Inevitably, many of the obits have focused on its latter years – which is fair enough because, to my amazement, it has been bloody successful for the last two decades, too, and really was a great show. With its latter-day incarnation hosted by Tony Squires and boasting panellists such as Crash Craddock, Adam Spencer and Candice Warner, the thing was still working and doing great box office. I have no clue why Fox Sports has cut it off at the knees, save the possibility its new owners, the British-based DAZN, intend to channel more foreign content to this small outpost on the other side of the planet at the expense of local content. But I digress. For my obit, let me focus a little on the first decade, when The Back Page proved the antithesis of Thompson’s dictum. It was a terrific show because we all really liked each other, and were close friends well beyond whatever we put to air. The show was the idea of the veteran sports producer Saul Shtein. Knowing that Mike Gibson, the iconic sports broadcaster from Wide World of Sports, would be at the Atlanta Olympics at the same time as me, Saul asked me to duchess him on the idea of the show, after Mike had politely rejected his first approach. Mike and I got together one day at the beach volleyball, when Australia had just got the gold medal, and I pitched again.