For more than seven decades, Denise Drysdale and Patti Newton have remained part of each other’s lives — long before television fame, Gold Logies and the years that would make both women household names.
But there is one part of their friendship that reaches even further back.
Denise knew Patti before she was Patti Newton. Before Bert Newton became the great love of her life. And when Denise recently reflected on their extraordinary friendship, she remembered a time when Patti was still just a young girl — and the beginnings of a relationship that would eventually become one of Australian entertainment’s most enduring love stories.
Before the television years, there was a dance school
Denise and Patti first crossed paths at May Downs’ dancing school in Melbourne.
For Denise, dancing had become part of her life from an exceptionally young age. She began lessons as a child and eventually moved into television, making her early appearances as a dancer. Patti was also part of that same young performing world.
Their friendship therefore began before either woman had the public identity Australians would later know so well.
It was a friendship formed when they were simply young girls sharing the same world of dancing and performance — years before television would turn their lives into public stories. Denise has since described their friendship as lasting for more than 70 years.
Denise knew Patti before Bert
That history gives Denise’s latest recollection a particularly personal quality.
“I knew Patti longer than she knew Bert,” she said, looking back on the extraordinary length of their friendship.
It is a simple sentence, but it says something much bigger about the women’s shared history.
Denise was there before Patti became part of the famous Newton partnership. She knew her as Patti McGrath, long before she became known publicly as Patti Newton.
And according to Denise, she and Patti could already see something developing when Patti was just 14.
The pair later realised that Patti was in love with Bert at that young age — a detail Denise can now remember with the perspective that only decades of friendship can bring.
What began as a youthful feeling would eventually become a marriage that lasted nearly five decades, until Bert’s passing in 2021.
From young performers to a life in the spotlight
Their own careers also grew alongside the changing face of Australian television.
Denise became one of the country’s best-known entertainers, earning two Gold Logies and building a career across television, stage and comedy. Patti likewise established herself as a much-loved television and stage performer.
Yet their friendship was never simply about being colleagues.
In 1967, Denise and Patti travelled to Vietnam together to entertain troops, alongside other Australian performers. Denise has spoken about that experience as part of the remarkable journey she shared with Patti in their younger years.
By then, they were no longer simply girls who had met at dancing school. They were young women navigating the unpredictable world of entertainment together.
Patti would later help open an important door for Denise
There was another unexpected connection between their lives.
During a sabbatical in London in 1970, Denise was with Patti when they encountered Ernie Sigley. The group went for a drink, and the meeting would eventually lead to one of the most important professional partnerships in Denise’s career.
A few years later, Denise appeared on The Ernie Sigley Show, where she became his famous “barrel girl”.
It was Sigley who gave Denise the nickname “Ding Dong” — the name that would become inseparable from her public identity.
Denise has credited the opportunity as a major turning point, while also remembering the friendship and chemistry she developed with Sigley over the years.
So Patti’s place in Denise’s story goes beyond childhood memories.
At different points, their lives seemed to keep crossing paths in ways that opened new chapters for one another.
A friendship that never needed to look the same
Perhaps the most revealing part of Denise’s reflections is that she does not describe their friendship as something that requires constant closeness.
After more than 70 years, life has naturally taken them in different directions.
They have had their own families, careers, losses and milestones. They have not spent every year side by side.
But the connection has remained.
That may be what makes Denise’s recollection so moving. Their friendship survived not because life stayed the same, but because it kept changing around them.
They knew each other when they were children.
They watched each other become performers.
They shared some extraordinary moments, including their time entertaining troops in Vietnam.
And Denise was there before Bert became such a defining part of Patti’s life.
The memory that only a lifelong friend could tell
For most people, Bert and Patti Newton’s love story is remembered through the years they spent together in the public eye.
Denise remembers something earlier.
She remembers Patti before the fame, before the marriage and before the decades of television appearances that followed.
That is what makes her words — “I knew Patti longer than she knew Bert” — feel like more than a light-hearted observation.
They are a reminder that behind one of Australia’s most familiar names was once simply a young girl Denise knew from dancing school.
And somewhere in those early years, before either woman could have known where life would take them, Denise was already there — watching one of the great love stories of Australian entertainment quietly begin.