It was May 1999 and Derryn Hinch had been called into the manager’s office at Adelaide’s 5DN. The ratings for his morning program had been tumbling, and after less than a year on air he was told to pack his things.

At the time, I was writing a profile of him for The Australian newspaper and happened to be in his office as he gathered his belongings. He told me that after the station manager broke the news he responded with two demands: the biggest possible payout, and the right to tell the press the truth about why he’d been sacked.

According to Hinch, 5DN offered him an “out” to give to the media. The station was happy to say he’d resigned to write a book. But Hinch was having none of it. “Nothing annoys a journo more than being bullshitted,” he said.

As well as being the “human headline”, Hinch was known for his towering ego and unfailing tabloid news sense. But those who knew him well also say he was a straight shooter, immensely likeable and, as he demonstrated after his fifth sacking in seven and a half years, also disarmingly self-deprecating.

“I’ve been to more stations than the Southern Aurora,” he joked.

Principled, in his own way

I first met Hinch in the early 1990s in the studios of Channel Ten, where he’d taken his eponymous current affairs program after it had been dropped by Channel Seven. He let me observe the production process for a documentary for Radio National’s Media Report.

Frankly, some of what I saw behind the scenes was shocking, including one of the program’s reporters faking footage because they’d got to a story late and missed the action they were there to cover.

But the most memorable moment was sitting next to Derryn as he wrote his tub-thumping nightly editorial with which he........

© The Conversation