Ive probably broken some kind of Logie law Bert Newtons secret gift to a dying AIDS patient revealed

“Promise me you won’t report this until I’ve carked it,” Australian icon and veteran performer Bert Newton begged entertainment reporter Peter Ford.

It was 1990 and the entertainer and four-time Logie winner had just moved to daytime television as the host of The Morning Show on Network Ten, later rebranded as Good Morning Australia.

Bert Newton and the Logies were, for decades, synonymous.

“I’ve probably broken some kind of Logie law, they’re going to come after me,” Newton said.

Ford, who had worked with Newton as a producer on 3UZ Radio’s morning program in the 1980s, swore secrecy and for three decades he kept his word.

Now, as the country mourns the celebrated performer, who died on Saturday in palliative care at a private Melbourne clinic, Ford has broken his silence and revealed Newton gifted a Gold Logie to a dying AIDS patient.

“This goes back to 1990. I had a friend who was dying and he was at the Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, even the name sounded scary. That was the place anybody with AIDS went,” Ford told Melbourne radio station 3AW on Monday morning.

Ford’s friend, who loved celebrities and show business, had only days to live, so the reporter sent half a dozen get-well cards in addressed envelopes to celebrities asking them to sign them and send them to the hospital.

They all did â€" except for Newton.

“About five or six days later, I went out to the hospital and there was a sort of buzz in the air. As soon as I walked in, I could tell it was a different mood and place to what it normally was,” Ford said.

“I said ‘What’s going on?’ [and] they said, ‘You’re not gonna believe it. Guess who’s just been here? Bert Newton’.”

He had gone around to every single patient, spending time by their bedside and making them laugh.

“You’ve got to remember 31 years ago there were still enormous fears about how you catch [AIDS] and can you be in proximity, and nobody wanted to go to that hospital, even if you had loved ones here,” Ford said.

When Ford went on to visit his friend, he noticed Newton had left something on his bedside table: one of his four Gold Logie awards.

“I rang Bert and I said ‘I can’t believe you did that’ and he said ‘OK, I’ve probably broken some kind of Logie law and they’re going to come after me for giving away one of my Logies so don’t tell the story until I’m gone’,” Ford said.

On Sunday, tributes poured in for the larger-than-life entertainer, who had undergone surgery to amputate part of his leg below the knee earlier this year due to a life-threatening infection in his toe.

Wife Patti Newton described her husband as “the most wonderful man” who should be remembered “as the legend that he was”.

“It’s very, very devastating. All our hearts are breaking because he was just the most wonderful man,” she told reporters outside her Hawthorn East home on Sunday morning.

“He had such a fabulous attitude. And he gave us so much joy right up to the end.”

Ford, who credits the success of his career to Newton, said the entertainer was a part of the fabric of Melbourne.

“It’s wonderful that he is being celebrated,” he said. “He saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself.”

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said there would never be another person like Newton. “Four Gold Logies, hosting the Logies on 20 occasions and entertaining Australians for over half a century,” Mr Morrison said.

“There was a familiarity that connected us to Bert, but it also connected us to each other. We could laugh together. That was his gift. Bert could give and take a joke. He could laugh at himself, I’m sure that’s what made Australians warm to him as much as we did.”

Newton will be farewelled in Melbourne with a state funeral.

Our Breaking News Alert will notify you of significant breaking news when it happens. Get it here.

Share this post