Why Andrew O'Keefe needs to learn from his Uncle Johnny's deadly mistake - before it is too late
- READ MORE: Andrew O'Keefe is arrested AGAIN
Andrew O'Keefe once said his role model was his father, a towering and respected figure in the legal world who served as Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
But it is the example set by his rock and roll star uncle which the disgraced ex-TV star has most emulated.
Johnny O'Keefe, who was known by his nickname 'the wild one' while his lawyer brother was dubbed 'the mild one', was a trailblazing figure in the Australian music industry, recording almost 30 top 40 hits between the late fifties and early seventies.
He also carved out a successful career as a television presenter, hosting Six O'Clock Rock on Saturday nights, which later became the eponymous Johnny O'Keefe Show on Channel Seven.
Yet, amid all the success and acclaim, he suffered terribly with drug and alcohol addiction, eventually dying from an overdose in 1978, aged 43.
It's a depressing tale thrown in stark relief when you consider Andrew O'Keefe's own sad decline and very public battle with drug dependency.
Last week, the former host of Deal or No Deal, 52, had three court appearances as he battles a slew of complicated domestic violence and drug-related charges.
Happier times: Andrew O'Keefe grinning beside David Koch at the 2005 Logies
O'Keefe once said his role model was his father, a towering and respected figure in the legal world who served as Justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales . But it is the example set by his rock and roll star uncle which he disgraced ex-TV star has most emulated
‘It’s a tangled mess, your honour,' O'Keefe admitted to a magistrate on Wednesday.
Outside court, he displayed his old charm, joking with reporters and insisting that he was on his way back up.
But less than two hours after Wednesday's hearing he was arrested for allegedly breaching a protection order and hauled back before a magistrate.
It was a sad and familiar scene he'd unwittingly predicted when he joked on the courthouse steps earlier in the week that he 'can't stay away from the place'.
Here, Daily Mail Australia charts O'Keefe's sad spiral from nationally-recognised TV host to tragic courtroom figure - and the alarming parallels with his uncle Johnny.
Following in his uncle's footsteps
Andrew's father, Barry O'Keefe, was a titanic figure in the legal world, at one stage serving as Commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in NSW.
O'Keefe initially followed his dad into the law, beginning his career as an intellectual property lawyer at Allens Arthur Robinson.
He and his wife Eleanor had just bought a house and had their first of three children when he decided to make the jump to television - a decision his risk-averse father described at the time as 'most precarious'.
Johnny O'Keefe (pictured above), who was known by his nickname 'the wild one' while his lawyer brother Barry O'keefe (below) was dubbed 'the mild one', was a trailblazing figure in the Australian music industry, recording almost 30 top 40 hits between the late fifties and early seventies
But it paid off when, in 2003, he was propelled to national fame as host of Deal or No Deal.
His quick wit and intelligent charm captivated viewers and he soon became a household name when he landed the role of Weekend Sunrise co-host alongside Monique Wright in 2005.
But, like his uncle, he was infamous for his hard-partying ways.
This much was apparent in 2008 when the The Sunday Telegraph published footage of O'Keefe collapsing into a gutter with a mystery blonde woman outside a Melbourne nightclub.
Channel Seven, who were at that stage used to protecting their star, allegedly paid $25,000 to a bouncer to try to suppress the story before it was leaked.
The network later issued a statement insisting O'Keefe was a 'family man' and he had 'never set out to deliberately offend anyone'.
O'Keefe himself promised that it wouldn't happen again.
In 2018, Kochie quizzed O'keefe about his 'demons'
'What occurred was highly unedifying and deeply embarrassing, and I am in no way proud of it,' he told the Herald Sun at the time.
When he returned to Weekend Sunrise, he even cracked a joke about the incident.
'I got everything I wanted for Christmas – a gift voucher to a rehab centre in Miami,' he told viewers.
O'Keefe has been in-and-out of rehab centres at least ten times in the years since.
His first brush with the law came on a family holiday to Cuba in 2015 when he was involved in a car crash with a 'government minister and his flunkies'.
'(It) meant no matter how much I argued, it was all our fault!', he recalled of the episode, which resulted in him spending 14 hours in a Cuban jail cell.
His uncle Johnny was also involved in a car crash, but his had much more serious consequences.
In the early hours of 27 June 1960, 'JOK' as he was also known, a band member and his wife smashed into the back of a gravel truck, leaving all three seriously injured.
O'Keefe lost four teeth and suffered fractures to his head and face in the collision.
It has been suggested he suffered undiagnosed brain trauma that exacerbated his slide into addiction and contributed to his multiple breakdowns.
The pressures of his career eventually led to the collapse of his first marriage in 1966.
His nephew, Andrew, would undergo his own bitter separation from his wife Eleanor in 2017, before finally divorcing in 2019.
At the time he told friends that he was being 'punished by his wife' who allegedly did not let him see his children.
In 2022, The Australian reported that he had not had any contact with his kids for two years, which he described as one of the great sadnesses of his life.
Addressing his 'demons'
O'Keefe appeared on the Sunrise sofa in October 2019 after taking an eight-week leave of absence from hosting The Chase to attend a mental health clinic.
He had given an interview to the Herald Sun a couple of weeks earlier where he spoke candidly for the first time about the split from his wife Eleanor and his spiral into addiction.
Andrew O'Keefe appeared upbeat outside court on Tuesday, even joking with journalists that he 'can't stay away from the place'
But the troubled ex-TV star cut a forlorn figure later that afternoon (pictured)
O'Keefe was ostensibly on Sunrise to promote a national 'JOK' tribute tour, entitled Andrew O'Keefe Shouts Johnny O'Keefe, and he hailed his uncle as 'an absolute icon'.
'This is the guy who really, single-handedly, invented rock and roll in Australia,' O'Keefe gushed to Sunrise hosts David 'Kochie' Koch and Samantha Armytage.
But the parallels between uncle and nephew were painfully obvious to all watching.
'They used to call uncle John the wild one and they used to call dad the mild one,' O'Keefe laughed.
'Dad was constantly in court defending uncle John on one thing or another, a traffic offence, a possession offence.'
Armytage interrupted his excited stream to ask who he took after the most.
'I think I'm a beautiful synthesis of both of them,' O'Keefe answered jokingly in a camp voice.
Kochie then took the opportunity to lend a more serious tone to the interview.
'We have been worried about you the last year or two,' Kochie said.
'You did that interview not so long ago about how you were coping with your own demons.'
O'Keefe spoke about how his uncle had 'many of his own demons', which lended a poignancy to the show.
'He had several breakdowns, he had electroshock therapy, they put him on all these drugs to deal with the stress, the anxiety and the pressure of being him,' O'Keefe revealed.
'I'm starting to understand that a bit more. Everyone has a time in their life where they really question what it's all about, who they really are, whether what they have done for the last 45 years means anything.
Last week, Channel Nine published troubling footage of O'Keefe shouting at police officers after being arrested for a 'violent and degrading' assault in September 2021 (pictured)
'I think when I split up from my wife Eleanor, that was my time. And the thing I always believed in most of all was the power of love and combining with someone to make something special, and when I lost that, I thought it was all meaningless.'
He added: 'In life, we have several choices on how to deal with things, and some people work their way through their pain, or turn to alcohol or drugs or eating.
'And I feel very lucky that in this country, we have these institutions and the expertise to be able to deal with those things and get on top of it.'
His candour was brave and disarming.
But his seat on the other side of sofa was no doubt a painful reminder of how far he had fallen since his days of regularly standing in for Kochie during his 12 years with Weekend Sunrise.
Little did he know it then, but he still had much further to fall.
