Former TV anchor claims she felt 'damaged'

Judy Bailey has spoken for the first time about her terrible last two years at TVNZ, describing the humiliation of her $800,000 salary being revealed and her shock dumping as "hideous".

Publicising her new biography My Own Words, Judy described how devastated she was by her salary being leaked to the media in 2005.

"The damage was huge. I felt damaged. People look at you like 'that rich bitch'," she told Paul Holmes in an emotional interview last night.

She had calculated her salary on her "brand" and the fact that she knew the one-year contract would be her last.

But the former "mother of the nation" details in her book the shock of her sacking just months later, including the tearful final meeting in then-chief executive Ian Fraser's office.

Fraser, she writes, "greeted me with open arms and a kiss" then told Judy he was not going to renew her contract.

"I felt numb," she writes. "'Oh... okay' was all I could come up with."

Judy asked to be left alone in the room, to write a public announcement about the termination.

"I sat there alone for a few minutes. The tears came and I let them roll down my cheeks," she recalls. "This wasn't how I'd wanted to go, but then life rarely goes to plan, does it?"

Remarkably, her family didn't share her sorrow. Judy went home that night to be greeted by her husband Chris and adult children James, Sam and Gemma, with champagne to celebrate. They felt, she says, that it was a good thing for her as a person - and it has been.

Reserved and regal on screen, Judy said she wrote the book in part to reveal the human face behind her presenter's mask.

It is a very personal account of her life, including her meeting Chris and his "sloshed" proposal just three weeks later.

"I was still 18 at the time, he was 22. I never really thought about it - I just knew it was meant to be," she writes.

A few years later, though, the nervous young mother went through her darkest period - suffering from post-natal depression after the birth of son James.

"James was nine months old before we had a decent night's sleep," she writes. Now Judy wishes she'd had the courage to speak out about the black nights when she would cry, yelling at her colicky baby to stop crying.

"I was ashamed of myself for not coping," she says.

She details the "nightmare" of her colleagues John Hawkesby and Richard Long's sackings, Long's reinstatement and Hawkesby's descent into depression. She writes movingly about the death of her beloved father, how she poured him a Scotch as he lay in intensive care then held him as he struggled for breath.

She told Holmes last night that despite her long career and "mother of the nation" tag, she never felt "good enough" to be a TV presenter.

"I never felt that I was quick enough with the one-liners." Which is why, she said, newsreading with its pre-prepared script was her real calling. She hated the limelight, but coped with the intrusions into her private life by "just getting on with the job".

Judy was the person who suggested One News cover the story of her leaked salary, even reading the item herself - "an out of body experience" as she describes it.

"It was a slow news day and the story about my salary was leading every radio bulletin." Bailey said she knew once her contract was revealed, it "would be open season on Judy Bailey".

"It was hideous. Just hideous," she said.

Fraser, and news chief Bill Ralston, however, assured her her job was safe. Three months later, she was sacked.

Judy said writing about that time in the book was "cathartic".

She spent months working at her kitchen table in the home she has shared with Chris and the children for the past 30 years.

All the writing took place from 4pm to 8pm - the hours that were her peak time during 26 years of newsreading.

The final piece in the book is about her last day at TVNZ and even now, she says, she cannot talk about that day without crying, because of the special way her colleagues farewelled her both on and off screen.

Judy now plans to focus on child advocacy and charity work and most of all she is enjoying her more private life.

"I'm really nervous (about the book). It's quite scary putting yourself out there again. The last couple of years at TVNZ were so hurtful and it's quite a leap of faith to do the book."