John Pospisil

I wrote this short piece in 2002. I thought of it recently, and found it on the backup of the computer I had at the time.

No one told me Paul Lyneham died. I only found out after his widow wrote a book about her life with him - about two years after his death. I heard her interviewed on the radio.

I asked my work colleagues whether they had heard that Paul Lyneham died.

“Of course,” they replied, “he died back in 2000″.

I only ever spoke to Paul Lyneham once. I was a third year journalism student at the University of Canberra and I needed to interview a journalist for an assignment.

Lyneham was a big shot television journo at the ABC, and I thought he’d be great to interview. I gave him a call at the ABC’s Parliament House bureau.

Lyneham told me that another student had already approached him.

“Look,” he said, “I’m just a regular guy, trying to pay my mortgage, spend time with my wife, I just don’t have time to do another interview.”

At the time, I thought it was odd that he had to justify himself. What was I to him? Just a faceless, annoying uni student.

When I heard that radio interview with Lyeham’s wife I was really startled to hear that he had died two years earlier; how could such a public figure die without me noticing?

Perhaps I was in the midst of frantic activity at work when he died, during one of the times when my family and friends didn’t see me for weeks on end. I didn’t read the papers and I didn’t watch television during those times.

Or maybe I was away on holidays, and when I got back, and there was no reason for anyone to tell me that Lyneham had passed away.

So why was I so jarred by the belated news of Lyneham’s death? I cannot claim to have known Paul Lyneham. Our paths did cross, but only briefly and tenuously.

He was out there, part of the world, and yet when he was gone, I was completely oblivious to his death.

Perhaps what alarmed me was this: If a public figure like Paul Lyneham can die without me knowing, what other, less noticeable, parts of my world have also died or disappeared without me noticing?