Derryn Hinch

Derryn Hinch is a journalist, media personality, novelist and ex-host of 3AW Drive in Melbourne.

In a career spanning 55 years in newspapers, radio, TV and the internet, the veteran journalist has paid a high price for his commitment to the journalistic creed of the public’s right to know. He was jailed for naming a paedophile priest 1987, served five months under house arrest for naming serial sex offenders 2011 and, in 2014, spent 50 days in jail in lieu of a $100,000 fine for contempt of court for a blog he wrote on the Jill Meagher murder case.

Derryn first joined 3AW in 1979. He went on to become the undisputed King of Melbourne radio – with the highest morning ratings ever achieved then or now – before leaving to start the top-rating HINCH on the Seven network and then the Ten network. He re-joined 3AW for the third time (after a year doing Nightline in 2000) in February 2003, and was number one when fired from the Drive program in 2012.

In politics, Derryn has met every Australian Prime Minister from Bob Menzies to Tony Abbott. He has been in the Oval Office at the White House and interviewed political leaders in Australia and around the world. A former editor of The Sun newspaper in Sydney, he now appears on Sunday Night and Sunrise on the Seven Network, on PMLive on SKY, on MMM’s Hot Breakfast with Eddie McGuire and on 2GB Drive with Ben Fordham. He also regularly appears across the ditch on NewsTalkZB.

Derryn used to threaten that he would eventually write an autobiography and call it Famous People Who Have Met Me. He was joking. Eventually he wrote three. The first was a kind of personal biography about the private thoughts of a public person with his sign-off line That’s Life as the title. The second, about his fall from professional and financial success, was called The Fall and Rise of Derryn Hinch. His book on life and love, You Are So Beautiful, The passion and the pain of relationships, was published in 2006. And his personal story about alcohol abuse, called I Beat the Booze – And You Can Too, was published in 2009.