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Otherwise, you just hit 80, and it’s a case of: 80-90 dead, or 70-80 dead. “Yep, decided I’d quit it all – scale down business, sell all the horses, and start a new life overseas. It’s Mother Nature’s own gold-standard form of Valium. Even on Zoom, you can hear the stress-busting “zwhosh, zwhosh, zwhosh” of tide over shells on the beach. “I decided years ago that when I turned 80, I’d quit everything,” he explains from the living room of Shells, which is so close to the gently lapping warm waters of the Pacific Ocean, he might as well be sitting in the drink.
There’s also a handy boat he can charter, nicknamed 007, to cruise Hawaii’s islands for weeks on end. He intends to spend six months or so of each year (roughly June to November) at Shells. Singleton remains based on the outskirts of Sydney on his just-as-picturesque horse stud, Strawberry Hill Farm, at Mount White, a 50-minute drive north from the CBD towards Gosford. Thus, the modern-day tales of life in the Aloha lane don’t disappoint either, but more on that later. They had been renting the Paul Mitchell Estate (created by the late hairdresser) for months while their Hawaii home was being finished. Located a 35-minute drive from Honolulu’s CBD, Singleton’s Hawaiian home (he’s called it Shells) sports Hollywood legend Michelle Pfeiffer for a neighbour on one side and, until October, the Obamas on the other. If anything screams relax, it’s Lanikai, which means “heavenly sea”. Little wonder Singleton has retained a soft spot for Hawaii.Īlmost 50 years on, in 2019, he returned to his hibiscus-strewn stomping ground of old to buy and renovate a 1960s waterfront bungalow on Oahu’s Lanikai Beach, with gun-barrel views to the Mokulua Islands, recognised as among the world’s most dreamy white-sand vistas. Opened in 1964 on the beach next to the Waialae Country Club golf course – and billed as the world’s first resort to boast all airconditioned rooms – it was rivalled only by the bright pink Royal Hawaiian, located around Diamond Head on Waikiki beach, closer to the city.Ĭue more tales of Honolulu in the ’70s, and unprintable stories of the ride over in the pointy end of Qantas, which then featured the trippy orange, purple and baby-blue lounge on the upstairs deck of the 747 jumbo jets. You could say it suited both of us, and we kept in touch for years.”īack then, the Kahala Hilton was the place to stay. He was having a bit of an impasse with his father at the time, and he appreciated someone to chat to.
“I had no one to drink with, and Frank Sinatra jnr had no one to talk to while he played piano in the bar. John Singleton at his new Oahu home in November with a local macaw, his favourite breed of bird. Hawaii was chosen for the regular meetings as the equidistant point between Sydney and New York. The “empty suits” being the men in black (read beige) sent from New York to keep him in check this was the period after American multinational advertising firm Doyle Dane Bernbach bought his Australian agency SPASM in 1973, and as part of the deal retained him on the management team for five (painful) years. “I first visited Hawaii in the 1970s, and quickly found myself returning to the Kahala Hilton every six months for four or five nights at a time with a bunch of empty suits who didn’t care for a bit of fun after the day’s work was done,” scoffs Singleton. The ad man has a reputation to uphold, after all. If any interview about John Singleton’s history with Hawaii didn’t start with a wild tale – propping up the bar with Frank Sinatra jnr, for example – it would be a missed opportunity.