Kerry Washington Tube Clips

Four Corners: raising a ruckus for 50 years

In April 1982, in a state of extreme jet lag, I arrived in Sydney from London, via Washington, to take over as executive producer of Four Corners.

Just a few months later the program celebrated its 21st anniversary. That already made it one of the longest-running programs in the world. To mark the occasion we aired a rather earnest panel discussion, in which former luminaries of the program such as Ray Martin - by then the biggest star of Australian television's most spectacular ratings success, Nine's 60 Minutes - generously agreed to take part. Rather immodestly, I allowed myself to be persuaded to take part too, to provide a British perspective more than anything else.

The program at that time had been cut back to 30 minutes, on a Saturday evening. Its very survival had been in question at the end of the previous season.  And we discussed, as I recall, whether there could be any long-term future for programs like Four Corners and the BBC's Panorama (for which I'd been working for the previous seven years) on prime time television. Weren't attention spans becoming too short? Wasn't the program, and its audience, too stiff-jointed, too sclerotic, too old, to survive in the feisty 1980s?

None of us, I'm sure, would have laid any money at all on the chances that Four Corners, substantially unchanged, would still be occupying a prime-time slot in the ABC's schedule - indeed, a much better and longer slot than in 1982 - 29 years later.

(Its current duration and place in the ABC1 schedule - 45 minutes at 8.30pm on Mondays - has remained constant since the late 1980s. It has a big advantage, from my point of view. It leaves a 13-minute hole before the 9.30 junction, to fill which the ABC created a special little program. Without Four Corners, there would never have been - and might not be - a Media Watch.)

Of course, Four Corners has attained, these days, the television equivalent of World Heritage Status. I'm sure every director of Television since about 1985 has gazed longingly at that 8.30 slot on Monday evenings, and longed to grab it back, for drama, or entertainment, or comedy. But it hasn't happened.

Who Broke the Bank? Uma Thurman or Kerry Washington? - mystyle.com

As born and bred East Coast gals, Uma Thurman and Kerry Washington have a flair for looking effortlessly put together. It was no surprise then when both stars sported the go-to piece for any polished lady: the lace sheath.

Uma wore her sleeveless Dolce & Gabbana confection to attend a Chopard event during Cannes back in May. The blonde looked every inch a city sophisticate with sparkling T-strap sandals by Giuseppe Zanotti and a pair of eye-catching earrings by Chopard.

Kerry Washington must have been taking notes, because less than a month later the Ray actress debuted a very similar Nanette Leopore design at the V-Day's Vivia Vevolution fundraiser in the Big Apple. The brunette accessorized her nude-lined number with a statement necklace, black peep-toes and a hot pink lip.