Carey's life 'relentlessly grim'

Andrew Denton says an interview with fallen former AFL star Wayne Carey is the most gruelling he has ever done.

In an interview to go to air on ABC 1's Enough Rope on Monday evening, Carey tells Denton that binge-drinking forms the basis of every misdemeanour performed by him in the past.

"I've rarely done an interview with such white-hot opinion about it and so many rumours flying about," Denton told ABC Radio this morning.

"With any long interview it usually goes from light and shade, there's bad things and good things, there's tragedy, triumph.

"In the case of Wayne Carey, it was pretty much relentlessly grim.

"I'll give him credit - to sit there for two hours and have all his misdemeanours on the public record and a few others dished up to him - it was not an easy thing to do."

Denton said he set out to find out how Carey reached the point where his reputation and life was almost in tatters.

He said Carey turned out to be a bit evasive, but did not think he intended it to be that way.

"I think he came in to be candid - you don't put yourself through that," he said.

"He put no conditions on it - at no time did he attempt to say 'don't go there'.

"He made his family available to us, we spoke to a lot of people, including his former wife Sally.

"I think there were times where almost out of reflex, he was trotting out the old party line on past incidents."

Denton said alcohol and family problems in the past were the main contributors to Carey's problems.

"The great contradiction of Wayne Carey in a lot of these incidents is that on the one level he must have been completely smashed and it must have been a bit of a blur, but on the other level he's suddenly specific about what he didn't do. It doesn't add up," he said.

"I felt some sympathy for him, particularly when you see how raw it is for him and his family.

"He wasn't volatile - he was quite composed, although when his family spoke I think he struggled a bit."

Denton said he had approached Carey for an interview a couple of times over the past years and that Carey's family eventually convinced him to grant one.

"I know people have a lot of strong opinions about Wayne Carey and I really understand those," Denton said.

"A lot of the women I work with have this vitriolic bristling at the mention of his name.

"I absolutely get that because he represents a lot of the things that women rightfully find really offensive.

"But what I think and hope this interview shows is everybody's life is way more complex than the headlines and that certainly he deserves the chance to rehabilitate.

"I hope he gets that space."

Enough Rope airs on ABC 1 at 9.30pm on Monday night.</p>