Wilson Quits

[Jono Russell]

From News.com.au

http://entertainment.news.com.au/story/0,10221,15409413-10229,00.html

ONE of the more ambitious experiments in the history of The Footy Show has fizzled to an end after Daily Telegraph columnist Rebecca Wilson quit the struggling program yesterday.

Her decision followed a fresh row with host Fatty Vautin, who along with co-anchor Paul Sterling had angrily resisted Channel 9's plan to install Wilson and 2GB's Ray Hadley on the show. While Hadley declined, Wilson appeared on the program last week and was scheduled to show up again tonight.

But tensions flared again over an interview Wilson gave to The Bulletin this week, where she labelled Vautin "a red-haired pest".

Vautin was also furious over Wilson's claims he and other players once played indecent practical jokes on Wilson as a young reporter.

Vautin told radio 2KY yesterday the claims were "outrageous".

 

[Once Dead]

Ding dong, something's dead...

Can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen...looks like Becky has left the building entirely

 

[Esoj]

you can bet she will but some spin on it saying that she did nothing wrong and that the blame rests entirely with fatty and sterlo

 

[Once Dead]

She already did that on Hadley's morning show.......claimed she was bullied out.....when she, in all truth, bullied herself in....

 

[BigSteveo]

Thank freaking god!

 

[Prodigiousman]

Brilliant manoevering (however you spell it) by the Footy Show management - the best way to discredit your enemy was to give them a chance to prove they could do a better job - and within a week Wilson has discredited herself again (if she had any credit left as it was) after getting her chance to be part of the show. Prior to her appearance the Footy Show was the bad guys now in one great move the producers have turned the tables and Wilson is playing into their hands beautifully. The fact of the matter is if she had taken the high road and just focused on bringing something to the show and making an effort to relate to her co-hosts she would've emerged from this situation with far more respect than she had going in.

But her opinions must be expressed - it is her job after all... just a pity she can't take it when the majority appears to disagree with her.

 

[Twizzle]

Can we please save the NRL forum for Rugby League.

I'm all Beckied out.

CC :arrow:

 

[Billy the kid]

PLEASE don't blame aggresiation on Rebecca Wilson with the Footy show. Yes she should not be on The Thursday Footy show but aim your aggrevation at the the Execitve Producer.


It was Steve Crawley's choice. He head should roll as well.

 

[madunit]

People, can we please be a bit more civilised in our opinions. No more references to Ms Wilson's sexuality or allegations about her being a heavy drinker please.

It's stupid and unneccessary. You are dropping down below her level when you subscribe to such comments.

 

[Prodigiousman]

If you think Crawley is to blame for her being on the show - you're right, but he's not stupid he put her on the show for a reason - and that reason has just been proven - she's out and she's discredited even more and she did most of it herself.

Television politics - Crawley is in the running for PM after this effort.

 

[Billy the kid]

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/site/articleIDs/87CFE4F60943D88ECA25700A0002B946


This is the article she had a go at Fatty

 

[Brutus]

Our favourite golfer.

 

[Surandy]

Wilson last night announced she had quit the Nine Network program after just one appearance, saying there was no room for a woman on the show.

Typical RW crap, use her quitting as another excuse to sink the boot into rugby league. There's room for a woman/women on the show, just not a RL hater that doesn't have a clue.

The sports reporter, who writes for two News Ltd newspapers, was hired by the Footy Show's executive producer Steve Crawley in a bid to boost ratings.

Sports reporter?

Gossip columnist is more like it.

And what did she think she was hired for if not to "boost ratings"? Did she think she was hired for her "expert" opinion???

"The last two weeks have been the worst of my life professionally," Wilson told ABC radio.

So that was worse than when she was ridiculed for being proven to print lies and false rumours? Or worse than when she's been found guilty of driving under the influence?

"What I think was that he believes that I could bring something to the table in terms of the way that I used to at The Fat, which was an opinion, a very definite opinion ..."

But she said this had worked against her.

"They (the Footy Show hosts) just don't like that I have an opinion and I am so direct," she said.

An opinion? Yeah, I guess on the Fat, and 110% Tony Squires she did voice her opinion, on every single topic regardless of the fact that she had no knowledge of the issues she was voicing an opinion on.

She said that the poor relations between her and Vautin and Sterling went way back and that the way she was treated was just part and parcel of being a female in the NRL world.

"Certainly there's a personal element because I was a Superleague girl and they are ARL guys," Wilson said.

Oh gee, bringing the women and the super league war into it? When the f**k are people going to get over the SL war? For better or worse it happened, get over it already!!!

She said AFL was a "much more egalitarian game and much more into women".

Into women? I like that, hmm, St Kilda players? Adelaide players? And the AFL guy that pissed on the woman standing next to him at a bar?

 

[iggy plop]

Typical RW crap, use her quitting as another excuse to sink the boot into rugby league. There's room for a woman/women on the show, just not a RL hater that doesn't have a clue.



Sports reporter?

Gossip columnist is more like it.

And what did she think she was hired for if not to "boost ratings"? Did she think she was hired for her "expert" opinion???

So that was worse than when she was ridiculed for being proven to print lies and false rumours? Or worse than when she's been found guilty of driving under the influence?



An opinion? Yeah, I guess on the Fat, and 110% Tony Squires she did voice her opinion, on every single topic regardless of the fact that she had no knowledge of the issues she was voicing an opinion on.

Oh gee, bringing the women and the super league war into it? When the f**k are people going to get over the SL war? For better or worse it happened, get over it already!!!



Into women? I like that, hmm, St Kilda players? Adelaide players? And the AFL guy that pissed on the woman standing next to him at a bar?

Brisbane Lions' Scotland yard incident? Hawks, Carlton??

Jeff Farmer belting his wife while holding a baby?

The AFL just has better spin doctors and a cosey relationship with the media.

 

[iggy plop]

Rebecca Wilson


As a woman in a man's world, this opinionated sports commentator always expected to cop a few hospital passes, so she's not afraid to tackle a gig on national TV chewing the fat with Fatty and her other sworn enemies.

Barracuda woman bites league stars! Babe bombshells the Fatman! What a time it’s been for sports fans north of the Murray, although you don’t need to live in NSW or Queensland or even follow their premier footy code to savour the stoush, a deliciously all-Australian tale of television, tribalism and blonde ambition. In the challenger’s corner: Rebecca Wilson, motor-mouth sports commentator and gossip columnist. A woman with an opinion on everything (“even if I only know a half a bit about it”) and a taste for trouble. In defence: former rugby league players turned TV stars Paul Vautin and Peter Sterling, aka Fatty and Sterlo. Hosts of Channel Nine’s Footy Show, a program which has run long and hard but is now perhaps a little tired and definitely losing audience. Which Wilson happened to mention, in typical bloody-shovel style, in her Sunday Telegraph column. Which riled the boys. Which reached a crescendo last week after the show’s new boss did the utterly unexpected and recruited Wilson as a regular panellist.


Dismissed by many as a publicity stunt to boost the ratings – which it clearly was, at one level, and effectively did – the general consensus was that the encounter itself, last Thursday night, was something of a damp squib. The two hosts entered the arena having declared they would introduce Wilson but not actually talk to her, for which they received a caning from Wilson’s fellow columnists at News Limited. “Precious prats” was one description. But if they were less than welcoming, there was no blazing confrontation: she was the clawless cat set among docile, if frosty, pigeons.

Still, it’s not over yet. Wilson is as unpredictable as she is outspoken and, as she made clear on the day of her debut, she won’t be shutting up any time soon. Not about herself, nor about some of the more intriguing issues about the treatment of women in sport.

“As a female journalist coming through that world, you have a chair beaten over your head every second day,” Wilson says. That, she claims, is the nub of her problem with the boys at The Footy Show. “Most of it. I’d say 90% of it. Because they are still from the old-fashioned school of sport, where there’s no place for a woman in sport. It’s still said to me all the time, ‘You didn’t play, you didn’t play the game’. And you go, ‘Mate, move on’. Most of these gibbering journos wouldn’t even know the shape of a rugby league football; they didn’t play, either. It’s a male thing, like a rite of passage, and only men know about what goes on in rugby league.”

Her enemies – and she has a legion of them, she knows – will say it’s a personal matter, nothing to do with gender at all. If anything, she’s blokier than most blokes and it’s what she writes and says that gets people’s backs up. She’s been called a ball-breaker, and worse. But she describes herself as warm and soft-hearted, with a great capacity for friendship. So why the abuse, the death threats, the ugly ‘I-hate-Rebecca Wilson’ internet site?

“Because it’s sport and because I’m a woman and because ... I tell you what, I said to someone on radio the other day who was working with me, ‘Don’t take me on and put my back to the wall because I’ll fight you and I’ll win. Don’t do it’.” Do her friends ever advise her to pull back, to be more cautious about what she says? “Yeah, they do, they’re always asking, ‘Do you have to push everything? Do you have to be so bloody opinionated?’ Well, yes. You can’t let the bastards beat you.”

It started when she was 23, moving from the Brisbane Courier-Mail (where girls weren’t allowed to cover sport) to Channel 10, where she was assigned to cover the 1982 Commonwealth Games in the Queensland capital – “To do the archery because I was the girl. So I trotted off to do the rugby league reporting and this is the Wally Lewis, Mal Meninga, Fatty Vautin era … I’ve known Fatty for so long, I can’t tell you.

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/eddesk.nsf/6f41c1d13a3b1f07ca256c2700808185/87cfe4f60943d88eca25700a0002b946/Body/0.1F90?OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=jpg“They used to play practical jokes on me and think they were really smart, pulling their dicks out during interviews, you know, that was what they used to do. That whole thing. You’d try to do an interview and they’d try to kick a football into the back of their heads during it … He was always around then and he was always a nark, Fatty. He was always the one causing the trouble. He’s a bloody pest, he’s a red-haired pest.”

It’s not so tactful, given they are now colleagues. Nor is her assessment of The Footy Show as having lost its edge, alienated younger sports fans and generally “disappeared up its own arse”. There’s also the fact Wilson was an executive with Super League during its knockdown, drag-out, 1995-1997 fight with the Australian Rugby League over the future of the code: “Those hatreds still run very deep … Peter Sterling and Paul Vautin were paid a lot of money to stay at the ARL and they have never lost sight of that loyalty and they haven’t ever really got over the war.”

All – or any – of which might help explain the reluctance of the hosts to welcome Wilson to their panel. But the deal’s done now, she’s there for the season. Her presence may make them uncomfortable but she doesn’t believe it will prompt a walkout. “Because look, those guys have had it pretty easy. They’ve gone straight from high school, where they were elite footballers, straight into a professional footballer role, into professional media roles. There’s been no struggle street for any of them. The moment they feel a little bit of hot air on their necks, they’re going ‘Aaaagh’ and having hissy fits. It’s ridiculous.

“Those guys have got to realise that if they want to keep educating their kids, paying their mortgages, and calling the footy, they’re going to have to fall into line a little bit, like other normal employees have to do.”

Isn’t she a little nervous, though, at the prospect of walking in there week after week? “Yeah, I’m a bloody wreck. I just went and broke my personal best on the rowing machine.” Tall and trim on six sessions a week, she’s also broken out in eczema, a sure sign of stress. But she’s not backing down. Not her style or her history.

Journalism is the family trade. Her father Bruce is a foreign correspondent, her brother Jim is a sports reporter, her sister Lizzie (to whom she doesn’t speak) works in PR. Rebecca was seven when she decided to join the club. She grew up in a house full of women and drama: “Opinions were always actively encouraged in our house. Mum and dad split up when I was really young, and my grandfather was a newsagent and we lived with my grandfather, my grandmother, my two great-aunts, mum’s three sisters, and my brother and sister. All in one big house at the back of a newsagent in the middle of Surfers Paradise … my grandfather used to seek solace in the Rotary Club.”

When she moved into television, they tried to groom her, to take away that unmistakable Brisbane accent, but failed dismally. “They tried to make me posh; dad calls it ‘the Qantas hostie accent’, which is about right … you’re not going to take the girl out of Queensland just like that.”

Wilson had a hit working with Tony Squires on ABC’s The Fat and a miss when the show switched time-slots and went variety. As a sports fiend from way back, it drove her cuckoo: “I don’t want to sit there and talk to some bloody half-witted actor. I’m sort of going, ‘You’re gorgeous but you’re hopeless’.” Truth is, she’s a News Limited girl at heart, likes the culture and is close to chief executive John Hartigan, whom she describes as “a very, very dear friend”. There has been gossip and she knows people say he protects and promotes her but Wilson insists it’s not so. “I fight all my own fights, he’s unaware of most of the fights I have because he’s at such a different frigging level from anything I do.” Professionally, she reckons it’s a bad rather than good association due to people’s assumptions.

The thing Hartigan has taught her, she says, is “to never, ever give a f**k about what anyone thinks. Of all the people I know, he’s the person who cares least about what people think of him and that’s been a very good lesson to learn. Because he believes that, as far as the world’s concerned, only a few people matter. That’s your kids, your parents and your loved ones, and that’s all that matters.” She has two sons she adores from a marriage which foundered a couple of years back, an experience she claims (though some may laugh) makes her more sensitive about what she puts in her well-read sports gossip column. It’s fertile ground for enmities. “People like looking for a reason to find an enemy in you if they don’t like you anyway. Put one foot wrong in your column and they’ll say, ‘I hate her, she’s banned.’ I get sin-binned by quite a few people.”

Most recently by Bulldogs CEO Malcolm Noad, who banned Wilson “based on the numerous errors and unsubstantiated stories that she has written about the Bulldogs over the past 12 months”. She laughs it off but is less amused by his allegation that she had “a personal issue” with him dating back to the Sydney Olympics, when Noad was her boss at News Limited. His statement alleged that “she [Wilson] was suspended by News Limited for the period of the Games at the request of Lachlan Murdoch for several indiscretions”. The response is vintage Wilson.

“First of all, I don’t have a personal problem with Malcolm Noad, I have a professional problem with him. Second, I have never been suspended. As for indiscretions, what might they be? Makes out I’ve been rooting in the foyer, or stealing money, that sort of thing … what happened was, I told them to stick their job up their arse.” Reckons the senior exec she said that to is still recovering from the experience.

But it was no fun. She spent six months in a foetal position. At the same time, she’s someone who loves a drama, loves a stoush, loves getting on the telephone and having a good gossip. You can see why her friends suggest she put her brain into gear before offering an opinion, and why she might refuse. “As long as there’s a grenade to be thrown, I’m happy with a grenade.”

Driven? “Yeah, totally.” Is there a risk she’s being used, in this latest fuss over The Footy Show? “Absolutely. All TV is that, all TV is using someone to get a better rating, that’s what TV is. And that’s what we do.” Tough, though Wilson claims she loves frocks and make-up and ranks nine on a one-to-ten scale of femininity. Her greatest fears are, in order: something happening to her children, death, and not having a job. She dreams of winning Lotto, paying out her mortgage and stopping work. In real life, she picks up her mobile each week and dials from A to Z, hustling for column items. It’s a hard business, gossip, and those who dish it often find themselves dished. It happened to Wilson again just this weekend, and she was last seen heading north to absorb the fall-out, girding herself for another wild week. Unlike sport, too much drama is sometimes more than enough. l

http://bulletin.ninemsn.com.au/bulletin/site/articleIDs/87CFE4F60943D88ECA25700A0002B946

By the sounds of this Wilson has ........ her way to the ... (if you can call it the ...). Clovelly Hotel incident as well. (as was reported in the paper)

Rooting in the foyer and stealing money hey Bec? No wonder Noady doesn't like you.

 

[Jae]

It'd have to have been a pretty dark foyer I'd imagine.

 

[PanthersChik]

ahhh wilson has gone. only lasted a week. heehe. soooooooooooo tell me guys, would you be okay with another chick being on the footy show, or is males only ?

 

[PJ]

Quiet happy to have a girl on the show, just not a trachy gossip columnist who is quiet keen to point out everyone else's faults but as soon as someone has a problem with one of hers she has a massive dummy spit.

 

[Brutus]

ahhh wilson has gone. only lasted a week. heehe. soooooooooooo tell me guys, would you be okay with another chick being on the footy show, or is males only ?

Women are fine on the show as long as they have a passion for the game. Actually that goes for the males as well.

People with long standing vendettas can f**k off.