NSW: Bernard King jokes after winning contract dispute

AAP General News (Australia)
08-04-2000
NSW: Bernard King jokes after winning contract dispute

By Margaret Scheikowski

SYDNEY, Aug 4 AAP - Bernard King today joked about "big bums" and unmarried mothers
with "ghastly hair" after a judge found the flamboyant chef's offensive comments had not
warranted the termination of his contract.

Judge Richard Rolfe awarded King $101,978 after finding Brisbane-based cookware company
Dine-Rite unlawfully cancelled his 10-year-contract four years early in 1998.

Later telling reporters he was funny not offensive, King described the mothers as "the
most delightful creatures" who huddled together in "little ghettos in special suburbs"

like Inala in Brisbane, Ultimo in Sydney and Footscray in Melbourne.

"They club together in a large group, you cannot walk down Glebe Point Road (in Sydney)
without being bashed over by an unmarried mother with ghastly hair and a kid in a pram,"

he said outside the NSW District Court.

But he did concede he might have "crossed the line a smidgin" when he told a cooking
demonstration audience "if you don't brown it well enough it's going to come out like
a stillborn baby".

Dine-Rite had claimed he breached the contract to promote its products by being banned
from the Brisbane and Mackay shows, making offensive comments during cooking demonstrations,
promoting rival products and refusing to appear at some shows.

The judge rejected all the claims, although he regarded the stillborn comment "as an
extremely bad taste remark" and a reference to "loads of unmarried mothers in this town"

as offensive.

But he said in isolation the remarks did not warrant King's contract being terminated,
especially after he agreed not to repeat them when he was chastised by Dine-Rite director
Paul Cunningham.

And the judge did not regard as offensive King's remark: "you walk so slow here in
Mackay your thongs don't even slap".

"It seems to me that (it) is merely a comment made by the plaintiff in order to enliven
the audience or engage them and get them to participate".

He said Dine-Rite knew King was a flamboyant entertainer who could attract crowds by
employing jokes, satire, humour and sending up members of the audience.

"I consider there is always the potential, with such an entertainer, for someone in
an audience, especially if it is a large one, to be easily offended when others were not.

"In such a situation one or two people could take offence at a joke which the vast
majority would find funny or even hilarious."

King later said it was "absolutely absurd" to describe as offensive his style which
people knew was tongue-in-cheek.

"I'm a Jiminy Cricket on their shoulder, reminding them that big bums are not the most
attractive way to look," he said.

"Anyone offended by anything I said can walk away.

"Most of my audiences at those shows were standing people, they don't have to stay,
they could have stretched their Supre tights and moved on."

He said he had been presenting low-fat, no-fat cooking when one would be bound to mention
"the size of a bustline or a backside".

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