Man with his finger on the TV remote

By Stephen Gibbs
December 28, 2005 SMH

HE SITS, he glares, barely moving. All the televisions are turned on. To change the picture he can reach for the remote control, a telephone or a gun.
The best-known Packer anecdotes create this image of the billionaire-lizard: watching, waiting, wanting to strike when he does not like what he sees.
Told over decades, usually by former employees, they make a canon of colourful stories - a narrative stretching from his ancestry into the afterlife. They could be told because of the Packer motto: "Never complain, never explain" and Gordon French tells one of the best.
On the day of the Hilton hotel bombing in 1978 the Sydney program boss offered his view that security in Mr Packer's Park Street headquarters was not up to scratch. He asked what Mr Packer would do if someone came into his office intent upon doing him harm.
"Kerry opened his desk drawer, produced a big handgun and said 'I'd use this', or words to that effect," Mr French recalled last year. "He then leaned across the desk and pointed the gun at my head and added: 'Which is what I'll do to you if the ratings don't improve' and pulled the trigger."
All the best Packer anecdotes contribute to the picture of a man oblivious to outside interference, in supreme command. They show the ruthless exercise of wealth and power, but also spontaneous acts of wild generosity and a resignedly bleak outlook on life.
His policy of not personally replying to what was said about him in public means the apocryphal sits alongside fact. Most rumours of his gambling, and outrageous tipping, he let stand.
The Packer biographer Paul Barry has cited AJC betting turnover figures, and Mr Packer's attendance at the track, to estimate the billionaire staked $55 million during the autumn carnival at Royal Randwick in 1987.
The British gossip columnist Nigel Dempster reported in 1991 that Mr Packer had tipped croupiers at the Las Vegas Hilton $US50,000 each after a $7 million blackjack win. Four hostesses each scored $75,000 tips after a lucky Packer run at Jupiters on the Gold Coast in 1998.
A few anecdotes that go some way to explaining Mr Packer's behaviour, or creating his image, were told by Mr Packer himself.
The most famous is probably a story from his childhood retold in Barry's book The Rise and Rise of Kerry Packer. It tells of the Geelong Grammar student arriving home to Bellevue Hill for a summer holiday, having forgotten to pack his tennis racquet. Sir Frank sent him back on the train.
It suggests a terrible childhood and alludes to ingrained discipline but when Mr Packer told the story on television he made it sound humorous. Mr French reportedly laughed retelling the gun-to-the-head yarn, but when in Mr Packer's office that day his hands shook with fear.
In other anecdotes, Mr Packer wielded a phone like a gun. In 1992 he pulled Doug Mulray off air after watching dogs mating presented as entertainment on Australia's Naughtiest Home Videos.