Growing up, Diffey thought he would be a farmer and studied agriculture at high school but went on to study education at university and briefly became a high school PE teacher.
Diffey and his brother raced motocross bikes growing up and came to know Darryl Beattie and Mick Doohan, two legends of the motorcycle racing world.
While Diffey didn’t pursue the sport competitively, his brother did, and one day the young chatterbox got asked to call a local race. His first opportunity paid just $60.
A local race promoter who headed up the Toowoomba Motocross Club happened to hear Diffey call races that day and tapped him to be the lead commentator at Echo Valley.
Diffey became a known name in the scene and through his friendships with Beattie and Doohan he went along to one of Paul Morris’ famous parties.
That set the wheels in motion for a career in commentary, as he recounted.
“Through those guys, I met Paul Morris… Fortunately, Paul and I became fast friends,” Diffey said on the Off Track with Hinch and Rossi podcast.
“His dad [Terry Morris] was one of the owners of the Super Touring series. Unbeknownst to me, once a year Paul – whose nickname is The Dude – used to have this big party at his place on the Gold Coast called The Dude’s Acres 500 and his place was called The Dude’s Ranch.
“You had to do all these things: like you had to do a lap of the property on a horse, you had to get off the horse at the lake, you had to get on a jet ski, do a lap on the jet ski, then you had to go around in a four-wheel odyssey, then you had to get back to the house and go down a slip-and-slide and then chug a beer. You had to do all this and you were on the clock.
“They got me in the front of his van. It was like an old telecom van and they drilled a hole in the roof. They put a loudspeaker on there with a microphone and Paul was driving. One of his mates was sitting there and I was in the middle and I was commentating The Dude’s Acres 500 live.
“Everybody is drinking beer and having a great time. If motorsports fans of Australia could have seen who was there, it was unbelievable. I’m commentating it and the very next day he (Paul Morris) rang his dad, who was one of the owners of the series, and said ‘Dad, I’ve found our new commentator, it’s Diff. You’ve got to give Diff a try’.
“So I moved to Sydney to try and propel this career opportunity and it was right then that they gave me a chance. I went and was doing field reporting and whathaveyou and they put me in the edit suite, made me call about five minutes.
“It was kind of like a screen test on the fly and I got the job and then that introduced me to Network 10 in Australia and things took off pretty quickly.”
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Diffey commentated the Australian Super Touring Championship and through a broadcast rights change got himself a gig calling V8 Supercars races in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The rest is history. Diffey has gone on to enjoy a storied career in sport, calling Formula 1, the Indianapolis 500, the 24 Hours of Daytona, more recently NASCAR, and even the Olympic Games.
It wasn’t always plain sailing for the former school teacher, however. Getting set up in Sydney was a grind to begin with.
“For a few months, it was pretty rough going,” said Diffey.
“I was doing substitute school teaching. I was doing whatever I could. I baked carrot cakes for my gas money. True story.
“I was living in inner-city Sydney and I went around to the local cafe, checked out what cakes they had on offer, and gave them my best pitch and said ‘I can make a better carrot cake than that, what are you paying for those? Mine’s going to be more expensive’.
“The guy said, ‘Well, go home and bake one and bring it back and the staff will decide whether it’s good enough or not’.”
A positive review from the staff soon had Diffey supplying carrot and banana cakes to the cafe.
“I used to put that money in a jar and I used that for gas,” added Diffey. “Fortunately I didn’t have to do that for very long because pretty soon after I got my first television commentary job then it started to pick up some momentum from there.”
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