Info

The Zilch! Factor by Leonard Lee

An outrageous book that refused to die.

First, they tried to ignore it. And then they tried to pulp it. But somewhere between the covers of The Zilch! Factor between 1994 and 2004 there was a flickering heartbeat; they couldn’t quite zilch the zilch.

My book was merely sleeping – hibernating -- patiently biding its time through the long winter of shit that erupted when it was published.

Its time is now. Zilch up pilgrims.

The Zilch! Factor: what is it about?

When people ask me what The Zilch! Factor is about, I look them directly in the eye (even if they have only two) and say: ‘Oh, it’s about nothing.’ They look at me oddly and blink rapidly. While I don’t blame them (well, who could write a book about nothing?), my book really is in part about nothing -- and the enervating power and liberty of it. But you have to read it to understand why.

"He opened his eyes and blinked. Then he smiled peacefully and a little lopsidedly, because he realised he did have something after all – nothing. Nothing was definitely something, whichever way he thought about it. He squinted and applied his imagination to give his new status a description. It came to him quickly: a Zilch! Factor. How perfect. It was though he had burst through a thick mist while climbing a terrible mountain and emerged onto a plateau of brilliant understanding."

From The Zilch! Factor

In the main though my novel is about a deadly, insidious plague in our midst: commercial television news and current affairs. That explains the subtitle: "Television, as you always feared it to be . . . "

What would I know about television journalism? Quite a lot, as it turns out. Indeed, I was a foot soldier, a spreader of it, for almost half of my working life -- until, thankfully, the back of my hair disappeared and I experienced television death (unlike John F Kennedy, who also experienced television death when the whole back of his fucking head disappeared). Apparently, I was good at television journalism: over the years my work somehow won Logie and Penguin Awards; a UN Media Peace Prize Gold Award and even a Colombia DuPont Award (silver baton). The latter is the television equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize and is awarded by the same people who award the Pulitzer.

These days, those who think they know (even if they haven’t seen me to 20 years), dismiss me as having gone gaa goo, or gone away forever – or both.

Au contraire, my dears; I am as sane as you. And I haven’t gone away.

The Zilch! Factor: the book they tried to pulp

It’s perfectly true. In fact, almost 3000 copies of The Zilch! Factor were pulped before fate intervened and allowed me to rescue the rights to it. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn’t pulped earlier on publication on the orders of a court, especially given the strange premise that the contents may have been truth dressed up as fiction. Or on the odd assumption that the work, set in the UK and US, was essentially all about certain people in the commercial television industry right here in downtown Australia.

The Zilch! Factor is considered, not least by me, to be the most provocative books published in Australia, possibly since Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory (1949). I fully expected, for whatever reason, someone to stick up his or her head and attempt to sue the bejesus out of the publisher and me. They had from May 1994 until May 2000 to do so when the statute of limitations ran out. But they didn’t. In fact, there was this resounding silence after my book was published; the same sort of stunned silence after a bomb goes off -- just before the screaming starts. I cannot speak for the publisher, Boolarong Press, but personally I would have genuinely welcomed a jolly good suing – think of what it would have done for sales of my book -- but it didn’t happen. I rather feel I was protected by the guilt of the guilty and the power of zilch, you see.

You do see now, don’t you?

Leonard Lee: nemesis of Jana Wendt and Sam Chisholm

Fancy that!

I likely rate as their collective worst enemy and I am very proud of it. But just because I am their enemy does not mean I cannot lovingly regard them as my friends, you understand? I feel for them both so intensely that it redefines the meaning of love.

I say judge a man by the calibre of those who consider him an enemy.

The burning question is: was The Zilch! Factor a square-up for Wendt and Chisholm (and others), each of whom played no small part making, for a time, my former life more uncomfortable and unpleasant than even I could possibly have imagined.

Of course not. What stuff and nonsense. A zilch upon you!

The Zilch! Factor: "outrageous satire"

Well, yes, I believe it is – but not because I say so:

(a) Jack Neate, fastidious book reviewer for the Brisbane Courier-Mail, actually described The Zilch! Factor as "wicked, outrageous satire . . . a very different, highly entertaining book"

(b) The Sydney Morning Herald paperback reviewer Daphne Guinness followed suit:

"This first novel knocks spots off Frontline, the ABC's attempt to satirise TV current affairs . . . so the author is to be applauded."

Now why wouldn’t I believe that?

"Television, as you always feared it to be . . . "

Ah, welcome to the world of airship-sized egos and fame devaluers. I mean, could you even vaguely compare the fame of Sir Edmund Hillary with that of Molly Meldrum or Mother Theresa with Jana Wendt? Of course not; Jana and Molly are much more famous because they are . . . on . . . bloody television.

" . . . I’ve been a television reporter most of my life. Do you remember Pulse of the People?"
"Sh-yit man! That’s where I know you from. I knew I knew your face. How about that now!" He drew back and looked at Lionel with new admiration. "You famous, mystery man!"
"I was once, just a little. I wouldn’t call it fame either. I was recognised because I imposed myself electronically upon people who had the misfortune to be watching television at the time. I didn’t do anything to be famous. Nobody on television does," Lionel replied, vainly hoping Leroy might understand what he was talking about.
"That’s curious," Leroy replied. "I never thought about of that before: unfamous people imposing themselves upon the proletariat via a transmitted electronic medium and creating the illusion of fame; it’s an interesting concept."

From The Zilch! Factor

I was a farm boy, raised in the cow shit of a struggling, cold dairy farm in New Zealand. Upon stumbling and falling into the world of television news and current affairs as a teenager and spending half of my working life in there, I ultimately – and sadly -- came to believe that I had merely come full circle, except the cow shit had became bull shit and the farm an asylum.

I can honestly say, as a man who has worked at some very strange places, including a buttery, inside a scaly boiler and on a mobile sheep dippery, that nothing compares with working in the deadly world of commercial television news and current affairs.

Do you know it took at least seven years after my scalp burst through my hair and consigned me to the zilch bin of television for me to recognise that I was but a mere human being, let alone accept it.

Point is, if you want my take on television news and current affairs, read The Zilch! Factor. You’ll never watch the news in the same way again, I promise. You may begin to believe that your favourite anchorperson could be insane – and that he or she could actually be the newsroom cleaner in disguise. Check out the amazing Bishop Rockwell in The Zilch! Factor, if that is who he really is . . . or isn’t.

The Zilch! Factor: an "important book"

It has been described as such, and by a discerning literary critic at that. Best though you read it and make up your own mind. It is certainly important to me, especially in the sense that it took up 11 years of my life to write and rewrite, and rewrite and rewrite, nine times in all. My manuscript then suffered 33 rejections before it was published. It travelled quite a journey, at one point ending up in New York with the respected literary agent Allan Lang. Lang liked the work enough to send it out to a number of heavyweight publishers in his orbit. A HarperCollins reader subsequently gave it a tick for publication, only to be overruled by the company’s cruel marketing division on the grounds that (a) I had no track record as an author (b) I had no profile in any field in the US and (c) the subject matter was "highly unusual".

You bet it was unusual: what other writer has espoused the theory that we are all dead between heartbeats?

The Joseph Heller connection

I encountered an attractive young woman in Double Bay, Sydney, who was the great Joseph Heller’s girlfriend (make that mistress) whenever he visited Australian shores. She kindly sent the work on to Heller for me, calling upon him to help. Heller rather expediently decided not to read it (in case he didn’t like it) but to forward it straight to his publisher. Heller eventually wrote back -- and I read the handwritten letter -- saying the publisher thought "the writing reminded him of me (Heller)" and that he liked it "nearly enough".

Sigh: "Nearly enough." "Reminded him of me."

I’d have paid money for a rejection as subtle, tantalising -- and as encouraging -- as that.

The Walter Cronkite—BBC World News Service connections

Chapter Eight of The Zilch! Factor contains an account of Lionel Loe being caught up in the most extraordinary story of his colourful career. Indeed, Lionel considers it to be the most important story to break since the Resurrection, assuming the truth of the latter. In the course of broadcasting the story to the world, Lionel deals with the great Walter Cronkite himself and BBC World News Service. The story is consequently broadcast on prime time BBC World News and on CBS News.

Isn’t that just amazing: I was also caught up in a similar story. It too became the centre of worldwide media attention and was broadcast on New Years Day, 1979 by both Cronkite (with whom I dealt) on CBS News and by the BBC World News Service. The story took me to Washington DC where I worked closely on it with a highly respected US Navy optical physicist who worked in advanced laser technology. The conclusions of the research still echo in my memory; I have no doubt that it remains the single most important story I have ever and could possibly ever have been involved in.

Sounded serious, didn’t it?

It was -- and still is. Thank you Lieutenant Walter Haut.

Is The Zilch! Factor’s Kara Minari Jana Wendt?

Ask me first whether Englishman Lionel Loe, the central character in the book, is I, New Zealander Leonard Lee. Hmm, there’s a question: the two names are somewhat similar, especially in the fact both of us share the same initials: LL. Quite a coincidence, yes?

What the hell: for argument’s sake, for one wild moment let’s pretend Leonard is Lionel.

In real life, I had an almost five-year relationship with Jana. No secrets there; it’s on the public record. In the book, Lionel has a long-term relationship with Kara. In life, my marriage broke up over Jana. Same in the book: Lionel leaves his marriage for Kara, the bastard.

I took Jana from Network Ten to Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes; Lionel takes Kara from Television Texas to Network America to work on the most watched current affairs show in the US, World Watch, where she becomes sickenly famous and turns into a television monster.

Coincidences abound – simply astonishing. Who said art does not imitate life?

Something else. In real life, poor Jana has (or had) an ample bottom. In the book, Kara suffers from slight steatopygia . . .

Oh, one thing more: one of Jana’s exes nicknamed her "The Menace". It referred to the havoc she wreaked upon hapless men who encountered her when she was an inhumanly beautiful young woman: they became drooling, jerking incoherenti.

"Woman. Was she really a woman?

There was masculinity about her; it was in her voice sometimes, a powerful male sound, a disturbing, belligerent tone, quite out of keeping with the body it came from. It was also reflected in her outlook. Lionel was sure she viewed the world as a man. Her mind seemed male; her cynicism was male, her friendship was male, her arrogance was male, her irresponsibility was male and her disdain for many of the women she worked with was male. Almost everything she did had a distinct male aspect to it. Was that Kara’s secret? He felt certain it was a large part of it. By a remarkable quirk of nature, or rare melding of male and female chromosomes, Kara Minari had seemingly emerged into the world with a man’s mind, an extremely intelligent, ambitious and talented one, hidden in the body of a stunningly beautiful woman. A freak. It would allow her to get away with almost anything. She would compete in a man’s world without any of them knowing they were competing with one of their own.

They never stood a chance."

From The Zilch! Factor

Further, and this is just the oddest thing – another boggling coincidence – but the name Minari has Latin roots. I may be wrong but I believe it means to threaten, or menace.

And to think I just plucked that name out of the air . . . my God!

Is The Zilch! Factor’s Arthur Cadwallader Sam Chisholm?

My dear, small but perfectly formed friend, Sam Chisholm is still the most terrifyingly powerful executive in Australian television. He is a television genius; just look at what he achieved with Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB and, before that, for Kerry Packer's Nine Television Network. Indeed, at the 2004 Logies, they inducted Sam, along with the transplanted lungs of a dead person, into the Logies Hall of Fame.

He once called me, tsk, "a cunt", that’s how close we are. Naturally, because he was referring to one of the most beautiful things in the world, I took it as a compliment that of course I am happy to return to him.

My favourite Sam story is of the sign he purportedly had on his desk when, God forgive him, he was running the Nine Television Network:

"To err is human. To forgive is something I never do."

In The Zilch! Factor, Arthur Cadwallader, head of Network America, is the most powerful and feared television executive in the US. He is literally a man without a soul.

"The men and women of Network America were the closest team in the whole American television industry and everyone knew it but most did not know why. The NA people were committed, industrious fulfilled, successful – and fuck-ruined, of course they were that because that was the way Arthur Cadwallader wanted it. It was why Cadwallader was known as the finest, most respected and most feared chief of the network chiefs in the United States. It helped that he was a little prick of the lowest, most evil order to boot."

From The Zilch! Factor

No similarity with Sam Chisholm there, is there?

Get – GET -- away!

Cadwallader buys the souls of network television stars. Now, did "Chequebook" Sam Chisholm ever, I mean EVER, do that? Such tosh!

In 1981 I negotiated Jana’s first contract with the Nine Network with Chisholm. In The Zilch! Factor, Lionel Loe negotiates Kara’s first Network America contract with Cadwallader. Now tell me there is any similarity there?

Scratchy chalk and stinky cheese.

Frankly, anyone who sees any likeness between my friend Sam Chisholm, delightful crunt, and Arthur Cadwallader, complete arsehole . . . well, I for one might find that highly objectionable.

PS: The ABC’s Jennifer Byrne once told me that Sam holds me in such high regard that his veins literally bulge around his neck at the mere mention of my happy name.

Now that’s what I call friendship.

Is The Zilch! Factor’s HG Haard Gerald Stone?

Remember him? Come on, all click your fingers. Former Executive Producer of 60 Minutes and that runaway current affairs success, Real Life. Former Editor of The Bulletin. Author. Board member of SBS – of course you remember him . . . don’t you?

He was the man who ordered his staff at 60 Minutes to put their jobs ahead of their families.

Let’s get one thing clear: Gerald "Tabloid" Stone does not like being called "Gerry’", even though most of us have called him that for as long as. Even as long as as. I don’t blame him; not much gravitas in mere "Gerry", is there? Think of "Gerry", think of professional idiots: Gerry Lewis and Gerry Falwell, for two.

But that is not why I still call him Gerry. I call him Gerry simply because I know it pisses him right off, simple as that. What is a friend if you can’t piss them off?

For proof, take a read of Gerry’s book, Compulsive Viewing published circa September 2001. I get a nasty little guernsey in it whereby Stone accuses me of being Jana Wendt’s "business manager" and said that I made a joke about her menstrual cycle to him. Wendt’s then accountant has since put it in writing that I was NEVER her business manager. The joke reference was extremely unworthy, tacky -- and utterly untrue.

In the book, HG Haard is the executive producer of the runaway US current affairs ratings success, World Watch, yes, yes, the program Kara Minari ends up working for. Haard is a foul-tempered, white-eyed CIA sleeper embedded in the mainstream US media to keep an eye on left wing elements in it. He’s a nasty but clever woman-fearing bastard.

Note ANY similarities between Haard and Stone there?

Of course not. Get a life. For goodness sake!

Leonard Lee: how the hell did he get away with it?

Get away with what?
*****************

Only a limited number of copies of The Zilch! Factor remain. Signed copies upon request.