Neil Brooks - After Swimming

After Swimming

Brooks retired thereafter, moving to Nambour, Queensland and starting a rock band called The Union. He played the electric guitar, and also wrote his own music and songs. He also represented Western Australia in water polo and indoor cricket and played Australian rules football at district level.

Having graduated from the University of Arkansas with a degree in journalism in 1985, Brooks entered the media. Before his graduation, he had been a cadet with the Seven Network in Perth for five years, reading the sports segment on the weekday evening news. He was a television commentator at the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics. Aside from covering the swimming and water polo, he also commentated on volleyball and in 1998, he called various downhill skiing events at the Nagano Winter Olympics. Domestically, Brooks called Australian Football League matches and read the sports segment on the weekday evening news for the Seven Network. For three years, he hosted Brooksy's Footy Show, a Western Australian travel/holiday show called Wild West, and in the lead-up to the Sydney Olympics, co-hosted The Games with Tracey Holmes.

However, Brooks' career began to unravel in the late-1990s. He became addicted to alcohol, leading to a series of on-screen incidents. He once read the sports news segment while inebriated, and was then involved in a drunken argument with the Nine Network's Australian rules football pundit Sam Newman. In early 1999, Seven suspended Brooks from on-screen duties for six weeks after he made comments that they deemed to be "tasteless and offensive". In an interview with a magazine that had not been authorised by Seven, Brooks was asked what event he was looking forward to most at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, and replied "The after-Olympics piss-up". He was eventually sacked, denying him the opportunity to commentate on the swimming events and costing him an annual salary of AUD700,000.

In late 2000, Brooks was declared bankrupt by the Federal Court in Perth after failing to repay a AUD14,941.64 debt to BankWest. In May 2001, the police raided Brooks' Perth home and found a metre-high cannabis plant. Brooks claimed that the plant belonged to a friend, and then announced that he would be leaving the state. Having moved to South Australia in 2003, Brooks started Local, which he billed as the state's leading lifestyle magazine. The venture was run solely by him and his wife, and was dominated by advertising. Journalist Peter FitzSimons criticised the lack of grammar checking and copyediting, citing a quote from Kieren Perkins, which was rendered thus in the publication: "I was over the moon. Winning is something you strive to do but when I consider all the factors being married two children twenty seven years of age competing in my third Games and I broke fifteen minutes twice in two days it really was quite outstanding and whichever way you cut it Grant Hackett was just the next generation of swimmer ." Brooks stood 200 cm and weighed 95 kg during his career, but in the early part of the 21st century fought a battle with obesity, after ballooning to 150 kg. As of 2007, he had lost substantial weight and fought off his alcohol problems.

Brooks later became a partner in Nitro Energy Drink Company, which was involved in motorsport sponsorship. However, the firm suffered from financial trouble and he had a falling out with his business partner. In 2009, Brooks was removed from the board and the company was put into administration, and both he and his former partner have started legal proceedings.

Brooks' first marriage was to Lynette Quinlivan in January 1985. Their son Luke is a member of the Australian water polo team, playing as a goalkeeper. He has two other children from other relationships. In 2000, he married his third wife Linda.