Trigger warning: This article discusses the topics of mental health, abortion, addiction and sexual assault.
Radio veteran Jackie O’s new memoir, The Whole Truth, has just hit the shelves. Following her shock on-air revelation in the lead up that she’s battled a drug and alcohol addiction seeing her admitted to rehab, it was clear the radio star was not going to be holding back.
And the memoir doesn’t disappoint. The Whole Truth, released on the 29th October, details some very high highs and low lows in the 49-year old’s life. Here, we’ve compiled an early look at what she’s shared.
BATTLE WITH FOOD
According to the book, Jackie ‘O’ Henderson has had “issues” with food all her life. It started in childhood when she describes setting her alarm for 5am so she could have a breakfast of white bread, butter and cinnamon sugar before her family got up.
This fixation on unhealthy food continued long into adulthood with her go-to foods being “hamburgers, hot chips and pizza.”
Ex-husband Lee Henderson once suggested she get a full-body scan “because he thought I was obese,” she writes.
The result showed she was overweight, something Jackie explained by her comfort eating and the couple of glasses of wine she was drinking every night.
One meal Lee found her eating seemed like a real cry for help. She says he came in to find her eating a whole jar of Nutella coupled with a glass of champagne.
Later in the memoir she talks about her recent weight loss, which the media put down to gastric bypass surgery and the weight loss drug Ozempic.
In fact the kilos fell off after going to rehab for her prescription pill and alcohol problems.
She says she naturally began a far healthier lifestyle and said the drastic changes led to her shedding 10 kilos.
“Naturally, after three years of sitting on a lounge consuming copious amounts of fast food, alcohol and sedatives that slow down the metabolism, the body will go into shock and shed the kilos when that stops,” she wrote.
HAUNTED BY ON-AIR STUNTS
In chapter six, Jackie O remembers a long list of on-air scandals she and her co-host Kyle Sandilands sparked during their early years working together on their now long-running show.
She wrote that she was “deeply ashamed” and that the show’s rising ratings success often came “at the detriment of my own morals and values.”
One such stunt hooked a 14-year old to a lie detector while the hosts asked her about her sexual history.
The segment was live and her mother was present when the girl broke down in tears and revealed she’d been raped when she was 12.
“Right … is that the only experience you’ve had?” came Kyle’s shocking response.
The segment saw the show taken off air for three weeks and Jackie writes that she regrets not pulling the plug on the awful segment earlier.
She also detailed a truly heartbreaking on-air moment they tastelessly titled “Dearly Deported.”
Two Vietnamese sisters were invited on to the show, one of whom lived in Sydney and the other back in Vietnam. They hadn’t seen each other in seven years, and they were separated in the studio, tasked with answering three questions correctly to be allowed to reunite with each other.
When they failed one was immediately sent back on a plane to Vietnam without getting to see the other.
“I hate that memory,” writes Jackie.
The problem, she recognised was that focusing on providing controversial moments for the audience meant it was easy to “lose sight of reality itself.”
She said that when the show started competing with itself to up the shock factor – “this is where we lost our way. Big time.”
HER ABORTION DECISION
Jackie shares that when she was 26 she unexpectedly fell pregnant when dating her now ex-husband Lee Henderson.
The pair, she wrote were “young and growing” and she was not “remotely ready for motherhood.”
Together they came to the tough decision to end the pregnancy and she writes about the experience at the clinic in Woollahra.
“It’s all so quick, so sober, so perfunctory. You wake up, and that’s emotional. I know there were tears on my face, definitely, and if I think about it deeply all these years later, even for a moment, there are tears now, too,” she recalled.
Believing the baby she was carrying was a boy she knows he’d be 23 this year.
“You try not to beat yourself up too much, but you do the maths every year. I don’t know why, but I always thought it was a boy.”
“A son. My son would be turning 23 this year,” she wrote.
DRUG AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION
One of the things Jackie says she was most terrified about sharing in her memoir was the secret battles she’s had with prescription pills and alcohol.
In her book she reveals that in 2022 she admitted herself to the Betty Ford rehab clinic in California after struggling with addiction.
Jackie says she was taking 10-12 Stilnox sleeping pills and 24 Panadeine Forte a day, often combined with alcohol, in an effort to relieve stress.
“Someone was watching over me because I don’t know how I woke up most days with that kind of dosage,” she wrote.
She reveals that her friend Gemma O’Neill, “saved her life” by persuading her to check into the Betty Ford Clinic and, two years on she is about to mark two years sober.
CELEBRITY WARNING
Kath and Kim star Magda Szubanski was one of the celebrities that the Kyle and Jackie O show have offended over the years.
At the time in question the radio hosts were talking about Magda’s 25 kilo weight loss when Kyle suggested she’d lose more weight if she was put in a concentration camp.
The comment was all the more offensive because Magda is Jewish, and her father was a resistance fighter in Poland during World War II.
Embarrassed Jackie reached out to apologise to the TV star afterwards and, on accepting her apology Jackie remembers the celebrity’s warning.
“If you lie with dogs you’ll get fleas, and that’s all I want to say on the matter,” Magda told her.
Kyle later apologised too and Magda still appears as a guest on their show today.
JAACKIE’S THREESOME
Jackie also opened up about her first threesome in her memoir.
It involved the ex-husband she refers to as “Ugly” Phil O’Neil and a 19-year old stripper.
The pair were in the early days of their relationship and Phil was living with a female housemate, Christie, who worked as a stripper.
“We went out to a nightclub one night and we came home and we were having sex and Christie decided she wanted to join us,” she wrote.
“The idea of a threesome had obviously never occurred to me before I had never even considered it because it didn’t sound like me.”
Much to her boyfriend’s disappointment Christie was far more into Jackie then him.
“Phil was really excited but Christie kept slapping him away. She did her thing and then left,” she wrote.
Jackie O’s memoir is now available at Big W and Amazon Australia.
If you or someone you know is struggling, contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or online at beyondblue.org.au
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