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vale bob...

 

bob, we will miss you... bob, we will miss you...

Legendary Australian writer, journalist, playwright and auteur Bob Ellis died today, 3 April 2016.

Bob had been battling liver cancer for the last year and finally succumbed today at his home at Palm Beach, in Sydney's north, at 4.15pm.

At the end, Bob was surrounded by his loving family, wife Anne Brooksbank, sons Jack and Tom, and daughter Jenny.

Bob Ellis was a true genius and an Australian icon, with a once in a generation facility for language. Often controversial, frequently confronting and always brilliant, Bob was simply unable to turn a dull phrase. He wrote movies and plays and books and articles and appeared on stage and gave speeches and was, in short, a brilliant, bubbling spring of creativity.

A long time IA contributor and a good friend, Bob became involved in IA after I opened his website Table Talk, one night in 2012, and read article after article — until I realised they were all written that same day. He was astonishingly prolific. I was astounded he was not being published by the mainstream media. I found out later he had been released by Fairfax in 2011 over some controversy or another. Outspoken and never shy from speaking his mind, Bob was never far from those. I emailed him and we reached terms almost immediately. He had a reputation for being difficult, and a curmudgeon, but to me he was always kind and warm.

I gave Bob no guidance about what to write and often disagreed with his opinions, but I always loved the way he expressed them.

Other obituaries will be written about Bob's immense contribution to Australia popular culture. His award winning movies Newsfront and My First Wife, and plays, such as the Legend of King O'Malley. But here at IA we weep for the loss of one of Australia's most piercing journalistic talents, which began in the 1970s with the Nation Review, a contrarian, progressive political publication not dissimilar to IA.

A star has fallen from the sky.

And so it goes.

https://independentaustralia.net/life/life-display/bob-ellis-dies,8841

 

a giant of wit, insight and often pertinent knowledge...

 

Ellis, a supporter of the Australian Labor Party, has written speeches for a number of Labor leaders (such as Bob Carr, Paul Keating and Kim Beazley) and written extensively on Labor history.

Regarding Ellis's speech writing, Beazley had said on the 7.30 Report that if he had used any of Ellis's speeches he would have been out of politics.

Ellis's involvement in politics became more direct when he unsuccessfully contested the Federal seat of Mackellar as an independent candidate against the Liberal Party's Bronwyn Bishop in a by-election in 1994[10] as the ALP did not field a candidate in that by-election.

Ellis's 2011 book Suddenly, Last Winter – An Election Diary created headlines for its criticism of the Labor Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and praise for the Liberal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott. He described Gillard as "not well informed" and "sudden, firm and wrong" in everything she does. He also said "She has no power, no influence, no friends, no learning. There's not much there" whilst describing Abbott as having "good manners", being "formidable" and possessing a "first-class mind".[11]

Ellis has written speeches for South Australian premier Mike Rann for a number of years.[12]

Writings[edit]

Ellis has written two books, Goodbye Jerusalem and Goodbye Babylon, on his experiences of the Labor Party. The first edition of Goodbye Jerusalem was pulped following a successful defamation case brought by two Liberal cabinet ministers, Tony Abbott and Peter Costello, and their wives. At issue was the single sentence where Ellis quoted politician Rodney Cavalier as having said, "Abbott and Costello...they're both in the Right wing of the Labour Party till the one woman fucked both of them and married one of them and inducted them into the Young Liberals". The publisher, Random House, accepted that the disputed content was a falsehood and the book was removed from sale. ACT Supreme Court Justice Higgins awarded the two politicians and their wives a total of $277,000 damages. A new edition of the book was published three months later which omitted the defamatory passage.[13][14]

In 1998 Penguin Books Australia published Ellis's First Abolish the Customer – 202 Arguments Against Economic Rationalism. Penguin published Ellis's The Capitalism Delusion – How Global Economics Wrecked Everything and What To Do About It in 2009 and One Hundred Days of Summer in 2010. In 2014 Penguin Books published "The Ellis Laws" by Bob Ellis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ellis

 

Bob was wrong on both Gillard and Abbott... He misread both, but all is forgiven.