He won!

I’m a bit late to the party with this news, but I discovered yesterday that my workmate Eliott Constable won Race Around the World.

OMG! Go Elliot!

Elliot is such a sweetheart. He always manned the barbecue for our social club sausage sizzles and was incredible kind to everyone he met.

He was so excited when he was at the airport and his girlfriend came up to him with a book she’d just bought called Sydney Cocktails.

He looked at the author’s name and saw it was me! He turned up at my desk the next morning to congratulate me.

I always had to resist the urge to say his name the way ET does … El-eee-ohhhht.

I suspect Elliot is no longer my workmate because the ABC have given him funding to create a TV special as his prize.

I must admit I’ve only seen snippets of the new season of Race Around the World, but I’ve heard he was a very deserving winner.

Do you remember Race Around the World the first time around, when it made John Saffran (above, with the stars of the 2026 series) a household name way back in 1997 and 1998? I loved that show!

This series saw Eliott hit the road for 100 days, with his journey taking him across countries including South Africa, Moldova, Norway, Azerbaijan, Japan, the Bahamas and Brazil. 

The contestants had to show up to a new country every 10 days, find a story, shoot it, edit it, record the sound and deliver it, totally solo.

After winning, Eliott told the ABC: “I thought I’d won already because I was on the show, and I think that’s the consensus with all the other racers. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime; we all won, right?

“But the fact that I now have an opportunity to tell another story or maybe go back and do something a bit bigger … maybe it is going back to Moldova, maybe it’s going back to Brazil, I don’t know, maybe it’s doing something in Australia.”

OK, I’d better connect with Elliot on LinkedIn today, so I can send him my huge congrats.

Here’s a link to the show on ABC iview: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/race-around-the-world/series/1/video/LE2514H007S00

PS Did you remember to fill out your Census form last night? I decided I didn’t want the world to know all my personal details in 99 years time, even though I’ll be long gone.

Song of the day: Queen “We are the champions”