Big weekend for Catholics with the canonisation of St. Mary – 'our Mary' as gushing commentators and headline writers now call Mary McKillop. And on SKY news they even reported that the sainthood was the 'coming of age for all Australians'.

I would have thought the Diggers at Gallipoli and those who fought for us in World War II may have had something to do with our coming of age. But then I’m a cynic and an atheist who doesn’t believe in supernatural miracles.

Our Foreign Affairs Minister and former PM, Kevin Rudd, was also in gushing mode in Rome. When asked about the elephant in the room – the Church’s belated and reluctant response to the scandal of clergy abusing children – Rudd piously said:  'I would like to acknowledge the enormous work which the Church has done and other Christian churches in dealing with this blight on all of human kind'.

The Catholic Church over the decades spent more time, money and effort protecting paedophile priests and the 'good name' of the church than it did on victims.

Don’t get me started.  Speaking of big weekends, it was a big weekend for punters even though the weather was bleak for the Caulfield Cup.

And, both personally and professionally, it was a big weekend for me.

The good news started Friday. Word from the Radiology Department at the Austin that I have been booked in for a 'CT Triple Phase Study' on Friday week to check the progress of my first burst of chemotherapy.

As I understand it, they will get me to drink 400ml of a contrast (dye) called Loscan and then it will be 'Cameras, Action' time again for the first check on how the war is going.

I’ve described it as waiting to see if Luke Skywalker is winning in the initial confrontation with Darth Vader and his cancerous cohorts. I guess that analogy was prompted by my gastroenterologist, Howard Tang, describing the cancerous growths on my liver as ‘a sort of mother ship with a cluster of satellites around it’.

I am under no illusion that it means very much - even if there’s good news on October 29. The ‘depth charge’ treatment is not a cure. But it may curtail and contain the cancers that have been slowly increasing in size. May keep the cancer inside the liver. I am well aware that, like any noxious weed, if it jumps the fence the next paddock is threatened.

And it will buy time, which, as I have stressed, is the most valuable commodity around for me right now. So that’s eleven days away.

Saturday night was the radio industry’s annual awards. The ACRAs. The Australian Commercial Radio Awards.

I was up for two of them, Best Current Affairs Commentator and Best Talk Personality. I won Current Affairs in 2008 and Best Talk last year. I did not  expect to win anything this year.

On Saturday, at Crown, Hamish and Andy won Best On-Air team for the third year in a row before they bow out next month and head for new adventures. And Justin Smith won best News and Current Affairs producer for the Mitchell program.

Then in the last award of the night I won Best Talk Personality for the second year running.

It topped a great night because hours earlier, in an announcement that made me cry, I was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame. It came as a total, unexpected surprise and I did say in a brief, gobsmacked, acceptance speech, that for once Hinch was lost for words.

After they had screened a three-minute montage of my 50 years in the business, I said: 'Now you don’t have to come to my funeral. You’ve seen it all.'

I’m told the organisers got overly sensitive after I announced my cancer last month and edited out a Mick Gatto quote that ‘I hope you go to your grave soon’. But I wouldn’t have been offended by that.

(It did show any cynics that my induction into the Hall of Fame had been voted on months ago and not as a recent sympathy gesture).

As I told the Sunday Herald Sun after the win: ‘It’s an omen. If I can win this award, and win in the High Court, and win the battle inside me, I’ve had a helluva year.’ And won’t that be the truth.

Footnote: No awards that any of us win are done alone. There are a lot of people whom I want to thank including my cherished producer Shannon Reid and assistant producer Larisa Tait. The control panel driver Mark Genge, our IT wizard, Ben Wise, our production guru Andrejs Nolle and the Newsroom’s Tony Tardio.

And you the listeners. I may drive this Drive program but you are not just passengers and for that I thank you as contributors. This is the entry which won for Best Talk Personality 2010.

'Fame Fame Fame' for Hinch

It was Derryn Hinch's night at the Australian Commercial Radio Awards on Saturday night with the Drive host being inducted into the Hall Of Fame.

3AW Drive with Hinch

Hinch is a former police rounds reporter, former foreign correspondent, former newspaper editor, former host of national current affairs shows, former novelist, former radio host in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide, former MIDDAY host and former jailbird.