Ray Martin is busy planning his funeral. Don’t worry, it’s not for real – it’s just for his new three-part documentary Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye on SBS. And he’s had the time of his life filming it.
“One of my fears when I was approached about doing it was that it would be depressing,” he tells TV WEEK. “I thought, ‘Three hours of death – that could be a bit deadly,’ excuse the pun. But it turned out to be uplifting and enlightening.
“Many of the people we spoke to, like the Mexican-Australian family, believe that it [death] is a time for a good drink, a good dance and a good mariachi band.
“Death shouldn’t be a sad time, it should be a time for celebration, and it’s a part of life. That’s probably the message that comes out of the show.”
Ray, an atheist, confesses he does harbour some fear of the “D-word”.
“My kids are in their middle to late thirties, and the grandkids are tiny, but in a crisis, you’re always around to pretend you can help out or take care of them,” Ray says. “And yet not to be able to do that is probably the scariest thing of all.”
He says it’s a comfort to know his children are his “greatest personal achievement”.
“They certainly trump any Logies [I’ve won],” the five-time Gold Logie Award winner says with a laugh. “But the main thing this show has made me remember is that you’ve got to live and have a go, whether you’re 20 or 100.
“If I had a headstone, which I won’t have, it would say something along the lines of, ‘You had a go.’”
And “had a go” he has. For close to six decades Ray – best known for helming A Current Affair and as host of the The Midday Show – has interviewed world leaders and celebrities from around the globe.
And yet there’s one chat he hasn’t had, perhaps his toughest to date: with his family about his own death.
“For someone who’s been a journalist for 60 years, and been with my wife for most of that time, we talk about everything I do, and have done over the years, except this one,” he says. “I think there’s still a little reticence about this, because it’s too close to the bone. But I’ll work on them.”
Ray’s family might not know he’s been giving thought to his own funeral.
“You’d like to think your kids would say something [in tribute at his funeral], but otherwise at that stage, it doesn’t really matter.
“I often refer to a quote by Hunter S. Thompson [the hard-living American writer], which I think is the best of all. He said, ‘Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!”’
“I think that’s a much better way to go than to go out quietly.”
But for now, Ray, who turns 80 this year, still has a lot of living to do.
“I’ve always been a bit of a hedonist, so I want to do things that give me pleasure. I’m an obsessive photographer, so I want to take that one great photo, like the image of the Afghan girl Steve McCurry took,” he says, referring to the American photographer’s famous 1984 portrait of Sharbat Gula, an Afghan refugee in Pakistan with piercing green eyes.
“I’d also like to see Souths [NRL team the South Sydney Rabbitohs] win another premiership,” he laughs.
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