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14.06.10
Herald Sun - Welcome to Shane Warne's world
By Patrick Carlyon From: Herald Sun, June 11, 2010 7:15PM
TALK show hosts take many guises.
This one wears a navy suit and silver-blue checked tie. His eyes shine blue. His television make-up glows orange. His teeth blaze white.
And his hair is splashed blond, as it always has been, as if to say "look at me" - which we've been doing for more than 20 years, whether we wanted to or not.
Yet right now, in the bowels of an empty MCG, Australia's next big television hopeful would prefer if observers look the other way.
He's just sparked up a sneaky cigarette. Rules both real and perceived have never much bothered him, especially the prissy ones.
And sneaky cigarettes, as with so many other personal matters, have doubled as currency for the circus that has always distracted from - but rarely diminished - the cricketing mastery of Shane Warne.
Cupping his smoke, alongside a willing accomplice, Warne recalls when he had his first cigarette two months after being paid by a quit-aid company to publicly give up.
He was in the West Indies. He'd been drinking. A bystander seized the opportunity to take a photo. Warne objected.
The ensuing scandal faded to another footnote in the confusing adventures of a bayside boy named Shane, who also dabbled as a cricket great and love rat.
That was 11 years ago. He hasn't bothered to try giving up smokes again since, he says. Hell, he loves them.
So here he stands, part schoolboy behind the shelter shed, part celebrity export who is about to embark on the latest incarnation in Warne's World. He is both the imp he once was and the Inc. he hopes to be.
He's between a photo shoot for his underwear line, which is about to expand into kids' clothes, and a Channel 9 piece to camera.
His days are always "full books". Today also takes in a voice recording session, a meeting with a department store's business managers, and an official visit to a McDonald's.
This weekend, Warne flies out for 10 weeks, for work and pleasure, to destinations including Morocco, Italy and Las Vegas. When he's not playing at suburban dad to three kids, he says, he's building the empire.
For years, he has taken shares in the companies he has promoted. It's part of his "win-win" philosophy he says he tries to apply in boardrooms.
Apparently, he's got to believe in a project to become involved with it.
Such an approach implies a thoughtfulness - and shrewdness - that doesn't gel with the sportsman once parodied for imprudent brushes with diuretics and bookies named John, as well as party girls and the odd nurse.
Warne has an interest in 888, the poker company he spruiks. There's also a joint venture with Crown casino and his old mate James Packer.
HE reckons he now has 18 corporate partners.
"That's my life at the moment," he says.
"It's the building of the business ventures that I most look forward to."
Among these are the coming television project, not as a member of a cricket commentary team, but as the main act in his own show.
He's not supposed to talk about it. Warne can't help himself.
The TV show is set to air in November, to coincide with the Ashes series. It may have a cricket bent, but it may not.
There will be interviews with famous people, some he considers friends.
He isn't Michael Parkinson, he admits, but he's learned a lot from watching his interviews over the years. The key, he figures, is the ability to listen.
"(The idea) was why don't you go and interview some of these guys - Mick Jagger, Chris Martin (Coldplay singer), Elton John, Michael Parkinson, Russell Crowe.
"All these guys have been around doing things for so long. What drives them? How did they get there? When did they know they were good? That's the sort of show I want to do."
There may be a segment where Warne fulfils a viewer request to, say, skydive or go three rounds in the ring with Jeff Fenech.
He is signed up, he says, for this program, even if the details remain hazy for now.
But there may also be another program - a reheat or revamp of an old favourite. On this, too, he is circumspect, except to say that it isn't Wheel of Fortune or Family Feud.
"My image at the moment is probably as good as it's ever been," Warne says.
"Touch wood, everything is going really well."
WARNE sounds genuinely comfortable with himself.
There are none of the frowns that once dotted probing television interviews, or the sort of tangential babble that may well have influenced Kevin Rudd's subsequent relationship with a microphone.
Today, Warne sounds like he wants to talk.
At one point, he expertly reviews the form of eight players at his beloved St Kilda within 13 seconds.
Cricket needs to evolve, he declares. Three versions of the game is too much cricket for players and too confusing to prospective fans.
Perhaps, 50-over matches could be played only every four years, as with the Olympic Games.
Warne sounds disappointed when commitments mean he can't go on chatting all day. He is a giving subject, and not at all like the accumulated snippets of his notoriously public private life.
Perhaps that's because his world sounds less messy than it once was. After all, Warne has become better known for Twittering to 106,000 followers than for text messaging those he probably shouldn't.
He doesn't go out much, he says. He's on the road far less than he used to be. On weekends, he provides a taxi service for his three kids.
Friends come to his house, or he attends dinner parties, where he will indulge in pasta, red wine, and chatter.
"I think I'm maturing a bit. At my stage of life now, I don't like fancy stuff," he says.
Asked the obligatory interview question about his relationship with his ex-wife Simone (pictured above left), Warne sighs. Yet he volunteers a constructive quote: "We both love each other and it's a matter of trying to work through our issues ... I think it's a credit to both of us to keep trying after what's happened over the years."
Warne has long accepted the public thirst for his personal life, the photographers who materialise from bushes or pitch camp on his nature strip. There is longer a sense that he expects indiscretions to go without scrutiny.
"I don't think it's anyone's business, but the more you fight it, and the more you resent it, the worse it can be," he says.
"I think you just say: You know what? It's part of life."
Never was the scrutiny more searing than during the 2005 Ashes, when the warring sides of Warne's magnetism were most magnified.
He slogged and slogged on the field. Most of his teammates appeared to be in shock at the English spirit.
He not only starred in a losing team, but stunned fans afresh with 40 wickets and a grit at the crease that had once defied him.
Yet salacious revelations piled higher in the press. Warne fretted about seeing his kids. He emptied hotel mini-bars to fall asleep, crying, at 3am.
The tour confirmed suggestions that Warne was the best cricketing brain never to captain Australia.
It also confirmed why officials could never trust him to lead the team.
During that tour, Warne sat down with manager James Erskine and fleshed out the potential business opportunities that have since flourished.
Warne says the same instincts that drove his cricketing prowess propel his business pursuits.
HE'S an instinctive bloke, he says. His first impression isn't always right, but it's close enough most of the time.
Warne thrives on "cat and mouse". This has shown in his TV commentary, in which he strives to offer viewers insights into the psychology of the contest.
Once, he learned such tactics from the Allan Borders and Mark Taylors. Now, Warne bows to the knowledge of billionaires who happen to be pals.
Learning poker, from friends such as former world champion Joe Hachem, has also honed his instinct for studying the cues of human nature.
"Guys like Lloyd Williams, James Packer and Zac Goldsmith are my mentors, business-wise," he says.
"I'm very lucky to be able to bounce things off those guys and see what they think."
Being a talk show host is just the latest reinvention of Warne, the boardroom player who won't play cricket much longer.
Yet he has never committed the cardinal sin of those who linger in the public eye.
Warne has never pretended to be someone he is not. This may make his past failings easier to forget.
Who knows? If Warne applies the talents he displayed on the field and the commentary box, he could swell as the sort of public figure most people never thought he could be.
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