Updated
Embattled gardening guru Don Burke is facing fresh claims about inappropriate behaviour, including allegedly calling a couple who lost relatives in the Bali bombing "c***s" and "wogs".
Key points:
- Burke did a garden makeover for a couple who lost family and friends in the Bali bombing
- The TV host allegedly referred to them as Mr and Mrs "C***y C***"
- Burke has yet to respond to latest set of allegations but has denied complaints of indecent assault and sexual harassment
It is also alleged he made unwanted advances to a Japanese translator while on a work trip and was kicked out of a Victorian pub for making lewd comments to younger women.
It comes in the wake of a joint ABC/Fairfax investigation that has uncovered claims of indecent assault, sexual harassment and bullying of women against Burke in the late 1980s and '90s.
Burke has strenuously denied all the allegations, saying: "The Harvey Weinstein saga in Hollywood started a witch-hunt."
A TV researcher who worked for Burke's Backyard in 2003 told the ABC the office was always tense and, "we were never working fast enough or long enough".
"People were always a bit nervous. Was the phone going to ring? Was it going to be Don … on the phone? Were they [Don and his crew] going to come in? When were they going to come in?
"They would all ring each other on the phone to say they're here, they're in the carpark."
She has backed stories of the psychological games that went on at Burke's production company, CTC, and said researchers had to undersell ideas to stop the TV star from shooting them down.
But it was a garden makeover for a couple who lost family and friends in the Bali bombing that was the final straw for her.
"We took it upon ourselves and gave them a beautiful garden," she said.
The researcher said it was well-known in the office that while filming the segment things took a strange turn.
"I understand he was just swearing at them quietly and smiling at them like a Cheshire cat, while actually he was telling them what he really thought about them and calling them terrible, terrible names like, 'Mr C***y C*** and Mrs C***y C***'."
Burke also suggested the couple should have olive trees because they were "woggy", despite the pair's objections.
"He said, 'F*** you, I'm paying for this, I'll put olive trees in if I want to put olive trees in and if you don't want orange trees, I'm going to put in more citrus'. He just didn't care what people thought."
Burke denied the original complaints of indecent assault and sexual harassment, saying they were made by former employees with grudges.
He has yet to respond to the latest set of allegations but told Channel Nine on Monday he had undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome and did not read people's reactions to his remarks.
"I am sorry and I might have gone a bit far," he said.
Burke said he believed he deserved some criticism, "but not for sleazy, sexual stuff".
'It was a bit like going to the gynaecologist really'
Two former staff have also confirmed to the ABC that while on a work trip to Japan in 2003, Burke reportedly made lewd comments to a Japanese translator, which was later discussed in the office.
"She clearly spoke English yet he apparently spoke to her in such vile and toxic tones about what we wanted to do to her, taking her up to his hotel room, how he would do her, what he would do to her. It was just incredibly unprofessional," one former production staff member said.
Another woman, who only wanted to be known as Michelle, said she was dating a well-known Australian actor when the pair were interviewed for the celebrity gardener segment in the early 1990s.
She said two female producers who turned up for the shoot warned her about Burke.
"I remember I was wearing like a cross-over-type style dress and they were buttoned right up to the top — they had their jackets on right up to their necks," she said.
"I said, 'Aren't you hot?' and they said, 'No, no'. They said, 'Look, you should put a jacket on, cover yourself, because Don Burke is a bit of a perv so his eyes will be all over you'."
The interview went ahead as planned but she said afterwards Burke made a lewd comment.
"We were sitting around a table in our kitchen … and he looked over at me and he said, 'That wasn't so bad, was it? It was a bit like going to the gynaecologist really'."
"We all just sat there a bit stunned actually. Nobody knew what to say."
'Every time his show would come on I had to turn it off'
Another woman, who only wants to be known as Nicole, said she was a young ballet dancer when she was asked to be in an advertising campaign with Burke to promote the arts in Sydney's Botanical Gardens.
"We all had to be in our tight ballerina tutus with our hair all done up and our ballet shoes on, and we had to stand in a huge pot where Don Burke was supposed to [be] watering our feet," she said.
"But he had to pour water into the pot and we had to lean over quite close to our bodies, which were in these super-tight ballet tutus.
"I can't remember exactly what he said, he was remarking how tight our ballet tops were and he just was leering and it just made me feel completely uncomfortable.
"At that time I'd never even had any interactions with boys whatsoever, I was 16. Every time his show would come on I had to turn it off because I just felt so disgusted."
A former employee of the Isle of Wight Hotel on Phillip Island in Victoria has also told the ABC that in 2002 Burke's behaviour also came up during a shoot there at Ventnor Common, a wetlands area.
"They put an advertisement in the local paper saying any local tradesman with machinery, etcetera could come out and donate their services for free and get their names on the TV," the employee said.
"On the Friday night of that weekend the cast and crew put on a meet-and-greet with the contractors at the Philip Island apartments, we went there had a few wines and a few beers.
"Afterwards, we went to the Isle of Wight Hotel, which was approximately 200 metres away.
"Later on that evening, Don Burke was asked to leave Isle of Wight Hotel for making lewd comments and misappropriate [sic] behaviour towards young women."
Topics: community-and-society, arts-and-entertainment, television, television-broadcasting, information-and-communication, broadcasting, women, australia
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