Obituary: Angela D'Audney

LOUISA CLEAVE on the controversy, sackings and triumphs that marked Angela D'Audney's 40-year broadcasting career.

In 40 years in broadcasting Angela D'Audney discovered it was not always over when it was over.

She was dumped from several roles but always bounced back. When ill health finally forced her out of her career, she had presented everything from an afternoon women's show to hard news and current affairs.

D'Audney - known to thousands as an anchor, actor, announcer and writer - died of cancer aged 57 early yesterday. She was diagnosed with a brain tumour last May.

She was known mainly as a newsreader - and as such was never far from controversy. Her first foray into fronting the news came in 1973 when she was rushed to the studios to fill in and sparked a wide debate on female newsreaders.

Sharon Crosbie, now head of Radio New Zealand, was quoted as saying: "I feel it is incongruous to have a continuity girl in a cocktail dress and hairdo saying that a typhoon has just killed 50 people."

There were complaints about D'Audney's style when she fronted the regional programme Look North. The New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation received letters about her hair being too long and her clothes too revealing.

"Angela's cleavage shocks TV fans", ran the headline in Auckland's 8 O'Clock weekly newspaper. It detailed viewers' complaints, from her plunging necklines to her "untidy" hairstyle.

"I think it was having a woman reading the news they didn't like," said D'Audney in 1982.

"I'd worn exactly the same dresses and hairstyle as a continuity announcer and there hadn't been a word of criticism."

A couple of years later, the entire Look North team was dropped then re-appointed. D'Audney was offered a reporting job but turned it down.

In those days it seemed she was never far from trouble. In March 1982 viewers protested to TVNZ when she appeared topless in The Venus Touch, playing the wife of a sexologist with sexual problems in his own marriage.

D'Audney said the topless scene, in which the wife tried to get some response from her husband, was crucial to the television play and "she would not have done that in a woollen nightie".

"I have done so many different things in broadcasting that I imagine people had already seen me in a variety of roles," she told the Herald at the time.

"I was an actress doing a job, and it would be unfortunate if I lost the goodwill of some viewers because of that."

D'Audney appeared at one time or another in nearly every New Zealand living room by way of the television, but comments made throughout the years indicated the occasional uneasy relationship between the presenter and her viewers.

"I never go down there at lunchtime," she said of Queen Street, during an interview in 1980.

"And school holidays - it's murder. I walk along with my eyes slightly out of focus. Friends are always saying how I snubbed them in the street."

Two years later, in a Listener article, she said: "I find it very difficult to eat out because some people are so rude. The trouble is the nice ones don't come up to you, so you do get the wrong idea about people."

D'Audney, born in Britain on August 26, 1944, spent part of her childhood in Brazil before coming to New Zealand with her family when she was 12.

Her career began in 1962 when she was accepted as a trainee announcer for the Broadcasting Service. She had started a science course at Auckland University just before turning 18, and wanted part-time work to pay for her studies.

The Broadcasting Service's head announcer in Auckland, Bob Irvine, is said to have rated D'Audney's audition tape the best he had heard and took it to the hierarchy in Wellington to convince them to break rules insisting announcers had to be at least 21.

She met her future husband Haddo D'Audney on her first day at the Auckland studios but they waited until she was 21 to marry.

They moved to Sydney in 1968 and she worked at radio station 2GB, doing the midnight to dawn slot three days a week. They returned to New Zealand in 1970 and she started work on radio station 1ZB as an "intermediary" between guests, such as David Lange and Bruce Slane, and callers.

She had a role in New Zealand television from its first days.

As a continuity announcer alongside women such as Margaret Moore, Edwina Rumford Myers and Alma Johnson she introduced shows such as Dr Kildare, Z-Cars and Bonanza.

Her first main role in television was reporting on an afternoon women's show called On Camera. It later marked the first of many public TV "dumpings" in her career.

During the mid-70s her marriage ended on amicable terms but she never remarried or had children.

In her recent book, Angela - A Wonderful Life, D'Audney said she had wanted children, but Haddo had discouraged the idea.

"I don't have regrets. I just don't, it's not in my nature," she said. "But one of the things I miss not having had is children ... But it wasn't to be, and I'm not going to lose myself in futile 'if onlys'. Regrets never did anyone any good."

Outside broadcasting, D'Audney had a love of cars and dogs, especially her beloved poodles. She fell in love with the breed while compering a fashion parade to mark the opening of Vulcan Lane as a shopping mall.

All the models in the show had poodles and D'Audney realised they were perfect - no fur on the furniture and no smell.

With her dark good looks - she was the daughter of a Spanish father and Jewish American mother - and the gap between her front teeth, D'Audney had a distinctive appearance rarely seen in today's television presenters.

In her book she says she regards 1984 as "her year". She worked on Eye Witness News, and says it was everything she could have wanted in a show.

"When I got biffed from Eye Witness News in 1990 it was a terrible shock," she wrote. "I'm a realistic person so I accepted that when I got older there was every chance I'd be replaced with some young dolly-bird, but I'd always thought I'd have until 50 before I needed to worry about that."

D'Audney wrote that she was "devastated and angry" by the decision to replace her with Cathy Campbell and Anita McNaught.

"They're both perfectly nice people and I haven't got a bad word to say about either of them," she said. "But they simply didn't have my breadth of experience, my skills, my track record. I belonged in that chair next to Lindsay Perigo, not them."

Dumped yet again, she was asked to read the news every fourth weekend, alternating with Tom Bradley.

The television work didn't bring in enough money so D'Audney went back to radio, landing a job on Newstalk ZB as an afternoon host.

She gave up the job two years later when advertorials were introduced and they conflicted with her TVNZ contract. Money was tight, recalled D'Audney, but she managed a decent income from media consultancy, radio shifts and weekend newsreading. A change in regime at TVNZ brought her back in near full-time work as weekend newsreader with Bradley and permanent fill-on for Judy Bailey on the TV One news.

The pairing lasted three years before the TVNZ axe fell on D'Audney again and she was dumped in a round of cutbacks.

TVNZ offered her a contract - but no job and no money - which gave her access to the TVNZ doctor, clothing and a hair appointment every two weeks.

Newstalk ZB offered her weekend newsreading work and TVNZ asked her to be Mary Lambie's fill-in on Good Morning.

D'Audney's broadcasting career of ups and downs came to an abrupt end last May when she underwent surgery to remove a brain tumour.

As well as the life-threatening illness she had to cope with a court case involving her former partner, Robert Webster. The property dispute involving half a million dollars was filed before she became ill.