Wild story you won’t see on ‘Molly’

WHEN Michael Gudinski rang through for a chat about Channel Seven’s upcoming two-part television special, Molly, we only had one question for him.

What’s his favourite story to tell about his good mate and Aussie icon, Molly Meldrum?

He replied with a wild tale about the night that he upset Molly by missing the launch party for Meldrum’s record label, Melodian Records.

“I was managing Jimmy Barnes at the time so I went to a Jimmy Barnes show instead,” said Gudinski, an icon of the Australian music industry and one of the executive producers of Molly.

“He (Meldrum) turned up (at Gudinski’s Toorak home) and was ringing the doorbell at three in the morning and was causing trouble. I said to my wife, ‘Don’t answer it, whatever you do. It’s going to be Molly’.”

The Countdown host was determined to confront Gudinski, and when no one replied to the buzzer at the gate, he pushed on.

“I’ve got a pretty big fence and he was over the fence and banging on the front door,” said Gudinski.

Jimmy Barnes and his wife Jane were staying at Gudinski’s house, and it was Jane who answered the door to an enraged Molly.

“Fortunately she (Jane) said Jimmy had headphones on and didn’t hear the kerfuffle,” explained Gudinski.

“I was pretty cranky and I came storming down the stairs and I actually put his head in the microwave, but of course I couldn’t shut the thing. The door fell off.

“I grabbed him by the neck and said, ‘Listen, you’re losing it,’ and my wife yells out to me, ‘Stop it, he’s enjoying it!’ This is the God’s truth.”

Molly left the premises but returned soon after, and this time Jane Barnes was in no mood for another early morning visit.

“She left hooked him,” said Gudinski laughing.

But after all the excitement, Gudinski realised that Jimmy Barnes had a TV appearance the following day alongside Molly Meldrum.

“We (he and Jane) made a pact then and said, ‘We’re not telling Jimmy’, because Jimmy was doing Hey Hey the next day and Jimmy, back in those days, was pretty volatile. I thought, ‘Whatever we do, we’ve got a brand new single, we’re not gonna blow off Hey Hey It’s Saturday’. So Jane didn’t tell him anything about it until after he’d done Hey Hey.”

Now that’s a cracking story.

For more true tales about Ian “Molly” Meldrum’s wild life, be watching Molly,which premieres tonight at 8.30 and continues next Sunday on Channel Seven.