What a year. I have published no fewer than 46 interviews in this space, and loved – nearly! – all of them. On a quick look back, these are the exchanges that most resonated with the readers, most moved me, or turned out to be particularly prescient.

When, for example, I asked the actress/nightclub impresario Nell Campbell the single moment she would likely remember on her deathbed, from her decade of running her eponymous nightclub in New York, she was fascinating.

Sting, Bob Dylan, Nell Campbell and Andy Warhol at Nell’s nightclub in New York.

“I doubt very much I will be thinking of Nell’s on my deathbed,” she replied, “but at one of my infamous Nell’s dinner parties, Andy Warhol on my left, Sting on my right, I left the table for a moment, returned and Bob Dylan was in my chair, so I sat in his lap and the meal continued on its merry way.”

The mind boggles!

By March and for the next few months as the federal election loomed, politics dominated my interviews, starting with then treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who I asked of his level of concern at the rise of the teals and that even the Herald-Sun had a headline saying “Kooyong ISN’T SAFE ANY MORE”.

“Last election,” Frydenberg replied calmly, “I also faced a well-funded independent, who fancied themselves. The people of Kooyong said otherwise. This time, I face another so-called ‘independent’, who is a former longstanding member of the Labor Party.”

Happier times: Peter Dutton and Josh Frydenberg. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Before the election, I asked Peter Dutton if he should find himself, as opposition leader, up against prime minister Albanese, would he support the Indigenous Voice to parliament? He replied: “I would support further recognition and I have had long discussions with Noel Pearson about the Voice and about other ways in which we can do practical recognition.”

The most horrifying quote of the year for me came just before the election when interviewing Priya Murugappan, the mother of the #HomeToBilo family of Tamil refugees, who had been in detention since 2018.