Game Girl: Fun and Fire on the World Stage

By Di Henry

Sydney-born Di Henry is recognised in her native country and internationally as an events manager without peer. She is the recipient of the Australian Order of Merit (OAM), the Olympic Order and her industry's Lifetime Achievement Award. Marking almost thirty years of professional achievement, these distinctions pale in comparison to the blue-chip honorific of being a seriously fascinating human being. Henry has managed - and management might be her middle name - to finesse several careers, two marriages and many rich and varied relationships into one hurly-burly cavalcade of a life, re-told in the pages of this no-holds-barred memoir. After a childhood that mixed trauma and tenderness in equal parts, and having taken a degree, Henry worked as an art director in Australia's re-awakened film and television sector in the early 1980s. Arts, event and sports management followed later in the decade.
By the 1990s and 2000s, having launched her bespoke company, Maxxam Events, this 'game girl' oversaw 18 Olympic Torch and Commonwealth Games Baton Relays, also games ceremonies, arena shows, cultural events and world cup spectaculars. She has produced over 1,000 large-scale public events in over 100 countries. Whether driving a flock of 1,500 sheep down the main street of Sydney, or sending fiery torches across the Himalayas and under the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, Henry has proven a match for every seemingly impossible abracadabra in the events trade, including wrangling Boris Johnson, whose Olympic and events program manager she was at the time of the London Olympics! This Is Your Life meets Celebrity Squares in Henry's account of her troubled but triumphant journey from lousy beginnings to living legend, beating booze and heartbreak along the way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Aug 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9781528988605

Di Henry

Balloon flights, baton relays, Buckingham Palace, David Beckham, boys and booze - event impresario, Di Henry's life has been anything but B-Grade. In this rattling retelling, royals, CEOs, celebrities, Sheikhs and superstars rub shoulders with the great unwashed. Everyone has a story to tell, especially Henry, once branded as the woman who touched the Queen! From professional triumph to personal free fall, this book strips bare every outrageously well-lived moment. Mordantly funny and morally provoking, it is, like the writer herself, a fabulous contradiction. Wherever Henry turns up, the circus - or the Olympics - is in town!

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About the Author

Balloon flights, baton relays, Buckingham Palace, David Beckham, boys and booze – event impresario, Di Henry’s life has been anything but B-Grade. In this rattling retelling, royals, CEOs, celebrities, Sheikhs and superstars rub shoulders with the great unwashed. Everyone has a story to tell, especially Henry, once branded as the woman who touched the Queen! From professional triumph to personal free fall, this book strips bare every outrageously well-lived moment. Mordantly funny and morally provoking, it is, like the writer herself, a fabulous contradiction. Wherever Henry turns up, the circus – or the Olympics – is in town!

Dedication

To my very generous and very patient friends and family and to all the great teams I have had the pleasure to work with over the last 30 years to create magical events.

Copyright Information ©

Di Henry with Libby Harkness (2020)

The right of Di Henry with Libby Harkness to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of creative nonfiction. The events are portrayed to the best of author’s memory. While all the stories in this book are true, some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of the people involved.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528988599 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528988605 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

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Canary Wharf

London

E14 5LQ

Acknowledgements

Thank you, Libby Harkness, for bringing my story to life and to Anne Reilly for a good edit. All my thanks to the core members of many of the Torch Relays: Barry Gallagher, Stephen Doran, Louis Rosa, Annemaree Lavella, Adam Best, Dylan Owen, Nicole Brown, the infamous Jackie Brock Doyle and Lisa Hanley. And to other major team members: Susan Hunt, David Grant, Nye Coffey, Harriett MacDonald, Kim Hobbs, Helen Simpson, Farlie Goodwin, Sophie Lukersmith and Anthony Bastic. You all know I couldn’t have done any of it without you and your special talents. To me lovelies who looked out for me: Sally, Bron and Liz Bassett, Art Mafia members: Fi Maclntosh, Pete English, Bruce James, Gitte Weise, Chris Snee, and Robyn Brady. To the adventurous Craig Hassall, Jules Hancock, Robert and Susan Weir, Jo and Jason Dwyer, John Tann and Ruth Laxton, Stuart Shepherd, Liarne Henry, Mum, Mary Weir, Pat O’Keeffe, Christine Howard and Harry Birch; I have been very lucky to have had you in my life.

Game On

The Queen, Beckham and Me

I literally had my feet on the desk when I took an interesting call. It was during the second week of the 2000 Sydney Olympics and I was totally buggered. I had just spent four years organising the mammoth journey of the Olympic torch from Olympia in Greece through Oceania and finally to Sydney. Thirty-six thousand kilometres, 14,000 torches and 13,400 torchbearers. My own flame was dead.

‘There’s a couple of guys from Manchester who want to talk to you about the Queen’s Baton Relay for the Manchester Games,’ I was told.

‘Sure, send them up.’

The two charming Englishmen were from the organising committee for the Manchester Commonwealth Games in 2002. They wanted to know if I could tell them how to run a relay. I could, I said, but probably not in half-an-hour.

‘Why don’t you take my operations manual,’ – it was a dirty big manual – ‘and read that. It tells you pretty much all you need to know.’

They took it back to Manchester, read it, but decided it was all too hard and they called up and asked if I could do the relay for them. Well, no problem, I said. I offered to go over for three months, get them started and see where we went from there. It was September and they wanted me by November. The Sydney Paralympics finished in October and I was supposed to stay on until December to mop up the financial ends but I had a pretty good accountant on my team who was already selling off the torches, so I knew I could leave things in her hands. So I hopped on a plane and went.

It was winter when I flew in to Manchester and it was a typical English weather, pouring with rain and dark by 3 pm. I sat around in the airport waiting for the woman delegated to collect me. She took me to a pretty ordinary hotel – which they mostly were – in Manchester. I sat on the bed in the gloom; there was no room service, no bar and I had no idea where to get any food. I burst into tears – what the hell was I doing here. I had just finished the biggest gig in my life and I was exhausted, on the other side of the world and a long way from my own comfy bed.

Fortunately, it got better. I moved into a serviced apartment about four light rail stops from the centre of the city; later I rented a lovely three-bed-roomed furnished terrace next door to a wonderful family who would become long-term friends. I also met up with a few other Aussie expats who were there to work on the Games, and started my three-month stint with the organising committee of what would become the most successful Commonwealth Games in the event’s history.

The Brits were very nice and had good intentions but they’d failed to mention the budget for the relay before I arrived; they only had around 100,000 pounds which I explained would get them about two days of a 50-day relay. I put together an executive summary of what they could do and worked out that to fund a relay around the UK involving 5,000 baton bearers, 50 evening celebrations on route, the support teams, the transport, the hotel rooms, the baton design, the baton manufacture, the uniforms and the myriad of other things that add to the cost needed at least three million pounds. That gave them what you call a reality check!

The committee had employed an Australian, Susie Hunt, a brilliant sports marketing and management professional to drum up sponsors for the Games. But there was no one in the relay’s corner, so it was up to me to magic up the necessary money. For the next three months, Susie and I travelled the length and breadth of the UK, she pitching for the Games and me, like someone’s second thought, trying to get the same sponsors to cough up a bit more for the relay.

Some days, travelling around in the freezing semi-dark, I felt I was in a bad movie. One morning, we pitched to Microsoft at its sleek headquarters in Reading and then drove 100 kilometres through the snow to Bournemouth to visit the Cadbury factory. We went into a bleak building that looked like an old warehouse and smelt like chocolate where we were greeted by a bald man wearing glasses. This was not Charlie in the bloody chocolate factory. There appeared to be little obvious interest from the man we were pitching to – he was very polite; afterwards we got in the car and I threw my briefcase in the back.

‘Well, that was a fucking waste of time,’ I told Susie.

‘Don’t be like that,’ Susie said. For some reason she was a bit more optimistic. I put it down to her either being more acclimatised to the weather or to the way the English do things.

A few weeks later, we got a call. The Cadbury people wanted to see us again as they had a few more questions. They were tempting us with real money but they wanted an impressive bang for their buck. I’d give it to them. From that meeting I went to our marketing committee and got the go-ahead to stitch up a broadcast partnership with the BBC. It would cover every second morning of the relay with the weather report and every night it would close off the news with the relay’s evening celebrations. That got me the deal with Cadbury and they handed over 3.4 million pounds.

As the presenting partner for the baton relay, everything had to feature Cadbury purple, including the relay uniforms. The uniform was designed by an in-house team in consultation with the sponsor; not a flattering colour and I’m not convinced that everyone liked the final outcome but it wasn’t a fashion parade. We persuaded Cadbury to sponsor the Games as well as the relay, but not before I made sure that my baton money was ringbarked. I also signed up the Guardian Media Group as our other media partner and the two other supporters, an international transport group, and a company that had a satellite-based global positioning system.

I’d got them off to a good start with the money and a forward plan for the relay but four months had gone by and I was still in Manchester with no forward plan for myself. I was getting ready to go home when they asked me if I would stay on and run the relay. I told them how much money I wanted and that I also wanted to be the relay director and a director of the organising committee.

Chief negotiator was Niels de Vos, the well-known British sports marketing man who was marketing manager on the organising committee and one of the two guys who had originally approached me in Sydney. Niels, a tall imposing man with big teeth and narrow rimless spectacles said, ‘This is more fucking money than we pay our prime minister!’

Niels was tough, and while I knew I was asking for an exorbitant amount of money, I also knew they needed me.

‘Sorry, but I’ve just brought in 3.4 million pounds so…’ I held my ground.

I had him over a barrel so we did the deal and I became relay director with my own team. I returned to Australia for a couple of weeks to put my stuff in storage and rent out my house and returned to Manchester for two years of hard work, a lot of parties and several encounters with the Queen.

***

The Games coincided with the Queen’s Golden Jubilee year of 50 years on the throne and she wanted to be an integral part of the celebrations. There was a chain of liaison: anything involving the Games and the Queen came under the Queen’s personal secretary and for anything to do with the relay, I was assigned the Queen’s assistant private secretary, Tim Hitchens, a lovely man.

One of the first things I worked on was the design of the baton. Everyone was keen to have something different and very 21st Century. I had in mind a baton that came ‘alive’ when held. I briefed some very good design companies and one took my rough verbal idea and turned it into something unique. It was so remarkable, it had to be seen to be believed.

The baton was equipped with sensors that detected and monitored each runner’s heartbeat. This information was transmitted to a series of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) which then became a bright blue pulsating light in sync with the runner’s pulse. The rhythm of the human heart was the core of the baton as it was passed through the hands of thousands of people on its 137-day, 63,000-mile journey throughout the UK and the 23 Commonwealth countries. As a way of stamping the host city into it, the Queen’s jeweller designed two sterling silver coins representing Manchester which were embedded on either side of the baton.

My first request to Tim was for the Queen to unveil the new baton design in October 2001. He suggested that as the Queen would be in Brisbane for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in October that would be a perfect opportunity for her to launch the baton to the media. The Queen agreed and I flew to Sydney with two batons where I planned to spend a few days catching up with friends before taking the batons to Brisbane.

Then 9/11 happened and the world stopped flying. Tim rang me and said the Queen was not going anywhere. Not being one to give up easily I made a request: could he please ask the Queen very nicely if she could still keep her unveiling baton appointment the following Monday, except in London not Brisbane, and that being the case could a cameraman and a photographer be there to record the occasion. Please?

Tim got the go-ahead and said, ‘Okay, pop along on Monday. And don’t wear stripes or anything too colourful.’ Back in London, with the two little batons still in their boxes, I turned up at Buckingham Palace at the appointed time. Baton bearer manager, Dani Elliot came with me for moral support. We were ushered into Tim’s office where I tried to hand him the batons and tell him how they worked. He explained that I would have to attend a private audience with the Queen and explain the workings to her in person.

‘You will have approximately 15 minutes with her; that will be enough time for the cameraman and photographer to get what they need,’ Tim said.

I was aghast.

‘What am I going to talk to her about – what she’s wearing on Friday night?’

Tim, overlooking my flippant concern, told me to call her ma’am, as in ham and showed me how to curtsy and how to take my leave.

‘How will I know when the interview is finished?’

‘She will put her handbag on her wrist.’

I steeled myself and handed the back-up baton and the empty box to Dani who was enjoying my predicament. Massive doors opened and I went in, managing to curtsy without falling over and immediately started to prattle on about how the baton worked and the Games in general. Lights flashed, the camera whirred and the baton flashed to the boom, boom, boom, nervous rhythm of my heart. I noticed when the Queen held the baton that the royal heart rate boomed at a much more majestic rate. After the guys had their footage of the Queen with the baton, they bowed out.

The Queen commenced a conversation. At this point I was overcome with bewilderment, standing in those elaborate surroundings with a little woman who looked like someone’s nice grey-haired granny. Being the seasoned diplomat, the Queen ranged over a number of topics – the current rail strike (she was travelling by rail to a Baton celebration in Leeds), the Afghanistan situation, even Lord Mountbatten – although I don’t remember in what context.

It was the most extraordinary conversation that seemed to go on forever. My eyes were on high beam for the handbag. Put the handbag on your wrist, put the handbag on your wrist. It was not that I didn’t want to talk to her but I wasn’t sure what topics I was allowed to raise, if any at all. Believing I was on safe ground, I told her I was accompanying the baton to Canada for the first week of the relay and later around its UK journey; I said I would see her in Leeds – well, of course I would but did it come out like we were going to have some private tête-à-tête? God, I was on the verge of a panic attack when she finally put the handbag on her wrist, pushed a button on the wall, the giant doors opened and I went out backwards.

Unfortunately, my chat with the Queen had put a few noses out joint back at Manchester headquarters. I had no idea that people higher up the organising Games chain, none of whom had met the Queen yet, thought that someone more appropriate than the upstart from the colonies should have done the job. Of course, after that I realised that I should not have taken matters into my own hands. But I acted through ignorance not deviousness.

Unveiling of the Manchester 2002 Commonwealth Games Queens Baton with Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II – 2001

Awards and Brickbats

Towards the end of 2001, I received a call from the Governor General’s office in Canberra. Someone had nominated me for the Order of Australia in the 2002 New Year’s Honours list for my work with the Sydney Olympics. And would I accept it? I told them that would be nice, thank you very much. However, I advised them that as I was now living in the UK, I wouldn’t be able to come back to Australia for the investiture; they checked and found out I could receive the award in London at the ceremony for the UK New Year Honour’s recipients. I was to go to Buckingham Palace (again) to receive my OAM from the Queen in March 2002.

Traditionally, the Commonwealth Games Baton Relay starts on the first Tuesday of March every four years. It begins with a ceremony at the Victoria Memorial Fountain in the forecourt of Buckingham Palace where the Queen puts her message in the special capsule on top of the baton before it travels around the Commonwealth countries and before it arrives in the host city.

As it was the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Year, the start of the relay was to be bigger than usual and filmed live by BBC television. There was a pop group singing the relay song in the forecourt, a parade down the Mall with six famous British athletes who would be the UK’s first baton bearers: Sir Roger Bannister, who ran the first four-minute mile in 1954, the multi Olympic gold track and field runner, Lord Sebastian Coe, curling champion Rhona Martin, heptathlon winner Clair Sweeney, Sir Steve Redgrave, the five Olympic gold-medal rower, and George Best, former Manchester United football star.

But with so much going on, I had forgotten to hand the baton message to the Queen. Fortunately, Tim Hitchens came to the rescue and retrieved it from me at the last minute.

Canada was the first Commonwealth country to run the relay and the next day Dani, photographer Greg Garay, a young BBC video/radio producer and I took the batons to Heathrow for our flight to Ottawa. We generally had two batons with us at all times, and although we always advised the relevant airline that we would be taking the batons in the cabin with us, we always got a thorough going over by security. We repeatedly had to explain what the batons were and what we were doing with them. Once on board, we put the batons in the overhead lockers.

At the end of the 10-day relay, Dani and the others went on to accompany the baton to the next Commonwealth country. I had assigned various trusted team members to accompany the baton through each country on its journey.

I flew back to London for the investiture on the 18th. As luck would have it, the plane was late arriving at Heathrow and I was freaking out. Once off the plane, I found my bag and in a blind panic I changed into my posh frock in the Heathrow express train toilet. My three guests who had come down from Manchester for the occasion were staying at a hotel near the palace, and I called them and told them I was getting a cab and to be outside. As