The Whole Truth

It’s Friday 11 November 2022, around 10 a.m., and I’m sitting in a makeshift broadcast booth set up in the spare bedroom on the top floor of my house in Woollahra. It’s not unusual for me to record from here, in this home office of sorts, with its big gleaming mirror, plush rug and a com­memorative picture plaque on the wall celebrating twenty years of the juggernaut crown jewel and gift of my career, The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

The Covid pandemic is only just beginning to fade, and in fact I’ve been laid low recently by the coronavirus and a persistent lung infection that followed. I’ve been very sick, actually, so working remotely is the new normal. My co-host and producers are used to communicating with me through a computer and a mixing board. And a big screen, of course, so that we can see one another while we’re talking and joking and laughing on air each day.

Today, however, our show is over for this week. Job done. We’re almost at the end of the year, too, with three weeks to go until the summer break, but I know I won’t make it that far. I’m hanging on by a thread. I’ve got my big headphones over my ears, and a ring light in front of my face, and I lean in to the microphone with one final thing I need to say.

I need to pre-record a message for our audience – some­thing to be played on Monday morning, during the first show break. Listeners will hear my voice and think it’s coming to them live – that I’m speaking to all of Sydney from my little patch within Sydney – but in reality I’ll already be half a world away. I need to leave this town, immediately, for reasons that will soon become clear, but I also need to get out of here without anyone noticing, hence the cloak-and-dagger public message.

I’d like to think I’m a good speaker on air. I’ve been doing this for more than a quarter of a century. But I’m nervous about this pre-record, and I think that’s because I’m not going to be telling the whole truth to our listeners. I’m going to have to leave something out. Something important. It’s a lie by omission – not a blatant fabrication. I will not do the latter, so I’ll have to walk a delicate line, and the anxiety shows in my cracking voice and halting delivery.

‘I do want to tell you something, guys,’ I say into the microphone. ‘I am, look, you know – I’ve been not very well. I think ever since I had Covid, I’ve just been struggling with this fatigue. Ever since I picked up that virus a couple of weeks ago, I’ve been to the doctor several times, and he said because I’ve been pushing myself every day, after the show all I’ve been doing is sleeping, and I’m not getting better.’

‘I feel like it’s got worse,’ says my co-host and friend, Kyle Sandilands. ‘I feel like I can hear it’s got worse. You can’t even laugh!’

‘I just have to take some time off,’ I say. ‘So, I’m ending the show today. As in now. But you know how much this show means to me. You know how I push through anything. I would not be doing this if I didn’t absolutely have to.’

‘Can I just ask a question?’ adds Kyle, dancing his standard daily line between blunt and brilliant, puerile and perceptive. ‘Are you slowly dying? Do you have cancer? Do you have an ingrown toenail?’

‘I rarely take doctor’s advice,’ I note. ‘I’m usually, like, “Nah, it’ll be fine.” But not this time. At least I’ll be all better and back with you all soon. It’s just for a couple of weeks.’

‘Have you taken a lover?’ jokes Kyle, trying again to lighten the heavy moment. ‘Because this is the sort of shit I do. It’s very disappointing, but I totally get it.’

I start coughing then, as if on cue, and I struggle to stop. It’s been this way for a while.

‘See,’ says Kyle, ‘the poor kid can’t even start laughing without a coughing fit!’

The cough is a great cover story for my hiatus, actually, because it’s totally authentic. But regularly hacking up a lung is not the real reason I’m taking a break. Far from it.

‘I’ll miss you guys,’ I say. ‘I love you. And I will get well, thank you.’

‘Next time someone offers to rub Vicks into your chest early in the piece, how about you don’t be such a little princess about it,’ adds Kyle, with that trademark smirk. ‘Listen, we love you,’ he continues. ‘Come home as soon as you feel rested. And I’ll be just sort of controlling this plane as it falls out of the sky, engine dropping off here, wing dropping off there.’

‘Okay, I’ll let you go,’ I say. ‘See ya! Bye! I’m out!’

With the pre-recording complete, the whole team wishes me well. I’m sure they’re curious about my temporary leave of absence – because none of them really knows why I’m stepping back – but it has to be this way. I say goodbye and wave, leave the Zoom meeting, log off and go down­stairs for a cigarette. I feel as if I can finally breathe again. With that last box ticked, there’s only one thing left to do today – get on a plane to Los Angeles, undetected by anyone.

It’ll take some doing. I start by packing my bags. My best friend and manager, Gemma O’Neill, is with me – she’s been with me all week, staying by my side, walking me through this entire episode. She tells me I won’t need any fancy dresses where I’m going, which I could have guessed. Instead I pack comfy clothes – tracksuits and T-shirts and big cosy hoodies. I pack twenty packets of cigarettes, because I think I’ll need them to pass the time.

We go for a walk along the cliffs near Clovelly and have lunch at a little cafe – Sea Salt – and it’s then that I get a little teary, not because I don’t want to go on this journey, but because I don’t know what’s going to happen there. I don’t have the faintest idea what it will be like, and that scares the shit out of me. But I shower and change, and soon I’m ready to leave for the airport, to catch this night flight across the Pacific Ocean.

Gemma is nervous about us being spotted and wants me wearing my baggiest, most oversized clothes as well as my reading glasses. I put on a Covid mask, too – which is no longer necessary but is thankfully still acceptable – plus a baseball cap, and my disguise is complete. One woman at the terminal seems to be sussing me out – Is that her, or not? – but I keep my head down and eyes forward.

‘Don’t let one person recognise you,’ Gemma warns me. ‘Not one.’ Because if even a single soul sees me and this little escape to LA gets into general circulation, the media will want to know why, and I don’t need them asking questions. Not about this.

We check in for our flight at the last minute and tuck ourselves away in a corner of the flight lounge. Gemma goes to the buffet to get me coffee or food or champagne, so I don’t have to come face to face with anyone else. ‘You stay here,’ she says. ‘Don’t move.’

We board at the last possible moment, and I end up with an aisle seat. Every time someone walks past to go to the toilet I face the other way, because the aisles are filled with Aussies. I watch Top Gun: Maverick, which I’ve seen before and loved. I watch Elvis, which I’ve also already seen and loved, but I fast forward to my favourite scenes and songs. Finally I sleep, heavy and hard, and wake up in the City of Angels, La-La Land, Tinseltown. But I’m not here for the glamour.

We arrive late in the evening, get through passport control, grab our bags and clear customs. We pick up our rental car and set a course for Palm Springs. We’re headed to a little hotel there for two nights, but that’s not my final destination. After our weekend in the Sonoran Desert, Gemma will be heading home, but I won’t be going with her. I’m going on alone.

When she checks out, I’ll be checking in – to the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage. I’ll be spending twenty-eight days on its famous twenty-acre campus. I’ve voluntarily enrolled in a Twelve-Step program there, to treat the substance dependence and drug addiction I’ve been able to keep secret for three long and painful years.

Ready as I’ll ever be, we get into our rental car, exit the airport and head east into the night. I look out into the deep darkness of the desert and cry just a little, utterly unsure of what’s to come.