GUY Hayston is big on personality and very engaging, and it’s perhaps these attributes that drew Channel Nine producers of Millionaire Hot Seat to make that casting call.
“It had been on my bucket list for years,” Guy said of the long-running game show.
It was during a COVID lockdown that Guy applied to be a contestant, with the try-out conducted via Zoom.
“I was in competition with eight other people in an online at-home version of Fastest Finger First,” said Guy.
“It was 15 questions in quick succession with whoever answers the most correctly in the fastest time period given the title.
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“And quite honestly at the end of it all I wasn’t particularly confident that I’d hear back from the producers.”
With no indication as to how he had fared Guy put it down to experience, and he went about his day-to-day life.
That was until he received the call.
“It was 18 months later and I’d all but given up.
“All I could say was ‘you must have been hard up’,” he said with a laugh.
Despite finding the initial try-out nerve-racking, he found the show itself to be thoroughly enjoyable, leading with confidence in Fastest Finger First to take out the accolade and bag himself a cool $1000.
Allocated to the sixth and last seat in the contestant line-up, Guy was the last man standing when it came to the final question and a chance at the jackpot of $10,000, which had gradually been whittled down by successive wrong answers.
With Guy listing his strengths as history and geography, he was elated when the money question was about countries.
“I was asked which of these four countries – Canada, Columbia, Romania and Nigeria – was the most populous on its continent,” he said.
“And I thought to myself, I know this, lock it in Eddy.”
Guy admits that he did study beforehand, spending his time studying the periodic table, memorising planets of the solar system and their respective moons, and delving into the works of Shakespeare.
“I’ve always loved the program, and so I was quite familiar with the types of questions they favoured,” he said.
Guy even spent some time researching the botanical names of plants which was a bit of an effort, as he professes he’s not much of a green thumb.
None of it proved necessary.
“It was a fabulous experience,” said Guy, with his enthusiasm only mildly tempered by having to watch himself on television.
“When the program went to air, I really didn’t want to watch it.
“But I was with friends who forced me to sit down and watch the entire episode.
‘I walked away with a very real appreciation of the show’s editors,” he said.
Guy also had great things to say about host Eddie Maguire, who he had met before.
Before embracing a slower paced life in Merton, Guy worked for Qantas for 28 years as a short haul flight attendant, flying domestically and trans-Tasman with the occasional stint to Bali, Tokyo, Mumbai, Singapore and Hong Kong just to mix things up a bit.
It was in this role that he met Eddie Maguire, one of numerous celebrities he served over the decades.
It was a great job, Guy said of his years flying.
Beginning his career at the age of 30, he had spent his life beforehand travelling extensively, living in a total of five different countries over the period.
Becoming a flight attendant was somewhat of a natural progression for the world-wise Guy.
The story behind his transition from waiting tables at the Breakfast Creek Hotel in Brisbane to manning the aisles on 737s and A330s is one of those sliding doors moments.
“I was working at the Brekkie Creek, and there was always one day a week when I covered my workmate’s area for about 15 minutes whilst they had a break,” he said.
“I was serving this particular group and unbeknownst to me a gentleman at the table was the training manager for Australian Airlines (as it was called back then before its merger with Qantas).
“I went to hand over the table to my colleague, and the gentleman at the table requested that I stay on serving them.
“At the end of the meal, he thanked me, commended me on my service and asked if I had ever considered flying.”
Two years later after the two airlines had finally merged, and Guy had repeatedly gone through the interview process, he found himself in the air and loving it.
“I’m not opposed to playing the long game, I can be quite a patient person when I have a specific end goal in sight,” Guy said of his journey to working for Qantas.
It was COVID that would bring about his retirement, taking up the offer of voluntary redundancy as travel across the country and all over the world came to a standstill.
“Besides I had always planned to retire at 60, as there are a lot of things on my bucket list that I have yet to tick off,” Guy said.
At the moment he’s particularly happy that he managed to achieve his Millionaire Hotseat dream.
And as for the remaining experiences on his extensive bucket list, more travel is high on the agenda.
“I’ve visited 54 countries in total,” Guy said.
“And there’s definitely the desire to explore more.”
There’s a safari in the Serengeti planned with his brother, and Guy has only recently returned from holidaying in Italy.
“On my fiftieth birthday I took off 50 days in long service leave, and had five parties around the world, one in each of the places that I had lived,” he said with a chuckle.
“We had a tour shirt with all the dates printed on the back, and at each party out would come the tops.
“It was also my ten year anniversary with partner Dejai so we celebrated with a cruise around the Mediterranean.”
Guy’s enthusiasm for life extends beyond his love of travel, throwing his support behind Dejai’s newest business venture into home-and-garden cleaning and maintenance.
There’s also a 75 acre hobby farm in Merton (with cattle and sheep, six chickens and a rooster, two cats called Cabernet and Sauvignon and a dog called Cosmo) that Guy calls home.
“I returned home from one of my overseas jaunts, and Dejai had bought a farm,” he said.
“Cosmo was another surprise that appeared one day as a new member of the family.”
Guy is the first to admit he’s had a great life, seeing the world and embracing everything that came his way.
“I’ve explored the statues on Easter Island, I’ve hiked to Macchu Pichu, I’ve walked along the Great Wall of China twice and I’ve dangled my feet over the Grand Canyon,” he said.
“But I always envisaged myself on a farm at some point, with a vegie patch and an orchard and the opportunity to be relatively self-sufficient.
“And now I’ve got the best of both worlds, my High Country home and a list of experiences that I'm steadily working my way through accomplishing."
