Jana still attracts TV offers

She is still remembered as one of the most enigmatic women to ever appear on Australian television. And she is probably still one of the most-missed.

But Jana Wendt doesn’t look like she will be winging her way back to the small screen anytime soon, although she does still receive offers “quite often.”

In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald to promote her new book, Nice Work, Wendt says that although she is tempted by some projects, she says she can’t imagine she will work full-time in television again.

Wendt has penned a book on on the work / living balance, which has an account of the day-to-day working lives of 10 people including a priest, the CEO of cruise-ship company and a sculptor.

The former TV presenter sounds remarkably content with her own life balance in the article, now as a solo author instead of a collaborative television participant.

“I know that some people find it tremendously difficult to be alone in any context,” she says. “I am not that sort of person. I am quite happy to be alone.”

These days she enjoys the craft of writing, where – unlike in TV – she has control over the finished product.

Wendt, like Ray Martin after her, sounds as if the years in the grind of commercial television are cathartically exorcised through publishing.

As for her views on the state of current affairs, Wendt says, “Many trees have been felled on the topic of what’s going on in television, but even a part-time observer can see that [current affairs] television has shifted in style,” she says. “It’s certainly true that when I started, it was something I fitted into well, and that later I fitted into it less well. Times change, things evolve.”

The one quality Wendt had in spades over many of her contemporaries, was simply this: credibility.

The small screen is surely lacking without her talents in there somewhere.

It’s a good read which you can check out here.