Don Burke harassment: Packer directive, more allegations.

Yesterday more reports detailed allegations against Don Burke….

Nine media mogul Kerry Packer made a personal phone call to celebrity gardener Don Burke in 2000 and ordered him to behave, according to media reports.

The call came shortly after swimmer Susie O’Neill made an official complaint against the Burke’s Backyard host, claiming he’d made ‘lewd, sexual comments’ towards her while filming a story at her Brisbane home.

A former Burke’s Backyard researcher said it was well-known in the office that while filming the segment things took a strange turn. She recounted one incident during a garden makeover for a couple who lost family and friends in the Bali bombing.

“I understand he was just swearing at them quietly and smiling at them like a Cheshire cat, while actually he was telling them what he really thought about them and calling them terrible, terrible names like, ‘Mr C***y C*** and Mrs C***y C***’,” she recalled.

Burke also suggested the couple should have olive trees because they were “woggy”, despite the pair’s objections.

“He said, ‘F*** you, I’m paying for this, I’ll put olive trees in if I want to put olive trees in and if you don’t want orange trees, I’m going to put in more citrus’. He just didn’t care what people thought.”

Sports journalist Caroline told 3AW about a Logies night when she sat next to Burke.

“When the actual televised ceremony part began I turned around because I had my back to the stage and I commented to Don ‘please excuse my back’ and he said ‘not at all, do you mind if I lick it?'”

Kerri-Anne Kennerley said there were many more men who sexually harassed women in the TV industry.

“I’ve done several stories with him, two in my home in various times,” she said of Burke.

“There wasn’t any question his language was appalling. I’m not a shrinking violet … but to me he always was just that little bit worse.

“It was the language school of Kerry Packer and it went downhill from that. All of his executives spoke the same way and they were all colourful. But Don, sometimes, was just a little bit more.”

Burke was also temporarily banned by Qantas from flying in the 1990s, slapped with a flight ban after he allegedly behaved inappropriately towards staff.

In 1993 he allegedly refused to withdraw from a domestic violence campaign “Real Men Don’t Bash or Rape Women” (NB: there is no suggestion he was violent to women).

“As soon as his face appeared in ads, we were contacted by several women saying that he was not appropriate for the campaign because he himself was an abuser,” said a former public servant who was involved in the campaign.

Celebrated children’s author Jackie French, who had previously supported Burke, backed away from the embattled celebrity on Tuesday. “The man you uncovered is not the one I knew,” French told Fairfax Media.

Burke has denied the allegations.

Source: News Corp, ABC, Fairfax, Nine, Daily Mail