I
t was a fancy black-tie movie gala and
the paparazzi were out in force. Amanda
Keller was smiling brightly on the red
carpet in a form-itting strapless black
top and tuxedo jacket and pants. But
moments later, inside the cinema,
Amanda started feeling strangely clammy
and unwell. “It’s one thing to dress up in
‘holding-in’ undies for a photo, but sitting
down for the movie I just started to feel
nauseous and overheat. I didn’t know whether
I was going to pass out or throw up,” she recalls.
What Amanda did know that night three years
ago, was there could be a sinister reason. “I’ve
heard women describe those symptoms who’ve
gone on to have heart incidents. I do a lot of work
with the Victor Chang foundation and I know the
symptoms for women are diferent from men, and
it’s not necessarily the shooting pains up your
arm that we think we have to look out for.”
So Amanda slipped out of the theatre, grabbed
a cab home and asked her husband Harley to rush
her to the emergency department.
The hospital monitored her heart overnight,
and while they deemed she was okay, the incident
set of a media frenzy. “I felt I bit naive really.
The next morning I’m on the phone to Jonesy [her
radio-show partner], on air saying I’m in hospital
having some heart tests, then suddenly a news
alert appears on the television that I’ve had a
heart incident and been rushed to hospital!
“In the end nothing had happened to my
heart, but I don’t regret going to the hospital.
Particularly for a lot of women, it’s in our nature
to think, ‘I don’t want to make a fuss’. But the
hospital said to me – make a fuss! If you think
that something is not right, go and have it checked
out. If it is a cardiac incident you may be prone to
something bigger. You may have damaged your
heart. So it’s always worth getting checked out.”
And there’s a kick in the tale to Amanda’s story.
“As I was leaving hospital they told me, ‘By the
way, you’ve got a hole in your heart’.
“They told me that many of us do, it’s just that
we haven’t had the tests that show it. But the
good news is, they said it’s of no consequence, it’s
fine,” Amanda says with a dismissive shrug. And
she’d know. Because what Amanda doesn’t say isthat she spends a great deal of time working with
charities like Victor Chang promoting awareness
of many health conditions.
“It’s made me more aware of what can go wrong
and that you can’t aford not to look after yourself.
So last year I had a mammogram, a colonoscopy,
I did it all. We’re all time poor and that’s the sort
of stuf that we tend to put of, which is so stupid.
So I thought, I’d better do them.”
With that has come some peace of mind for
Amanda, now 55, who is padding around her large
family home in Sydney’s east, barefoot and
chugging from a water bottle she’s filled with
something coloured a bright green. In person
she’s a more muted and thoughtful version of the
wisecracking, fast-witted personality of Network
Ten’s The Living Room and WSFM radio’s
breakfast show Jonesy & Amanda.
But she admits that having a calm, patient
demeanour isn’t her natural speed.
“On daily radio everything I say has got to be
fast. It is adrenalin-inducing. But I’ve got to be
careful not to bring that speed into everything
else. My husband [TV producer Harley Oliver]
often works from home and when I come in
after the show he’ll say, ‘Slow down!’
“I do have to remind myself that not everyone
is working at a pace that’s as frenetic. Sometimes
Harley will say, ‘You’re talking me to as if I work
here!’ ,” she laughs.
Amanda’s daily schedule is enough to make
many busy women feel like underachievers. Today,
just like every weekday, she has been up since 4am.
Before most of us have hit our desks, Amanda has
spent three and a half hours acting sharp, smart
and funny on radio. Then she’s shared a birthday
cake with radio partner Brendan Jones, driven
the 45-minute trek home through morning traic,
poured her energy into our photo shoot and now,
at what most of us would consider lunchtime,
she’s contemplating an afternoon nap.A
manda has become adept at getting up
when most of us are deep into our REM
sleep. She’s been doing breakfast radio
on and of since she partnered with her old uni pal
Andrew Denton on Triple M in the mid ’90s.
“Whether you do breakfast radio, or you’re a
baker or a flight attendant, when the alarm goes
of very early in the morning, they can be the
loneliest hours. You feel like you’re the only
person awake and that can be a really dark time.
I’m not prone to dark thoughts but when I wake
up I just get up, then once I’ve got my head under
the shower it could be any time – 4 or 7am.
“My family doesn’t hear a thing. I once fell all
the way down the stairs and no-one heard it.” 66 PREVENTIONAUS.COM.AU