Dangerous Topic: Richard Fiddler

Each week, Benjamin Law asks celebrities to roll the dice and discuss a topic they’ve been told to keep private. This week he speaks with Richard Fiddler. The 58-year-old broadcaster is a popular podcast presenter. conversation ABC Radio, author of best-selling history books ghost empire When golden mazeHis latest book is Book of Roads and Kingdoms.

money

What did your parents do for money? My mother was a nurse and had extensive medical knowledge. With such intelligence, I once said to her, you would have been great ’ She did not accept the premise of my comment. She was raised as the spouse of a respectable man. So when she met an impressive man, my father who was a businessman, she got married.

Growing up, what did you want to do to make a living? I had no idea. As a child, I lived in fear of the future. Economic instability was also a factor. My father grew up in extreme poverty amidst terrible atrocities. He had a successful business career for a while, but then it went very badly. So for several years he was unemployed and lived off the income his mother earned as a geriatric nurse. It was terrible at the time, and I was worried about the future.

then you became famous Doug Anthony All StarsDid it make you rich? It gave us the opportunity to travel. The first thing I did after leaving Australia was to go to London and go straight to Covent Garden and start busking. We earned £130. Then we went to Edinburgh and soon things started to take off.

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did you always want to do it? No. I remember the first manager telling us at the time: You should do it until you can’t stand it anymore. ’ So I did that for 10 years until I couldn’t take it anymore.

you are now the host of conversation; you are also a writer. What does a working pie chart look like? i am working conversation 4 days a week.three [of my] Episodes air weekly. Sarah Kanowski does her two jobs over the weekend. Then on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I work on my book. It’s a completely different activity and a completely different kind of fun. One is the balance of the other.

politics