It hasn’t been an easy year for Marcia Hines. When asked casually to reflect back on 2009 she uses terms like “trying” and “full on”. This year Hines has played gigs across the country, filmed the sixth season of the seemingly-evergreen Australian Idol and has written her first book entitled Life: The Things to Get You By. It’s autobiographical and possesses a number of unique attributes – each chapter begins with lyrics from her favourite songs, before going on to present a moral or idea in the chapter title – “Dream and Dream Again”, “Find Your Bliss” – followed by a story from Hines’ own life.

“I’ve got a really cool ‘brains trust’,” she explains in regards to the origins of Life, “and we have dinner every once in awhile where we get together and talk about stuff. We talked about all our different projects and the idea of the book came up; because I’m always cracking jokes and wisecracks. They said to me ‘we should try and put a book together!’”. Seemingly, that’s all it took (along with finding a publisher in HayHouse) to commence proceedings – with that, Hines began writing and expressing her own philosophies and outlook based on the different moments that have defined both her personal and professional life.

While writing a book is no mean feat, Marcia insists that the entire process was “a very nice experience”. She also knew from the very beginning that she didn’t want the book to really be your regular tell-all celeb autobiography. “I think that all the things that I’m learning and have learned along the way I can put into practice and maybe share some of the stuff that’s helped me out with other people.”

Indeed, from her growing up in Boston, Massachusetts, to the launch of her career as an Australian citizen right up to the very present, to say that Hines has faced adversity along the way would be a crucial understatement. There are several points during reading Life where you can only imagine how difficult it was to put into words – including the death of close friend Belinda Emmett, and the sharp plummet of her career whilst struggling to raise a teenager, whom we all know today as the lovely Deni Hines. Surprisingly, this difficulty didn’t hit so hard – or so says Marcia.

“I worked with some very talented writers,” Hines notes. “I’d talk to them and embellish how I felt, then I’d stop and they’d go away and write up their version of what I’d said.
We all worked on it together,” she continues, “and I think to have anything successful, you have to have a good team of people you can trust and are on the same page as you. And that’s what I found I had.”

When asked what the most important thing one can take from reading Life, Marcia affirms that it depends entirely on the readers themselves. “The morals of my stories are the morals of myself,” she says in a heartfelt manner.

Conversation moves to Australian Idol – another huge part of Marcia’s career – and of how the ‘reality TV star’ stigma seems to have lifted in recent years – Lisa Mitchell is a star, Matt Corby has airplay on Triple J, Wes Carr is on tour with Cold Chisel’s Ian Moss, Jessica Mauboy has been nominated for seven ARIA awards, Guy Sebastian is still releasing albums; and the list goes on.

“I have to thank you for being observant and realising that the tide has turned,” she says thoughtfully. “Talent is talent. It is what is. Wes, Matt, Jessica and Lisa are all incredibly talented. They have only done the same thing – and that’s Australian Idol – to get to where they’ve gone. They haven’t done anything wrong – it’s just their vehicle of choice.” Hines also links their successes back to how motivated they are as musicians and songwriters. “No matter what you get, if you’re a finalist or if you win the thing – it all depends on your work ethic.”

Of course, one cannot mention Idol in 2009 without discussing the controversy surrounding the departure of Kyle Sandilands as a judge following his on-air controversies as a part of the Kyle & Jackie O Show. At first, Marcia is slightly wary about weighing in on the matter. “You know what they say about people and opinions,” she cracks. Eventually, however, she opens up about her feelings on the situation.

“I miss Kyle,” she begins. “I can’t lie. As I’ve said before, I can’t be responsible for the words that come out of my colleague’s mouth – I can only be responsible for the things that I say.” Despite distancing herself from Sandilands’ actions, she isn’t so quick to distance herself from the man himself.

“I think that the person that you would see in the general public is very different to the person I know. You can judge a good person by when you see them with their partner. I see him with [Sandilands’ wife, former pop-star] Tamara [Jaber] and he just melts, y’know?”. We both laugh, as she adds: “See, you wouldn’t think that, would you?”

The most important thing to come from Kyle’s departure, Marcia states, is not letting it severely affect the show itself. “It’s not about us on that show – it’s about the kids,” she says in reference to herself, Ian “Dicko” Dickson and newcomer Jay Dee Sampson. “I know we take up a lot of space there, but we find them and the most important thing that we can do is stay solid and keep everything as normal as you can have it. At the end of the day, we need to give the kids a strong foundation.”

Eventually, after some giggly discussion about Sandilands being a teddy bear, Hines moves on to her favourite part of Idol this year. “I got to sit next to Liza Minnelli.” Was that good? “Stupid good!” she replies. “I think she’s like show-business royalty; and royalty that knows how to perform,” she says, her voice thick with awe. “We all teared up at her performance at the start of Idol – of all the things we’re trying to teach the kids; there she is, executing them within an inch of her life.”

Sure, 2009 might have been a “full-on” and “trying” time for Marcia Hines, but if the respectable ratings of Idol and the excellence of Life is anything to go by, her hard work has payed off.

Marcia Hines’ – Life: The Things to Get You By is out now through Hayhouse publishing.