A Beautiful Mind

Julius Robertson is charming, witty, and a TV star. He’s also the inspiration for his mother Kathy Lette’s brazen new novel. In a poignant interview, mother and son tell Juliet Rieden how revealing to The  Australian Women’s Weekly five years ago that Julius has Asperger’s changed both their lives for the better.

Julius Robertson and Kathy Lette make the most astonishing and engaging double act. Kathy, 58, with her quick-fire puns and irrepressibly youthful joie de vivre, and Julius, 26, with his cutting dry wit, founded in searing truths, and extraordinary chutzpah. “A lot of my friends simply adore him. They say he’s the most interesting person at parties because he’s so funny,” says Kathy, staring lovingly at 1.83m Julius, who’s polishing off the plate of bacon and eggs his mum has just whipped up for brunch in their Sydney apartment.

There’s no question that Jules is a chip off the old block – both Kathy’s and his dad Geoffrey Robertson’s (a Queen’s Counsel and human rights barrister) – but part of the charm of this unique mother-son relationship is its honesty; there’s no artifice at all here, there can’t be. Julius, who has Asperger’s, a developmental disorder on the autism spectrum, doesn’t know how to lie – though he does love to tease, I soon discover – and Kathy has learned that the only way to live with her son’s condition is head on, however confronting that may be.