Shock Jock Who Was Shy And A Softie At Home
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday July 13, 2007
HE WAS the beastliest beast in Beauty and the Beast, an entrepreneur flogging Stan the Man coffee mugs and his brand of chardonnay, but most of all, Stan Zemanek was a provocateur who boasted that he "abused the shit out of people".
At the microphone for more 20 years, Stan Zemanek became a "legend in his own night-time", said the veteran radio director John Brennan. The night-shift shock jock died early yesterday morning at his Kent Street apartment, with his wife, Marcella, and family members around him. Tribute web pages yesterday recycled some of his classic exchanges, such as the caller who told Zemanek he was 17. Zemanek asked: "Do you wanna turn 18?" Caller: "Yes." Zemanek: "Then don't ring me again." He was labelled "racist", "hard right-wing" and a "ratbag" by those who cringed at his on-air insults, but friends painted a different portrait of the private Zemanek as "a beautiful man away from the microphone", shy, calm, socially withdrawn, a softie who went to church, and who decided to paint after once dismissing artists as "wankers". His family said yesterday that they had been inundated with condolences and tributes. Late yesterday afternoon the ABC station 702 played You'll Never Walk Alone after Tracey Holmes talked of Zemanek and broke down in tears on air. Zemanek regarded himself as an entertainer, a "cheap psychologist", a man who revelled in being hated, just as long as he was noticed. His philosophy of late-night broadcasting was "let's keep them awake as long as we possibly can". He talked to taxi drivers, drug addicts, late-night sherry tipplers, and callers he named Bruce the Goose, Francis the Talking Mule, and a Fort Street Boys High student who phoned in as "an Aboriginal fisherman" with the hope of being told to "get stuffed". The broadcaster Alan Jones said yesterday that Zemanek's listeners included "a raft of young boys at boarding schools who were supposed to be doing their homework but were listening to Stan. He had almost a cult following." His younger colleagues, however, were not all fans of Zemanek, who could be difficult with panel operators and others lower down the radio food chain than on-air personalities. He made an enemy, too, of Phillip Adams, who found Zemanek "crass, inarticulate, ill-informed and none too intelligent". Zemanek's financial affairs were far from steady. He had the knack of losing almost everything, then earning an income of more than $1 million a year. Brennan, now 2GB's program director, said Zemanek called him in the late 1980s to ask for a job on air. He told Brennan, then at 2UE, "I've only got $25 in the bank". Brennan gave him the midnight to dawn shift and, in 1990, the 7pm to midnight slot. "He was perceived as arrogant," said Brennan. "But that was all an act. I said to him 'being provocative, confrontational will increase the ratings at night. Flaunt yourself, like a professional wrestler."' After Zemanek challenged and abused his listeners, "he sauntered home and became Stan and readied himself for another innings", said Jones yesterday. A family friend, the publicist Prue MacSween, said that Zemanek lived a roller-coaster life. "He always had a lot of determination and a steely will to survive. He really thought he was going to beat this [the brain cancer with which he was diagnosed 14 months ago]." Zemanek's funeral, open to the public, will be held on Tuesday at St Mary's Catholic Church, North Sydney. The eulogy will be given by Marcella Zemanek.
© 2007 Sydney Morning Herald