Matt ‘Goliath’ Parkinson.

Hello and welcome to the penultimate instalment of my chat with Sale of the Century Grand Champion (although these days he’s better known as Goliath from The Chase: Australia) Matt Parkinson. I love how our conversation has been going off on all sorts of interesting tangents, but this week, I did want to bring the discussion back to Matt’s Big Win on Sale – and its aftermath – back in 1992…

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SH: Now, not to get too crass, but did you buy a house with your winnings?

MP: I sort of wish that I had. I really wished that I had, but I did not.

SH: Right. Okay.

MP: I wish that I had, because that really would have changed my life and set me on a different path, but I wanted to be free. It would have been enough for me to establish a really good deposit to take out a big mortgage, but I didn’t have steady work. So I didn’t know how I was going to feel about paying a mortgage. And I didn’t want to have the weight of a mortgage on top of me. I felt really good about having the money in the bank and the interest. And that gave me mental freedom to go and do other things that I wanted to do, which I probably wouldn’t have done if I’d have been worried about paying a mortgage. I just probably would have gone and got a really boring job in the public service or something, I don’t know, just to pay off the mortgage.

SH: Sure. What age were you when you won?

MP: I was 29.

SH: Right! That’s good – that’s nice and young.

MP: Yeah. So it was a good ‘turning point’ age too.

SH: Yeah.

MP: And it also taught me that you can have a thing happen that you think is going to change everything… and some things just stay exactly the same, because you’re still who you are.

SH: Yeah. What’s an example of that, that you’re comfortable talking about?

MP: Oh, I thought one of the things I’d do if I ever got that much money is that I’d just disappear, and go and be in the wild for 10 years. “Hey, do you know where Parko is?” “Oh, he’s traveling. He’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere”.

SH: A nomad?

MP: Yeah. And I didn’t do that because the little bit of traveling I did made me realize that I like being physically comfortable. You’re not often physically comfortable if you undertake that sort of itinerant lifestyle; you’re quite often in like small spaces or short beds. And so I weighed that up for about six months there. And I was like, ‘okay, well, I’m not going to be that roving guy who goes hither and thither and writes interesting stories and travelogues…’ I’m going to be a bit of a limited traveller, and travel under my own terms. And so there was a certain amount of realization that there are things about me I can’t change, that the money won’t change.

SH: Yeah, sure. Nice. Is there anything you want to volunteer about looking back on that win, in subsequent years?

MP: Honestly, I wish that more quiz shows – I wish that even one quiz show now – had a Gift Shop. I don’t think people understood the appeal, the sheer cheesy visual appeal of the Sale of the Century Gift Shop. It wasn’t always an attractive model in the glow mesh halter top… but sometimes it was! And even when it wasn’t, sometimes it would just be delightfully absurd, the idea that these models were like pretending to tee off around for a round of golf in a TV studio, or whatever. It was just nice. And I miss it. It’s an element of game show television. I miss the model – male or female – just doing a bit of bad acting with a prize.

The Gift Shop from the very first episode of ‘Sale of the Century’! That’s the host Tony Barber on the left of frame, and co-host Victoria Nicholls second from the right.

SH: Yes. Looking off into the middle distance.

MP: You’ve got it. That’s it.

SH: I remember on one of my Temptation episodes, in the Gift Shop they had a little Vesper motor scooter. And Livinia’s script said, “you’ll look like Audrey Hepburn zooming around Rome on this!” And I remember saying “Thanks, but no thanks. But I have always wanted to look like Audrey Hepburn zooming around…” It was fun.

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And that’s where we’ll leave it for this week. Join me back here next Tuesday for the final instalment of our chat, where we discuss The Chase: Australia in more detail, and Matt drops a few hints abut what we can expect to see coming up on the show!

Until then, then!