
Mum reminds me of it.
13:46
So, somehow that morphed into after I, you know, graduated university.
13:52
I went and taught for a couple of years at Ipswich Grammar School.
13:57
which was a journey in itself because I taught PE and 10th grade maths and then I taught, then we started, well they started a junior school, which was grade seven to begin with.
14:11
Now they've got all the way down to I think grade one.
14:14
But anyway, I taught the first ever junior school there and then all the way up to grade 12, which was sometimes intimidating because the kids, you know, I had to discipline them.
14:23
You know me, I'm a short ass.
14:25
I was like looking up at the kids.
14:26
I was like, hey, how'd you do that again?
14:27
You know, I think any of these kids, some of these first 15 rugby players could have squashed me.
14:33
But, you know, I think I had them bluffed for a little while.
14:36
I love the fact that you've been back there and spoken at the school since then, mate.
14:41
Am I right in saying the first car was a little orange, maybe two-door E20 Corolla, circa 1970-something?
14:50
What was it, mate?
14:51
A 1.2?
14:51
What happened to that car?
14:53
It went to the junkyard.
14:55
It went to the metal heaven because...
15:04
I took it, it was my sister's car, it was a Toyota Corolla, it was this burnt orange and my sister and I used to call it the Jaffa, because it looked like a Jaffa, you know, the lollies.
15:13
And so the Jaffa, so my sister basically drove it into the ground and then my dad, you know, I think my dad may have given my sister some money for it to give to me, you know, for a car for uni.
15:24
And you know, I thrashed that thing all around the place.
15:28
When I worked at a gym for several years and one of the gym members was a guy who lived up the road who had the local service station that had a couple of bays for the mechanics to work on cars.
15:42
His name was Rudy, big tough guy.
15:45
And I was like, Rudy, you know, my car is making some creaks and croaks and funny noises.
15:49
Can you have a look at it?
15:50
Can you put it up on the hoist and have a look at it for me?
15:52
And he came out from underneath the hoist and he said, are you bloody evil, Knievel or something?
15:57
And I said, why?
15:58
He said, all the cross members are just about full.
16:00
They're rusted out.
16:01
He goes, this is a death trap.
16:02
I was like, oh, maybe it's time for a new car.
16:08
Classic, mate.
16:09
My good friend and yours, producer from Network 10, Michael Heaton said, we've got to remind you, because you brought it up there about your love of fitness.
16:17
You've talked about PE there a moment ago.
16:20
Competition aerobics.
16:22
True or false?
16:23
What are we talking here, mate?
16:24
Is it aerobics, Oz style, wild world of sports?
16:27
What was it?
16:27
Share a bit more on that.
16:29
I didn't get that far, but I did compete at the Queensland leg
16:35
of the Reebok Australian Aerobics Championships twice.
16:41
So in the mixed pairs or mixed doubles, whatever they call it.
16:45
So the gym that I worked at was Jindaloo All Sports owned by the Bowman family.
16:50
And so my first year was with Kerry Bowman, an old friend of mine, one of the Bowman daughters.
16:55
And then the second time I did it, I did it with a friend of ours and a fellow instructor called Katrina Moore.
17:01
So good experiences.
17:04
I don't think I've ever worn lycra again.
17:08
Thank goodness.
17:09
Thank goodness.
17:10
But, yeah.
17:11
What are we talking, mate?
17:12
Full Borat-style leotard?
17:14
What were you doing?
17:15
Oh, yeah.
17:17
Yeah.
17:17
I'm just going to say yeah and leave it at that.
17:21
Classic, mate.
17:21
Yeah.
17:21
Classic.
17:22
Let's move to commentary.
17:24
Was the first proper job, maybe there's another one, but was the first proper job at the Tivoli Motocross Circuit?
17:30
How did that opportunity come about?
17:31
What kind of princely sum were you paid back then?
17:34
Well, Tivoli, so it was the Ipswich Motorcycle Club at the Tivoli Circuit.
17:38
And when you drive into Tivoli, it was very easy.
17:42
The driveway and the road went straight in like that.
17:44
You'd go to the left to go to the motocross track, which was awesome.
17:48
And on the right was the flat track.
17:50
And so we weren't really a motocross family.
17:53
We did it.
17:55
But we were definitely short circuit flat track people.
18:00
as a family.
18:01
And so we, after many, many years at Trailblazers at the Junior Motorcycle Club, obviously it was time to go up to the seniors.
18:09
And I only raced one year.
18:10
I think I stopped racing it after when I was about 16.
18:15
And, you know, just hung around.
18:17
Even when I stopped riding, I'd still hang around because my brother raced and we had lots of friends.
18:21
Darryl was racing then.
18:23
He raced at Ipswich Motorcycle Club on a 125 in the juniors and then he stepped up and he tried a little bit of speedway and then he went road racing shortly thereafter.
18:34
So I was hanging around that scene with my brother, with Daryl, with lots of other friends.
18:38
And, you know, as you know, my brother's quite the introvert and, you know, sometimes he didn't want to go to the awards nights or sometimes he'd left the track and there was a trophy to be collected.
18:50
And so I'd get up and I'd...
18:52
collect the trophies and make a speech on his behalf.
18:55
And there was an elderly couple who ran the flat track side of things for the club.
19:00
And they approached me once and said, hey, listen, young Diffie, you know, we are looking for a commentator.
19:04
You seem pretty comfortable behind the microphone.
19:07
Would you come and be our PA, our public address announcer?
19:10
And I think I was about 20 years old.
19:12
I was definitely still at uni and 2021, something like that.
19:17
And they said, we've got $60 budget for you.
19:21
So I sat in this little wooden tower, as you and I have done many a time at different racetracks and the lap scoring ladies were behind me.
19:29
And I sat out on the little, like balcony sounds too flash, but yeah, I sat out on the front part of this wooden shack and I had a transistor, a wireless radio next to me, one microphone.
19:42
maybe a can of Coke or a bottle of water or something.
19:44
And I called, I think I called over 90 races that day.
19:48
Now, they're only short.
19:49
Unbelievable.
19:50
They're only short.
19:51
They're only four lap races.
19:52
But, you know, I called those races and when I'd get tired or run out of things to say, you know, in between races, I'd take a break and I'd just, I'd leave the mic on and, you know, press play on the wireless radio and hold the mic near the speaker and then the music would go out and then the next race would come out and I'd go again.
20:07
So that's how it all started.
20:08
Yeah.
20:09
We'll take a quick break at the Tivoli motocross circuit back with the 80s in a moment or something, was it?
20:16
I think it was something like that.
20:17
Hey, mum, get me a pie.
20:18
Classic.
20:30
If you want to laugh, YouTube Honda MR50 top speed.
20:34
He really gives it his best shot.
20:36
Through Daz, you meet Paul Morris.
20:39
He told us on the podcast that he used to have an event, a very unique event at Dudes Acres every year, you called it.
20:47
What are your recollections of that?
20:49
Chaos.
20:50
A lot of fun.
20:51
A lot of fun.
20:53
A lot of stuff that we can't talk about in a public forum.
20:58
But the most fun part was a really good friend of Paul's, Cromo, not Crompo, it was in Neil Crompton, but Stuart Crompton, good friend of Paul's.
21:12
So Cromo, Paul and myself, we got in this old, like I think it was an old Telstra van or something, an old Toyota Hiace van and Paul had it painted up like a Safari, kind of like a...
21:24
you know, like a lion or a tiger type thing had all this safari motif over it.
21:30
And it had a hole drilled in the top and it had like a loudspeaker through the roof above the cab.
21:37
And it had just like a pull down cable, like a walkie talkie, you know, like a, like a,
21:42
you know, like a loudspeaker.
21:43
CB radio.
21:43
Yeah, kind of like a CB radio, but it was projecting out.
21:46
And so I was wedged in between Paul and Cromo, and this was on Paul's farm.
21:52
So the beers were flowing and we were driving around and I was commentating what was called the Dudes Acres.
21:59
I think it was the Dudes Acres 500.
22:01
And you had to do all of these activities around Paul's farm to be crowned like the Dudes Acres 500 champ.
22:07
And it was...
22:10
you know, doing a lap around his property on an odyssey, you know, those four-wheeled off-road buggies.
22:15
Then you had to, I think there might have been some motorbike riding in it.
22:20
I can't remember.
22:21
He had a small lake.
22:23
You had to stop at the lake, get on an old stand-up style jet ski, do a lap of the lake on that, get off.
22:29
You had to ride a horse.
22:30
You had to do a lap of a horse bareback, and then you had to finish up near Paul's house and garage, whereby you had to go down a slip and slide,
22:40
you had to shoot a can of beer or, you know, like scull of beer, and then the stopwatch finished.
22:47
And so, I mean, it was pretty loosely run, but it was so much fun.
22:50
And we're just driving around and I'm commentating on it live.
22:53
And it was as simple as this.
22:57
At the end of that weekend when everybody had sobered up, Paul went to his dad, Terry Morris, and said, Dad, we've got to get this guy on the Super Tourist.
23:04
And you've retained great respect, great friendship for people like Terry and Paul from that introduction.
23:10
There have been a couple of key people along the way that have been good with those sort of introductions.
23:16
Can we come to the super touring thing in a moment?
23:18
Because I just want to touch on the other one.
23:19
And that is your good friend, Phil Christensen, who ran Supercross Masters.
23:25
Mate, I mean, they were the Supercross events at the time.
23:28
He was the godfather of promoting those events.
23:30
How did you guys connect?
23:32
And that was another significant step on the path too, mate, wasn't it?
23:35
Yeah, and I owe a lot to Phil for being kind of like a second father type figure to me in my life.
23:44
Still very good friends to this day.
23:45
Still speak to, I call him Greybeard.
23:47
He's never lost his Greybeard.
23:50
You know, and he also helped, you know, not only, you know, yourself, Neil Crompton, he was partners with Neil's good friend Phil Harrison, our friend Phil Harrison as well.
24:01
So, but anyway, Christo helped me enormously and he came to me
24:05
via a well-known Queensland commentator called Bob Johnson.
24:11
And Bob was kind of the stalwart at Tivoli and at the Brisbane Exhibition Grounds for Speedway and Archerfield Speedway, all over the place, wherever you'd go, wherever there was a big motorsport event, motocross, whatever it may have been, Bob was there and...
24:27
I remember going and asking him as a young guy, can you tell me a little bit about commentary?
24:31
I'm interested in it.
24:32
How does it work?
24:34
What do you do?
24:35
And Bob could have just kicked me to the curb and said, go away, pest.
24:39
But he didn't.
24:40
He took the time to tell me a few things and he's a physically big man and quite intimidating.
24:45
So I was,
24:47
I definitely had to work up the courage to go and, you know, ask in the first place.
24:51
Anyway, fast forward to the early 1990s and I was actually living, I was house minding in Darryl Beattie's first house that he built, which was out in an area called Esk, a rural area beyond Ipswich.
25:04
And the phone rang one day and Bob Johnson had put Christo on to me, but he rang my mum and dad's house and they're like, oh, he's not here, I'll give you the number for Darryl's house and he rang.
25:16
And he said, oh, it's Phil Christensen from Supercross Masters, wondering if you'd like to come out to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre this week and call the Supercross evening.
25:24
And I, you know, nearly dropped to the ground because, you know, I'd done a lot of fun events and in all due respect to all of the clubs I'd worked at in Queensland and New South Wales and Victoria.
25:36
You know, Supercross Masters to me then was big time.
25:39
You know, it was a big show, packed house at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.
25:43
Yeah.
25:43
I said to my girlfriend at the time, oh my God, what do you mean?
25:45
She came along with me and we were both pretty nervous.
25:48
But yeah, Christo, I owe a lot to Phil.
25:51
But you have always been good at taking a punt.
25:56
So mid nineties, I think it was a Suzuki Swift GTI, black one, though, cool, cool, cool boost back then.
26:03
Had the hanging five and 95 sticker on the back of it to support Daz.
26:08
You pack up and leave Queensland and make a bold move
26:13
to Sydney.
26:14
Did you have a TV gig at that stage?
26:16
Was it purely just roll of the dice?
26:18
Yep.
26:20
I had stopped school teaching at the end of 1995 and mum and dad kindly let me move back home and supported me.
26:27
Dad said, I'll pay your mobile phone bill and we won't charge any board and just put your head down and try and make this work.
26:34
And I was, you know,
26:36
I was doing whatever I could.
26:38
I was doing relief school teaching, you know, like substitute school teaching.
26:45
Some of those days were pretty memorable, you know.
26:48
It wasn't, I think I had it cushy at Ipswich Grammar School when I went out to some of the state schools, which I'm a state school kid, you know.
26:55
You know, I had a few kids put me in my place with some pretty, pretty, pretty right language.
27:01
And I was like, yeah.
27:03
Please TV, please TV, come along faster, sooner rather than later.
27:09
But I was doing whatever I could to survive and I was starting to lose opportunities because I didn't live in Sydney.
27:16
And I just said, I rang Christo, again, Christo to the rescue.
27:19
I rang Christo and I said, I've got to come to Sydney but I don't know how I'm going to make it work.
27:23
And he said, listen, my sister-in-law,
27:25
She lives in Alexandria in, what do you say that?
27:29
That's like inner west, like, you know, it's basically it's downtown Sydney, isn't it?
27:35
And he said she will rent you a room for a reasonable price, bring your gear down and, you know, have a crack.
27:41
Obviously, you've got the Supercross Masters jobs whenever they happen.
27:45
You've got that to bank on.
27:47
That won't be enough to get by, but see how you go.
27:50
And so I moved to Alexandria, packed up my Suzuki Swift GTI and, and, and drove down there.
27:56
And, um, I live with Mari and, uh, for probably, uh, more than six months.
28:01
And at that time I, uh, I had some PA commentary jobs to do and, uh,
28:09
I had been annoying the hell out of the super touring people to try and get that job.
28:14
And the first round came around and I missed out.
28:16
It was at Amaru Park and Neil Crompton and Craig Denya, Grant's dad, commentated it.
28:22
And I don't think there were any pit reporters.
28:24
And anyway, they wanted to, you know, change things up a little bit for the second round.
28:30
But in the interim, before that all came about...
28:32
You know, I'd been scrapping away the best I could.
28:36
I even baked carrot cakes to pay for my petrol money.
28:41
I sold carrot cakes to Com's Takeaway on Mitchell Road, Alexandria.
28:47
I don't think it's there anymore.
28:48
Last time I went past, I think it had burnt down.
28:51
But...
28:53
Yeah, I thankfully only had to do that for about a month or six weeks.
28:56
And, you know, whatever I got for the carrot cakes was my Aunty Dixie's recipe from Shepparton.
29:01
And I, you know, that paid my petrol money.
29:03
And then I started teaching, like doing substitute teaching at the inner Sydney schools.
29:11
And yeah.
29:12
That was pretty rough.
29:13
And I thought, well, maybe I should go out to the posh area.
29:15
So I went out to Vaucluse and out there.
29:19
And the kids were a little easier on me.
29:22
And anyway, it all just, it all kind of came around pretty fast.
29:26
I'd obviously annoyed the heck out of the super touring people enough that they called, Kelvin O'Reilly called and said, hey, we're at Lakeside this week.
29:34
We'd like you to come out and do some reporting.
29:37
And I said, oh, well, the only thing is I don't live in Brisbane anymore.
29:40
I live in Sydney.
29:43
that will fly up and you can do it.
29:46
And that was the beginning of the super touring days.
29:49
Interestingly enough, Craig Denyer and I had to do a piece on camera
29:54
And none of it was live.
29:55
It was all taped.
29:56
But Craig Daniel and I had to do a piece on camera for the US coverage, and it was in 1996 the then fledgling Speed Vision.
30:05
Amazing.
30:06
And who knew but six years later in 2003 I would actually work for Speed Vision.
30:13
That's awesome, mate.
30:14
I've got great memories of those carrot cakes, incidentally, too, and so have the team from Zed Space or Watch Out Productions.
30:20
I think they used to get snapped up pretty quickly there.
30:23
Just quick reflections on that Suzuki Swift GTI.
30:26
That was a cool little rocket.
30:27
Did you ever tune that up or was it just a stock machine?
30:30
No, it was stock.
30:32
It wasn't chipped.
30:33
It wasn't chipped, mate.
30:34
It wasn't chipped.
30:35
Didn't have a chip in it.
30:38
So the super touring opportunity comes up and that opens the door to Channel 10, which would play a very significant part in your life, mate.
30:46
There would be opportunities that would emerge with sports tonight, eventually the supercars.
30:52
I mean, they were amassing a portfolio of things.
30:55
Let's start with the post-produced stuff that you mentioned there with Watch Out Productions and Tim and Fran Jardine, who you've got a great association with to this day.
31:04
Yeah, so I would go and do the super touring races, which you then did the next year, so you know what the routine was like.
31:12
And the then head of sport at Network 10 was, I say, with a very heavy heart.
31:18
Now the late Mike Audsen, Audie was terrific to both you and I and Krompo and everybody, Bill Woods, Matty White, Barry Sheen, everybody.
31:26
And Ordi came down to the Phillip Island round and I had, you know, naively, I had no clue why he was there.
31:33
And our producer at the time, Tim Jardine, said, listen, you know, yes, he's the head of sport, but don't get nervous.
31:38
Just do what you normally do.
31:39
He's just here to observe.
31:40
Well, little did I know, but it was kind of a live...
31:44
you know, in the moment, on the spot casting.
31:47
It was a screen test for what was coming, you know, the following year, which was then touring cars.
31:53
It wasn't called V8 Supercars then.
31:55
In 1997, it was still called the Australian Touring Car Championship.
31:59
And I didn't know and nobody knew that 10 had the rights to it.
32:03
And so Audie was seeing what I was like on camera, how I handled myself with the producer, just everything that was going on.
32:10
And he called me to a meeting and said, listen, you know, you're doing well, the Super Tourist stuff's going well, but you need to learn more about TV.
32:18
How about I get you a job at Sports Tonight as a freelance reporter?
32:23
Fantastic.
32:23
And I said, well, you know, I have a teaching degree.
32:26
I don't have a journalism or communications degree.
32:28
He said, all right.
32:28
He said, you know the sport and, you know, the rest you can learn.
32:32
You have people help you.
32:33
And the then executive producer of Sports Tonight was a guy called Craig Reynolds, and Reno helped me a lot as well.
32:38
I didn't tell him that I didn't know how to type
32:43
Pretty intimidating being in the Sydney newsroom and not being able to type.
32:47
You know, I'd hide in the corner and do my little, you know, one finger.
32:52
And anyway, it was so I would work the freelance shifts whenever they came up at Sports Tonight, which was terrific to be, you know, I could, you know.
33:03
Famous show.
33:06
Six months earlier, I was, you know, just, you know, scrapping to survive.
33:11
And the next minute, here I am in a newsroom with Bill Woods, Tim Webster, Matty White, Tony Peters, the old rugby league guy, Leanne West, you know, James Knight.
33:23
I mean, the list goes on.
33:24
There's so many people that I'd seen on the television for years.
33:28
And the next minute, I'm sitting in, because, you know, I have to be honest, part of me was like, what the bloody hell are you doing here?
33:35
And they were all really good to me, welcoming, and they knew that I was from the motor racing side, but being a PE teacher, I was pretty well versed in a lot of sports, but I had to learn the business of television and reporting and writing.
33:50
the art of a voiceover for a 60 second or a minute 15 or a minute 30 television package for the news and you know, and you went down that same road, mate.
33:58
You know what it's like, it's putting all the pieces of the puzzle together.
34:02
And after doing freelance sports tonight for a few months, Mike Ortsent called me to a meeting
34:08
in the old office in the old Altimo building at Channel 10 before they moved to the big Piedmont building where they are now and have been for a long time.
34:13
And he said, and I was only 25 at the time, still wet behind the ears.
34:17
And he said, hey, we got the Australian Touring Car Championship next year.
34:20
He said, how would you like to call it with Barry Sheen and Mark Osler?
34:25
You know, I...
34:26
I think I nearly vomited on his desk because he said, are you all right?
34:29
And I said, no, I don't feel real good.
34:31
I said, can I sleep on it?
34:33
And I went home and I rang my mum and dad and told them and asked them and anyway, it went from there.
34:39
So a terrific man who gave me a huge opportunity.
34:43
Most definitely, mate.
34:44
And a great transition as well.
34:45
I can fondly remember at the time the pair of us trying to juggle jobs on occasion and subbing or swapping for one another.
34:52
You'd come around to mum and dad's and steal my dad's good red wine, which was always a great laugh.
34:57
Yeah, and sleep on your fold out bed.
35:00
It was about as big as a paddle pop stick.
35:02
Correct, correct.
35:04
Let's talk Baz and Mark Osler firstly.
35:07
Marko, who we love.
35:08
You had a good little nickname for Marko.
35:09
I don't know if he knows about it, but you had a good nickname for him, didn't you?
35:12
Wasn't it the Toyota Camel from the RAV4?
35:15
Yeah, because he was very characterful, right?
35:17
And he would always pull faces and he was terrific, like you.
35:21
He'd do impersonations.
35:24
And when he'd do his impersonation face, he looked like that caricature of the Toyota Camel.
35:28
They ran that campaign for a long time.
35:32
But Mark was good.
35:33
I wish he kept broadcasting because he was a very good broadcaster.
35:36
Me too.
35:37
Baz, people knew you was Stiffy, which is a great nickname, but Baz wanted his own moniker, didn't he?
35:44
And he called you Miso.
35:46
Explain that.
35:46
Miso.
35:48
Yeah, so Miso, M-S-O.
35:50
So instead of calling me Stiffy, he called me Miso, which stood for Mighty Stiff One.
35:56
He was remarkable, mate.
35:57
People love a good Baz story on the podcast here.
36:00
I mean, we'll get to the fact that he quietly helped you when you would take the next phase of your career.
36:06
But, I mean, he was just an unbelievable human being.
36:10
Share with people, if you can, just maybe a couple of recollections of what it was like to work with him in those early days, those first moments.
36:15
Well, first of all, it was incredibly intimidating to begin with because of his star power.
36:22
Stature.
36:23
And his stature and his global celebrity status.
36:27
And, you know, I'd been watching him and listening to him for years and, you know, with the depth of knowledge of global motorcycle racing that my dad had, you know, of course, who didn't know who Barry Sheen was?
36:38
And so, yeah, not only was it going to be...
36:42
was I taking over from somebody who would become a good friend in Mike Raymond, but taking over from the Channel 7 days of, you know, Mike Raymond and Gary Wilkinson and Krompo when he was there and all that Channel 7 regime.
36:56
When it came to 10 and other than Mark Osler, it was a totally fresh change.
37:00
So, you know, as a 25-year-old kid from Brisbane,
37:04
And, you know, shit, I felt the pressure.
37:06
I really felt the pressure.
37:07
And so, and then you're working alongside Baz.
37:12
And to begin with, our first race was that night race at Calder Park.
37:16
Do you remember that in 1997?
37:17
Yes, I do.
37:18
I think a lot of people remember from Mark Scaife's car and the massive glowing brake disc.
37:23
Glowing brakes.
37:24
Yeah, it was a really, it was a cool event.
37:25
But it started out, it was just Barry and myself
37:29
in the commentary box and Mark Osler was down on pit lane.
37:33
And I'm not sure if it was just for that one weekend or maybe one more.
37:36
And then Mark's like, you know, I'm not really a pit reporter.
37:40
You know, I don't really, I'm kind of, I don't feel comfortable here.
37:44
I can do the job, but I don't feel comfortable.
37:46
I'm better in the box.
37:47
And so Marko pitched it, you know, to then our producer, Andrew Radford and Murray Lomax and, and, um,
37:56
Mike Ward sent and David White, who was then the new head of sport at Channel 10.
38:02
He was the head of Sport and News, you know, dear, dear friend.
38:05
You know, he was then coming into the mix in that mid-97 period.
38:10
And so Mark got his way into the booth and then it was myself, Baz and Mark.
38:13
And we formed a really terrific team that worked together for three full years on what would then in 1998 become V8 supercars.
38:21
Pretty surreal, mate.
38:22
So was it from memory, Primus 1000 Classic, Larry and Russell in it, and here's this young kid from Queensland calling it.
38:30
And as you say, you know, taking the reins from one of the greats in Mike Raymond.
38:36
I mean, that's just dream stuff, isn't it?
38:38
Yeah.
38:38
Do you want me to tell you a secret that I've never told anybody?
38:41
Please, share.
38:42
Seriously.
38:43
Seriously, this is something that happened.
38:45
And I think, you know, I think there would have been a greater reaction if social media was around back then.
38:51
But thank God it wasn't.
38:54
Because back then the top ten shootout,
38:58
As you well know, and anybody who went to the track, the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people that went to the track over the years know that back then, the top 10 shootout didn't happen at 5 o'clock.
39:10
It wasn't live.
39:11
It happened earlier in the day.
39:13
I thought we were talking about qualifying, and they put up a graphic of qualifying, but I had the top 10 shootout results here, and I said the results of the top 10 shootout before we put it to air.
39:26
And nobody in the truck screamed at me, so that was good.
39:31
But somebody in the truck noticed and I was just praying that none of the viewers noticed.
39:35
And I think if social media was around back then, I could have crawled into a hole and died.
39:40
But yeah, I still shake when I think about that.
39:45
Lesson, less early, early lessons in television, not what to do.
39:49
Exactly.
39:49
And the beauty of what is live when it just happens live.
39:52
You don't have to worry about stuff like that.
39:53
But when you've got to put your brain in that space.
39:57
So from a supercar standpoint, you spent a great few years there, mate.
40:01
I mean, that chapter was remarkable.
40:04
you know, it exploded on Network 10.
40:06
They had all sorts of other motorsport that they were amassing.
40:11
But you would go in 99, I think, to the Le Mans 24 Hour with Tim Jardine and the Watch Out gang.
40:17
I think John Smales went with you as well.
40:20
Was that a real kind of eye-opening moment to the potential international opportunity?
40:26
Yeah, so the whole international thing actually started the year before.
40:30
It started in 1998 when I was working at Sports Tonight and I was asked if I wanted to go to London for a Formula One launch.
40:41
I was like...
40:42
Sure, I'd love to go to London.
40:43
That'd be incredible.
40:45
And it was back in the days where you'll remember where there was significant size tobacco sponsorship and budgets.
40:53
And so they would pay the production fee.
40:57
They'd pay the travel fee, they'd pay for the cameraman, they'd do everything.
41:00
It was a sponsor.
41:01
You know, these days it could be the same as Red Bull or, you know, pick one of the sponsors.
41:06
They just happened to be paying for the production budget.
41:09
So...
41:10
In 98, I went to London for a Formula One launch.
41:15
And then I went to Le Mans in June with Tim Jardine.
41:18
And it was just Tim and myself and a cameraman and, uh, our friend, a guy who had helped me, uh, in a couple of years down the road, a British guy called Andrew Marriott, who back in the day was Barry Sheen's media manager and his PR manager.
41:31
Um, so I got to go to Le Mans in 98, which was just unbelievable, you know, uh, Toyota and Porsche and BMW and Mercedes and,
41:42
It was just mind blowing.
41:44
I'd never seen anything like it in my life.
41:46
And we made a documentary, an hour long documentary, I think it was, for Network 10.
41:51
And Tim Jardine was very insistent on
41:57
You know, he said, you're a young guy.
41:58
You'll be able to handle it.
41:59
I want the authenticity that you need to show the viewer of what it's like to do this marathon.
42:05
And so Tim and I didn't sleep.
42:06
By the time when we got up to go to the track on race day to when we finally went to sleep after dinner on the Sunday night, Tim and I didn't sleep, I think, for about 38 minutes.
42:16
hours, something like that.
42:17
It was crazy.
42:18
Amazing.
42:18
You know, so I had some growth on my face, I had bags under my eyes, doing the last pieces on camera.
42:24
And we would just go around the track, back to pit lane, around the track, and we'd just shoot pieces, get driver interviews.
42:32
And that was the big eye-opener for me.
42:34
That, you know, doing what we were doing in Australian motorsport was, you know, I never dreamed of that.
42:40
It was unbelievable.
42:41
But then when I went to Le Mans, I was like, holy dooly, this is something else.
42:45
Because it's such a massive, it's a massive event, mate.
42:47
Not everyone realises that in terms of spectators and you've detailed some of the manufacturers there and the great rich history as well.
42:54
Yeah, it's crazy.
42:55
Wherever you are, if you can be in the pit lane or like I was for 10 years straight, I was in the commentary booth.
43:01
You know, when I joined Speed Channel in the early 2000s, I got to call Le Mans 10 straight years, which was crazy.
43:07
fantastic experience, but you can watch the crowd swell as they come to the starting line for the race.
43:14
You know, hours before the race, there's more than 100,000 people just come to that front straight area to see the driver parade and then the start of the race.
43:23
And then because it's 24 hours, they go back, they go and get something to eat and drink, they go to a different corner, they move around.
43:29
they go and sleep, they come back, and then they all swell back for the end of the race.
43:32
So it's this, the crowd, you know, several hundred thousand people, it's this living organism that just, you know, breathes and it ebbs and flows and moves around and it was quite the experience.
43:43
In that 1999 year, which was the fateful year of Mercedes, when Mark Webber was driving for them, when Peter Dunbrecht went flying off into the trees, that was crazy to be there, to be a part of all of that.
43:56
And prior to that, John Smales, legendary Australian broadcaster and journalist and businessman, we were standing in the pit lane and he said to me, what do you think about all this diff?
44:06
And I said, ah.
44:07
It's crazy, like look how big this place is and the cars and the drivers.
44:11
And he said, no, no, no, no, no.
44:12
I'm not talking about the event.
44:14
I said, he said, I'm talking about motor sport and sport and living in the Northern hemisphere.
44:19
He said, you should be here, you can do this.
44:22
And I said, really?
44:22
And he said, yeah, give it a crack.
44:24
Why not?
44:25
What do you got to lose?
44:26
And that was in June of 1999.
44:29
And by January of 2000, I was living in London.
44:34
Crazy.
44:35
In the window in between, I can vividly recall being with you, maybe at Queensland Raceway.
44:39
Your dad might've even come too.
44:40
And you asked me to take a photo of you at the time.
44:43
It might not have been a phone.
44:44
It probably would have been probably a camera.
44:47
Back then it was you and maybe Krompo or you and Baz or something.
44:52
And it was like you were capturing a memory.
44:53
And it did hit me at the time.
44:54
I thought, oh, that's interesting.
44:55
But you were clearly well advanced on the idea.
44:58
But how big of a, again, of a punt was that going to the UK?
45:04
It was...
45:06
It was probably the most, uh, it was the most frightened I've been, but it was also the most exciting time because, um, uh,
45:18
I mean, so much happened in 1999.
45:20
I married my first wife in 1999, bought a house in 1999, and then at the end of that year moved overseas.
45:28
So it was crazy.
45:29
I mean, just so much happened.
45:32
And it was very, very difficult to leave Network 10.
45:36
And I had to have some very tough meetings with now one of my best friends, David White,
45:42
the late Mike Ord sent, Scott Young, who went on to become the head of Formula One at Sky Sports up until recently, he moved on to a different company.
45:52
Murray Lomax was there and, you know, I'm not trying to overplay this, but, you know, they didn't want me to leave because we had a great team.
46:00
Like, we had, it was all humming along and, you know, I do, like you did, we all worked on different types of motorsport and, you know, we had a team and they didn't want the team to break up and,
46:11
You know, they got a little bit upset with me.
46:13
And, you know, I think after...
46:17
I'm not sure if they really thought that I was serious.
46:21
You know, I was in my late 20s.
46:23
What was I?
46:24
1999.
46:24
I was 28 years old.
46:28
And they were like, what are you doing?
46:30
You got the best job in Australian motorsport television.
46:33
What are you walking away from?
46:34
Why are you walking away from it?
46:36
And I just said, well, I need to have a go and try and be a small fish in a big pond.
46:42
So you knew Andrew Marriott, so that's at least one kind of connection.
46:46
And you're very good at making your own way, mate.
46:48
You always have been.
46:50
But in perhaps a quiet little way, Baz in the background did help champion the cause, didn't he?
46:56
Oh, massively, massively and more than quietly.
46:59
So...
47:00
Um, Andrew Marriott was a tremendous resource and Andrew is still a dear friend to this day.
47:06
I rang Andrew, I seriously rang Andrew, if not every day, almost every day of the week, almost for a year straight.
47:14
I drove him mental.
47:16
And in the end he said, listen, just come.
47:19
He used to produce, Andrew did so many things.
47:22
He was part of a group called CSS Stella and it used to be just called CSS and he was one of the founders of that.
47:33
And then when it became CSS Stella, the Stella arm of it was Julian Jacoby, Etten Senna's manager and Dario Franchitti, Alan McNish, so many people.
47:42
and they joined and became this mega agency and different things.
47:45
Anyway, Andrew had so many irons in the fire, but he said, look, one of the things I do is I produce a two-hour weekly motorsport show on Sky Sports.
47:52
We have everything from Formula Fords to Ford Fiesta races to, you know, wacky sports car stuff.
47:58
He said, if you come over, you know, I can't give you a full-time job, but I can guarantee you I can give you weekly voiceover work.
48:05
They're probably, I don't know,
48:06
you know, pay me a few hundred pounds, you know, a voiceover session.
48:10
He said, it'll be enough to get by, but you're going to need to find something else.
48:14
So, Neil Crompton helped me with a guy who he used in Sydney.
48:17
I put together, you know, I had a show reel.
48:19
Michael Heaton put the show reel together for me, our dear friend and long-time producer and editing master and director, producer, you know, Hedo did it all.
48:29
put my show reel together as a going away gift.
48:32
Neil Crompton helped me put it in this presentation pack and make a booklet.
48:36
No, don't use that photo, use this photo.
48:37
Change the script, Crompo introduced me to this guy who made these cool boxes.
48:42
And so that was my presentation kit, you know, and I'd go and present it, go and give it to somebody.
48:47
Anyway, all of that, that was all fluff.
48:49
What really mattered was Barry Sheen behind the scenes was ringing the head of BBC Sport.
48:55
He too called Dave Gordon almost every day.
48:59
And because Barry, you know, as always, Barry knew stuff that nobody else did and what was coming down the pipe.
49:05
And you've got to give Lee a go.
49:07
Give Lee a go.
49:08
Check him out.
49:09
So the BBC got the world's super bike coverage away from Sky and Barry wanted to be, you know, right in the mix and instrumental in putting the team together and the team would be his old partner in crime and his best friend, Steve Parrish.
49:24
And I was leaving and he knew how much I love bikes and Baz and I called bikes together.
49:28
You know, we all did, you know, you, me, Woodsy, Darrell, Baz, we all,
49:32
you know, went to World Superbikes and Grand Prix weekends.
49:35
And so Baz is like, you and Stavros would be a great team.
49:39
But he didn't tell me that at the time.
49:40
He's thinking that.
49:41
And he helped introduce me to Steve before I knew I had the job.
49:45
So I was chatting to Steve anyway, not knowing that the cables were being connected.
49:50
And I was at the Jaguar Formula One launch at Lord's Cricket Ground with Andrew Marriott.
49:56
And we were interviewing, you know, Sir Jackie Stewart and Eddie Irvine and a bunch of different people and I'd just got a mobile phone.
50:06
Mobile phone rang and a guy said in this very posh English voice, he said, hello, Lee, it's Mark Wilkin from the BBC.
50:14
I'd like to talk to you.
50:15
And anyway, long story short, went in there, got the job and it wasn't
50:20
till about, I don't know, a month or two after that Dave Gordon, the head of BBC Sport at the time, told me that Barry had been ferreting around behind the scenes calling him saying you've got to give my mate a job.
50:36
That's the end of part one of my podcast with respected Aussie motorsport broadcaster Lee Diffie.
50:41
A few of you have been asking for it in the feedback section of the Podcast One Australia website and via social media, so thank you.
50:48
We read every one of those messages.
50:51
Part two is in the Rusty's Garage library right now, ready for you, so fire it up and enjoy.
50:57
In addition to his insights on climbing the ladder to secure some plum motorsport gigs, we also talk posty bikes...
51:05
His thoughts on Scott McLaughlin's move to IndyCar and clear up a rumour about whether supercars really did approach him to potentially be part of their line-up under the new Fox Channel 7 telecast deal.