Jill Singer, who transformed news coverage when she hosted Today Tonight on Channel 7 in the mid-90s, has died of a rare heart and blood condition at the age of just 60.
She had extraordinary intelligence, courage and vivacity. She lived tremendously and always fought for the people and things she believed in. She was a great beauty with a lovely voice. Sometimes though she could sound like a shrieking country girl giving the finger. She always remained a wild girl. After this author's first lunch with her at Jimmy Watson's restaurant I retired hurt at about 7pm but Jill went on to dinner with Christine Nixon (then Police Commissioner) and you could only tremble at what she might have said.
![Jill Singer in 1996, in the control room of Channel Seven's Today Tonight.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170729175320im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/w/n/1/3/r/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwxm93.png/1498364032784.jpg)
Jill Leonie Singer grew up in Warburton and went to Upper Yarra Valley High School. She once told: "They introduced a social welfare officer to the high school which we'd never had before and I think their time must have been entirely taken up with the Singers â with me and my two brothers."
She went to Monash when she was 17 to study biochemistry and microbiology. Her research in immunology might have led to a career in science but instead resulted in a young marriage which produced, at age 23, a daughter.
![Jill Singer was a master of cross-examination.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170729175320im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/v/g/t/n/m/image.related.articleLeadNarrow.300x0.gwxm93.png/1498364032784.jpg)
Her cadetship with the rural ABC in 1984 resulted in her becoming a senior reporter on the 7:30 Report and winning a Walkley award for her "Baby M" story about the death of an infant with severe abnormalities. As a consequence the Law Reform Commission redrafted the law in this area. In 1999 she was awarded a Quill award for a report on Exxon/Mobil, and shared another in 2010 with Lisa Whitehead for a story about domestic violence which she witnessed first hand.
Singer's days of glory were in 1995 and 1996 when Melbourne's Channel 7 made her the presenter of Today Tonight. She combined glamour with a razor sharp journalistic intelligence as one of Australia's most formidable interviewers.
She was a master of cross-examination. And the Premier of Victoria, Jeff Kennett, was a target. Singer believed power required scrutiny. With a story about Kennett's business deals, Singer, always braver than she was self-protective, announced on live TV that the item would not be broadcast because "we have been instructed by senior management not to put the story to air".
And then â if that was not dramatic enough â she collapsed. On air.
It was arguably one of the most dramatic (non-news-driven) moments in the history of Australian television. Her condition was a severe migraine. Kerry Stokes, the Channel 7 overlord, who had been close to Singer, apparently never spoke to her again. She subsequently appeared on The Arts Show and First Edition. As a panellist on the pilot for a culture show this author saw Jill Singer out-compere everyone in sight. But she had burnt too many bridges â at the ABC and elsewhere. She was too outspoken and too dangerous.
When it comes to outstanding moments in television it would be hard to beat the interview Singer conducted in 1999 with that emperor of Aussie Rules football, Ron Barassi. She asked him when he last cried. He said it was when the poet Peter Rose spoke at the funeral of his quadriplegic brother Robert Rose. And it was spellbinding. It was so fine you felt you had dreamt it.
From 1995 until 2012 Singer wrote a column for the Herald Sun. When Kevin Rudd was demonising people smugglers Singer would ask, eyes level and expressionless with cold anger: "Who is the most famous people smuggler of all? Oskar Schindler."
The anger, which was not always separate from vanity, could be difficult to be on the receiving end of. But much was forgiven her because she loved much. I saw her rant intemperately and quiz people about their privacies. But there were also the thousand nameless acts of kindness.
Once, during her lengthy relationship with Peter Davidson, the architect of Federation Square, she left him speechless when she declared she was going to leave the key to the front door of her Fitzroy house for her students so they could borrow cameras. Never mind the art on the wall.
She nursed Peter for years after he was laid low by a massive stroke in 2010. It was a time of great stress. She then met Anthony Brand, the lawyer, in 2013 whom she married on April 1, just two months before her death.
How like Jill Singer that when she was finally diagnosed with the rare heart and blood disease amyloidosis she should take to the pages of the Herald Sun to tell her story. She was wasted by something and feeling ghastly. Singer recounted this with great boldness and bravura. But there was the characteristic Singer touch. She said she was privileged. She had her insurance: what about the people equally afflicted who our society abandoned while they waited for treatment?
She was a star, Jill. She fell from the heavens much too fast.