Keating: The Interviews: sneak peek

In the first of his interviews with ABC TV, former PM Paul Keating tells Kerry O’Brien about his early days managing a rock band, The Ramrods, and meeting Tom Jones.

“I always loved star power. It gives you that charge, whether it’s a very great tennis player or a it’s a very great singer,” he says.

“Jones was the greatest individual artist of my lifetime.”

Paul Keating left school at 14, joined the Labor Party soon after, and thus began a remarkable and tumultuous 40-year journey into history as one of Australia’s most significant and contentious political leaders.

Love him or hate him, there’s been no one quite like Keating. In this candid four-part interview series with Kerry O’Brien, he reveals the forces that shaped his ambitions, and some of the inside stories of perhaps the most intense and sustained period of economic and social reform in Australian political history, including the triumphs and the tears of his highly successful but explosive relationship with Bob Hawke.

This unique series has many unforgettable moments. No prime ministers have revealed so much of themselves and their craft to the camera.

Paul Keating lived by the sword and died by the sword. “We all get carried out in the end.”

Keating: The Interviews airs 8:30pm Tuesday, 12 November ABC1.