Fergus Linehan - Sydney Fesitval 2009 director

Congrats on your SMAC of the Year award. Thanks. It meant a huge amount, it really did. It felt like we were getting through to a bunch of people that we were really trying to talk to. I was really moved.

Why do you think that you've been so well received in Sydney? Ha! The classical music people might have something different to say there. [Laughs] I think making tickets cheaper helped...

You've timed your departure well. The crunch is going to make life pretty tough for your successor next year... It would take a hell of a recession to dampen Sydney's enthusiasm for January. And you know, sometimes a boom is not the best time for work, you know? It's all got to be bigger, brighter, shinier! Tough times can be more creative.

If you had to recommend just four things from this coming programme for people to see, what would they be? All Tomorrow's Parties on Cockatoo; Ivanov - you'd want to know your theatre a bit, but it's magnificent; Run Lola Run will be incredible at Darling Harbour - that's a free one. I think Festival First Night is a really good night this year.

What's next for you? I literally don't know. You know in American Beauty when Kevin Spacey goes into McDonald's and says "I'd like a job with the least responsibility"? I want a job like that - maybe serving cocktails to bored divorcees on the Gold Coast.

What will your legacy will be? Can you have a legacy after just four years? Let me think about this. I suppose it would be very difficult to shut Sydney Festival down now. I do think people feel very strongly about it now, there's a fairly strong sense of ownership.

Have you made any mistakes? Yeah, we made a few mistakes. Of the Domain concerts, I don't think we ever got the Symphonic one right. No disrespect to the Sydney Symphony who are a brilliant organisation.
What will you miss about Sydney? The absolute directness of it and the optimism. I'll be sad to go back to entrenched class systems that go back thousands of years.

And what will you not miss? Nick Cave has this great line. He says: "It's illegal to be sad in Australia." Sydney struggles with melancholy. There's no half light that evokes different senses, ambiguities, where you can walk in drizzle and feel sad and optimistic at the same time.

Best theatre or dance you've seen in your time in Sydney?
Barrie Kosky's The Lost Echo which was the eight-hour piece that was done in two sections for the Sydney Theatre Company. Magnificent.

Best art exhibition? A big Bill Henson retrospective at AGNSW in 2005 which knocked my socks off.

Best gig? Sigur Ros at the Enmore.

More Sydney celebrities and identities? Sign up to our weekly newsletter