Geoffrey Edelsten, the Jewish doctor who made medicine glitzy and grubby

ASHLEY BROWNE reflects on the colourful life of a Mt Scopus boy whose tawdry flair and dubious ethics propelled him into the spotlight and then prison

WHEN I CHANGED JOBS a few years back, moving from editing the official AFL website to editing the Australian Jewish News, there weren’t too many high-profile identities who followed me from one title to the other.

One who did was Dr Geoffrey Edelsten.

There were times in the football job when an angry Edelsten would call the AFL to complain about references to pink helicopters during his short-lived, but high-profile period as the owner of the Sydney Swans.

I tried it on again at the AJN, in a piece about Jews in football, headlined People of the Boot, which would be the forerunner of the book of the same namethat Dashiel Lawrence and I jointly edited 2018.

I figured that Edelsten, while born Jewish and who had minimal contact with the community at that stage, might not see the story. I was wrong.

The paper had barely hit the streets when an angry Edelsten was on the line threatening legal action if there was no retraction. “The helicopter wasn’t pink. It was blue and white, and it was used to get between my various medical clinics so that I could deliver babies,” he growled down the phone.

He got his retraction and I managed to stay out of the website he created where he railed against the journalists who he felt had wronged him over the years.

But when Dash and I were mapping out our book, we passed on devoting an entire chapter to Edelsten, despite his amazing life story and the brief but important contribution he made to the history of AFL football. It just wasn’t worth the trouble or the potential legal fees.

Edelsten passed away last Friday, aged 78. For so long one of Australia’s most intriguing and at times, high-profile figures, he died alone at his flash St Kilda Road apartment, and spent the last few months of his life as a virtual recluse.