Kerry Packer was instrumental in shaping Australia's media landscape and culture. For 30 years he controlled television's perennial ratings leader Channel Nine, and a large percentage of the nation's most influential magazines. So much of what Australians watched, read and believed came through the prism of this larger-than-life man. Beneath all the billionaire clutter, Kerry Packer had plenty in common with the average Jo: a cheeky humour, a competitive drive, deep love for his kids, a passion for sports and movies. In business, Kerry Packer would fight to the last dollar in a deal.
Yet the same man would take his private jet to Las Vegas and lose more than $20 million in a week - then leave a $1 million tip. In his Park Street, Sydney office, where the visitors' chairs were clustered in front of his giant desk, Packer would verbally dissect a hapless executive, but no less often, the very same man would step in silently and invisibly when hardship or tragedy struck a loyal staffer or their family.
Packer bulldozed through his dyslexic condition with a steel-trap mind and by asking an awful lot of questions. The son of a father who shunned him, he inherited a business in 1974 valued at perhaps $100m. When he died 31 years later, on Boxing Day 2005, he would hand his own much-loved son, James, control of a media, property, agriculture and gambling empire worth $6.9 billion.
Kerry Packer: Tall Tales and True Stories is a collection of stories, gathered from people who knew him, from those who have documented him, and from the folklore that inevitably grew up around him.
