There comes a point in the life of every 57-year-old accountant-turned-political firebrand-turned-deputy-prime minister-turned-bonk-ban-recipient when he finds himself contemplating a video he didn’t know was taken, starring himself at an hour he can’t recall, sprawled out in a suit next to a planter box outside a Canberra kebab shop, cursing a blue streak and otherwise talking 86 kinds of Ewokese to someone who wasn’t actually on the end of his upside-down phone. Friends, Barnaby Joyce reached that point four months ago . And late last week, he emerged from rock bottom, 15kg – and curiously, several facial shades – lighter, looking for all the world like a newer, less fire engine-red man.
Image: Marija Ercegovac. Credit: As success stories go, it was as satisfying as accidentally coming across a back episode of The Biggest Loser and watching a chastened contestant, high on wheatgrass shots and his own horrifying post-workout stench, surviving an elimination challenge after being forced to bench-press his own starting weight in discarded cheesecakes and regret. Barnaby’s fall – and his subsequent redemption story – had everything.
A very public extramarital affair, an unexpected pregnancy, a pre-Christmas country wedding featuring matching his-and-hers Akubra hats, a spiralling mental health situation, the pressure cooker of the Canberra political scene, and (finally) enough booze to leave half of Manuka feeling like it’d been worked over by a potent batch o.