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[Music] Tim Ross Rosso welcome to my podcast hello Tom how good is it to be on your
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podcast hey mate I'm I'm so pleased to have you here I've got um as you couple
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of cards with with questions on I was wondering whether you were going to do any research for this I I've I've got
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your book um your first book my mom had a kingsworth in my in my library and I did flick through that for this it's
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always I find it very strange doing these um podcast when it's with um someone you know because you I don't
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want to like disrespect you in your time by not doing any research but I don't
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want to research too much do you know what I mean yeah how long's been we known each other for what 20 years now
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you reckon even longer like it was 20 years ago this year that um me and JJ got married and you came to the oh yeah
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has it been 20 years you still married legally you still legally hav got to the bottom of it but you know but I was
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thinking about this on the plane on the way over because I've flown over from
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Sydney just to see you um that I'll never it was 2001 or 2002 or something like that and we were in in Las Vegas
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was it Las Vegas was the first time I saw you radio conference yeah it was Vegas yeah yeah yeah and then you came
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bounding up to me you're like a like a little still to this day you're still
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the same you're like a little kiwi Labrador all energy tongue out oh yeah and introduced yourself and said oh and
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and you know I'm Dom I'm from New Zealand I do the show on the edge and we
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rip off all your gear that's what you that's how you introduce yourself we've
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been on your website and you've we all your all your segments we all do them
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some of them work you did hello New Zealand which was a takeoff on or but did that work for you no to us Tuesday
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can't remember yeah we did to Tuesday yeah I I remember that and yeah I was going to ask you what your recollection
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of our first meeting was because I feel like I got off on the you by the way um this is going to require a little bit of
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establishment because yeah why you reset for your audience here yeah well none of
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the kiwis to know know who you are but um uh Tim Ross um His Radio name was Rosso part of a very very popular and
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famous and successful Australian duo called American Rosso so like heish nandy before Hamish nandy yeah L
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successful oh you know yeah my recollection of meeting you and your your co-host mer exactly the same I
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thought it was CU we were uh your boss at the time was a guy called Dean Buchanan who was a guy that I knew he
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tried to offer me work over years kiwi D and that was his nickname in Australia yeah um so I came up and I thought it
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was the ultimate compliment to say hey really like your show been to your website stolen some of your ideas cuz
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there's a there's that saying imitation is the sincerest form was hilarious but
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you I think you were fine with it your mate Mir who you were working with he seemed really really pissed he came
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around to it at the end but I think you found it hilarious but oh I just thought
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it was amazing that there was this you know tall gangly kiwi Labrador who would like what we did but yes no um I think
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it's interesting you know when you back to your question about you know people come you know
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before us there was another you know really successful you know radio Duo Martin Malloy probably oh yeah um MC
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yeah uh was it m Malloy no who and Tony martiny they were huge um yeah they used
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to I bought one of the CD the brown ALB and very different to what we did um and
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then you know I H sh Andy came along and we like this and they were of a gener new
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generation and um and all their successes because you know they're incredibly
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talented and had that X Factor that um you know I didn't have so yeah thanks
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for bringing it up mate oh no no I wouldn't say that it's just a weird thing like I've um I've done some a lot
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of work on myself over the over the last few years and I realize it's an it's an
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ego thing and when it happens I I I catch myself doing it now like there'll be a promo for a new TV show in New
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Zealand something that no one ever like tapped me on the shoulder for I did audition for didn't even know it was
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coming and I'll be like how how did they get that job and I didn't and I realiz
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it's a crazy it is no I think you can let that stuff eat you up and I um I remembered I I I remember hearing
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them for the first time and I really liked what they did and you know I think sort of reached out to them and um you
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know that were guys who used to listen to us on the radio and they they were inspired by that and I think that's
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really important but I think it's you know what they say comparison is the thief of all joy it is it is I I'd agree
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with that unless you're comparing down you don't you never have to look too far to see someone that is a lot
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happier with a lot less yeah and I think the one thing I've always thought is that he also realizes
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that you know there's some things you can't control um there's relationships
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that you can't always control um time and place is everything m i i I was thinking this the other day and like
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when I started and I was radio you know there's a lot of really talented people around but we were just
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sort of the right place right time and in a pre-social media world you know if you get one of those lucky breaks you're
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everywhere today it's much more of an even playing field you can come out of
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nowhere there's always someone and you would have been the same he's got some
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bazillion followers on Tik Tok who's doing a live tour and you go [ __ ] I've
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have heard of that person yeah it happens all the time time they they're filling up theaters so there's something
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wonderful about that so the barriers to entry are different and I sort of I also
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think if we were starting today it would be far more competitive for americ and I um but on the other side of it we
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probably would have ended up doing you know the potential to do Global things might have taken us in another position
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yeah that's true that's true um okay well let's go the way back so so um yeah
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how did you and mirik uh meet so you're in a band right like like a punk band
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comedy band comedy punk band Yes um black roses Black Rose well done you've been and I was the lead singer sort of I
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was Rock piss take band you know and we was just Melbourne Melbourne in the in the '90s and we were gigging around a
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bit and we had a bit of a following and I was doing a standup gig at the same time as amck and he came up and said
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like you but less Labrador and not he has got big Labrador energy and uh you know he asked me about
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my band and I I don't think I'd met anyone you know very few people that I
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didn't know who was com coming to see the band and you know we became friends
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and then you know a couple of years later we we start I sort of rang him up and said oh look do you want to do some
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shows together and we did one called Piss heads from out of space and it did pretty well and and then we did another
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one and then we sort of you know I don't think either of us probably thought we
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were going to end up in a Duo and then we did for you know 15 years or something yeah it was it was wildly
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successful and we'll get through all of that um ended with you guys being the
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number one Radio Show in Sydney which is [ __ ] massive um it's huge Sydney is
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the size of New Zealand um and just the the different economies like the amount of money you make when you're number one
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in Sydney it's crazy money um You' been looking at my old bank accounts you've
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been going through my wheelie I'm stay stop staying in your sphere room of your
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primary residence after you pick me up on your Porsche um that's why yeah people in
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Australian radio seem to like get get bored or disillusion and retire early no one in New Zealand retires yeah you can
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hang around here forever like out of necessity yeah I mean I always loved your work ethic though because we used
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to do stuff all and then I remember being at your house on on Sunday and you went oh I've just got to go and do a
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team call I was like what what you know I'm doing some PR you're doing some prep
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for the next day and I was like what are you doing that for and said well we have to do
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that cuz that you know that's how you do it and and to be fair it's probably why
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you stayed on air a lot longer than I did you know yeah I okay we'll get into that
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we'll try go some sort of sequence so so so you and Mir you um hook up you do
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your shows together um really Innovative standup too like like um overhead projector stuffff with what was that you
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had like letters you yeah we used to write prank letters to people you know celebrities now this stuff quarter of a
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century later it sounds sounds really you said overhead projector Forward Thinking things but it was it was this
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is pre- internet so no no one's doing um the overhead projector was kit even
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in the '90s and I think that was part of its charm I flogged it from the University and so um we called it Fonzi
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and what happened is that we would write to you know famous people and pretending
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to be children or you know old people or you know being a bit special and we just
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you know ask some silly things and um sort of I think the one famously I wrote to the then prime minister John Howard
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and asked him whether he could do all these things like the rank donkey dance which just doesn't exist and he wrote
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back saying no I'm afraid I don't do the rank donkey Dan it's like and so when
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you put these things up on an overhead project people would lose their minds and it was sort of um yeah it was
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inventive and we'd go and shoot films you know prank films and then I would come home and wear a little video camera
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that I borrow of someone and I would edit them on the camera on onto a VHS tape and then you know like in camera
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editing and then I would take when we' go on do our tour sometimes I'd have
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like a TV on stage with the VHS player and I'd push play on the VHS player on
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stage uh and then we got into bigger venues and then have like a sound guy sound guy they had a projector and they
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push play on a VHS and that's how we T around we show these videos um and one
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of those videos was an opening of a casino and we dressed up as bogens and just walked around just going oh [ __ ] me
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dead this joint's off its head the characters you did on the like the red caret for the was it Bron Craig
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yeah that sort of stuff yeah just being sort of Aussie it's it's quite funny cuz
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when you get to know you yeah you guys so um your Mer's quite quite the same I
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guess like on stage and offstage but you're quite deep and introspective and
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thoughtful well mes you know incredible performer huge presence I'm a true extrovert you know which I'm not
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um but he would I would be more likely to be playing a role and that stuff but just performing it's like you get on
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stage and also you know I'm not 25 or six anymore you know I'm a in a 50
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so you know like if you if you present if I'm presenting still as that same person it's kind of lame it is
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completely tragic um unless you know someone's paying you a whole bunch of money to still be that person but even
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then I think we all evolve in our own ways um and and and whether you do or not you know some people never launch I
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suppose but I I think I enjoyed playing that role for period of time but I like doing different things now it's not like
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giving up being funny or nothing but it's just it's just different and I
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think everyone looks back at themselves in their 20s and sometimes you're really
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surprised by it I often look back at myself in my early 30s and we had a a show on the nine Network and that the
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confidence of me at 30 odd I was like what's what happened to that guy I want
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him back um you only have that once that sort of naivity and then you you know you get knocked around a bit or you you
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know you're not you know when you're top of the pops you know you feel like you can do
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anything yeah and you can't by the way you're unless your tail SED you're a
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you're you're a non-drinker now you had been for a couple of years and I
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couldn't be happy about that because this this voice that you've got now on
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the podcast um this is the same voice you have if you're out at a restaurant
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or a bar with you so I find myself leaning over the table with my ear like centimeters away from your mouth you're
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you're a very quiet talk softly spoken eh yeah I suppose I mean yeah I probably am in terms of this
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is that a shinness thing or no I'm just just calm measure well I mean the the the very
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nature of a podcast there two things that happen you know they're the dumbest
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things in the world for anyone to open up about on because you know you could do a radio interview 20 years ago and no
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one would ever hear it again this thing sits here forever anyone who thinks they
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should come and open up to you is a complete [ __ ] but because I trust you I'll talk to you
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but yeah I mean okay you want me to project is that what you're suggesting no no no no no it's just just obervation
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but it's um you know the nature of asking someone to talk about your life you got to be reflective about it and
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also um I think most people because more people did podcasts now than ever who would never be interviewed in front of a
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microphone most people find it really you know they're okay with it but it is
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it is invasive in some way oh it you're let quite confrontational and um you
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know it's reflective and and and only insane people speak about their own life
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without having a little voice going this sounds really boring and mundane but then of course when you listen to
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someone else talk about their own life I find it fascinating but for whatever reason for yourself to be able to talk
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about your own life and we were also taught one of the fascinating things is that by doing doing what we were doing
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for so many years we're taught to keep everything short you got this sort of
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clock in the back 5 minutes and it's got to be a full length story like an intro
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yeah clock in the back of your mind I think that did enormous damage to me as a Storyteller because everything you
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feel like you've got to condense everything and then one of the things when I started telling stories and
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working out live again was just to retrain a brain not to make everything as short as possible just to let
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everything breathe and you know let let stories roll yeah untrain untrain the radio in a way and in radio if someone
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someone has an interesting answer and you you you think oh I got to pull on a thread there and it goes goes nowhere
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you're at the end you're like oh [ __ ] I'm going to be red over the coals for
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this this sort of thing and I am and also the the nature of interruption so I I remember seeing bumping into some guy
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who was doing a who had had a regional Radio Show in New South Wales he's having a couple of beers with his mates
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and he waved at me and went over and I'd met him at some you know I've been on
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his show a couple of times and he was there with a couple of really straight beer drinking
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mates and he said something really fascinating to me he said oh you know you guys are radio people you just
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interrupt and so you can't just tell a story around radio people because the
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whole nature of it is [Music] interrupting and they don't know when to stop and it's like oh it's mate Fitz he
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does the Nova breakfast show it's like dude stop in corupting let's we just you
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know you can't get you know your life's might breaks there was a famous um guy called Jonathan comman who
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was an Australian broadcaster and did really well in the UK really successful in Australia and I met him for the very
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first time we going to Tokyo on some junk junket to um meet the cast Superman Spider-Man or some [ __ ] and he talked in
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mic breaks he would say this is my daughter I've got a son he's on the he's
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on the PlayStation for too long you know it's like he's giving you the backstory every time you go your
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life is one continue life break you know just my wife she does this she does that
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it's 7:45 you know oh God it makes people it's exhausting makes people insane yeah so yes so you and mck you're
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doing your comedy show and then you did like live live prank calls and stuff on stage yeah so prank calls were huge part
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of what we would do was this about the same time as the Jerky Boys you know they yeah um it would have been around a
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bit later I think the JY boys when I was at school but you know talk about tech things so in order to do prank calls
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live on stage uh I would plug a phone that I took from home into where the the pay phone was at the
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p on the pub wall cuz it was close to the stage and then I had a box it was like a beer box and I had foam in it and
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you like soundproof and I had yeah and I had a microphone that this guy rigged it
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up at Uni to use for the student radio station and had a microphone you put the and a and a and a speaker and you put
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the microphone on it in the box and had a lead that would go into the PA and so you basically have a you know that's how
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you could hear it and make it work and then we had after that we had a guy who worked out how to you know this Tech Guy
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to take a noia and you know like a classic old school noas and take the handsfree microphone and turn that into
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a thing that you could do prank calls live on stage but how do you how I'm thinking from like a cuz on our radio
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show we do prank calls from time to time and you might have to record 10 of them
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before you find one that's usable like when you're doing it live on stage in
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front of an audience you there's no yeah and I think we you know there's no
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safety net is there no and we were pretty loose in in how we did things and we the nature of what we did we weren't
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very good at rehearsing um you know we couldn't plan a mic break we couldn't plan anything
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we'd just we just do everything off the because that's what we do um it's not you know when I think we
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probably would have liked to have been able to rehearse and to plan things and do things quite in a well structured
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manner but it just it's just not how our brains worked or not how we worked together um and so our execution on
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things was sometimes pretty ordinary but then it also had this wild you never know what's going to happen type yeah
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that unpredictability but it must have um must have worked as well cuz you had this swelling sort of fan base at the
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time yeah and then good enough to I guess get the attention of the programmers or management at Triple J
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which is uh I think it's reasonably well known here in New Zealand you run in New
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Zealand would know about the uh Triple J Hot 100 that comes out every Australia um Triple J I I don't know if any radio
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station has the same sort of appeal now but at the time in the late 990s early 2000s that was a cool [ __ ] station
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yeah and I mean that's the hotter grunge around that when we joined um the B big
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day out was huge actually was the actually to be fair it was the end of and it was the start of shitty Pro Tools
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Rock You Know play a lot of corn and Limp Biscuit um no but let's it was a bleak time was it it was
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a ble it was that that sort of 97 998 99 there was some there was some rubbish out there but
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um yeah I mean it's the big day out was huge um you know the hottest 100 it's a
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national station we were doing Drive um we did a we did this thing called The Love bus where we took a bus and we We
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Tour it around the country and every day we' stop in a regional place and then
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you know people would just turn arms you know you're in Newcastle there's a
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couple hundred people there and by the time we got to Brisbane we got to the Queen Street mall and there was I I
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think there was 3 or 4,000 people there and we just lost our mes like um yeah no
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no radio activation is going to have that sort of impact now no no you know you'd have to give I mean it was simpler
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times but that's you know there was everyone listened to the radio um and also I remember when we
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started doing we selling a lot of tickets for one of our first interstate shows in
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Adelaide and we'd been on Triple J part-time for a while and being able to walk past the lines of people coming to
00:20:48
our show and people not knowing what we look like oh yeah yeah was in the very early
00:20:54
days dial photos of Might SE who might have been on TV once or twice or something but you know they people
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wouldn't have seen um yeah might have seen our face on the poster but they wouldn't put two and two together so
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that that's really you know a lot happens in your lifetime in terms of you know this is R they were radio people in
00:21:15
those days who never showed their faces and that was part of them they quite like that most of them because they were
00:21:20
ugly the face for radio face radio yeah yeah yeah there was a guy on pth right that was there for New Zealand guy a guy
00:21:27
called Fred boder and old he never his they want the audience to know he was like 17 yeah exactly he
00:21:35
was he was like yeah I he was 70 and still talking about yeah became became a thing even when the internet was on I
00:21:41
remember when I was I've got some siblings in Perth and it was almost like um you know the next door neighbor on
00:21:46
Home Improvements yeah next door it's kind of like that so Al so you're at
00:21:51
Triple J and then um then you get um a new station comes on board called Nova uh which is a very big brand now um
00:21:59
I remember this was this was inventive it sort of changed radio like instead of doing you know 15 minutes of music and
00:22:05
then a 3 minute a break thatd have like two EDS in a row so like one minute Ed breaks it was just and the slogan was
00:22:10
sounds different and it and it did and it was exciting and they they poached you guys to be to be the breakfast show
00:22:17
so you guys went from doing afternoons on this um grungy sort of cool station to being on this the sort of mainstream
00:22:26
Beast of a station that must have been a weird there was a time now uh that was that was a time then where selling out
00:22:32
was a thing oh yeah I remember oh yeah just a couple of weeks ago I listen to a um a podcast with Billy Joe Armstrong
00:22:39
from Green Day yeah and he talk it's coming up to the 30-y year anniversary of dookie and he he talked about that
00:22:45
and how they made the Breakthrough to commercial he was having the time of his life um but it must have been the same
00:22:53
for you guys like going from this yeah people people for years would come up till you go and see a band and you be at
00:23:00
a sort of Indie band venue and they'd Go why'd you leave Triple J and I was like
00:23:04
oh mate it was 10 years ago can you just stop um it was a real I found it Merck was into it from day one I
00:23:13
loved working at Triple J I love the audience and I never got that audience again because it was National they
00:23:20
really deeply engaged um you know we'd turn up and we do these outside broadcasts and there'd be people that'
00:23:25
make their homemade American Roso t-shirts though they really subscribed to what we were doing just Bor into it
00:23:33
yeah and um it was you know we playing good music we were broadcasting to people you know
00:23:41
that'd be in the city or they could be in the country so it's that National
00:23:45
reach was was really important and then we went to a one market only um Sydney though yeah not like wool
00:23:53
and gong no uh and look the money of course was important the it was excit if it had if it hadn't been a new station I
00:24:02
don't think we would have left I think that was the the idea to start something
00:24:06
and um without sounding like a wanker that you know they sort of based the ethos of the station or the well maybe
00:24:15
it wasn't the ethos but certainly so they want to be like a cool top 40 station yeah I think in terms of the
00:24:21
comedy stylings of it the brand values in terms of um you know how it sounded and how felt that sort of irreverence
00:24:30
was based on our personalities and that still sits in the DNA of the radio station which is sort of interesting I
00:24:36
think um but ultimately yeah they came with the checkbook and you know you're
00:24:42
talking about a you know your mate Dean Buchanon came this sort of ko g a really
00:24:47
shitty pair of cargo pants and you know oh it's Rich coming from you look you
00:24:52
your cargo suit yeah but you know just you know terrible shoes on I still remember
00:24:58
you know these orange shirt and he like whoa you know um and I wasn't buying
00:25:03
what he was selling and um but ultimately they got us but I I think I do remember we normally would
00:25:12
finish up the year and would say thanks lot we see it next year and I I think just we hadn't told anyone cuz the deal
00:25:20
was a secret and they were trying to not let anyone know that we were launching the station but I don't know how people
00:25:26
didn't work it out but maybe they didn't think we were good enough to do it but I
00:25:31
put down the headphones and you know after saying goodbye without saying we'll see you next year and I cried you
00:25:36
know because I was knew that that was an end a really important part of my life um really how old you at the time late
00:25:43
20s yeah did 20 30 or something yeah 30 30 31 or something yeah that's yeah and
00:25:50
I loved it says a lot about lot about you but I GRE I grew up listening to the ABC um and watching the ABC and I'm
00:25:58
firmly you know I just I you I make docos for the ABC now I love public broadcasting and it um and it's reason
00:26:06
for being was so pure and then we got to do great things at Nova and it was really an incredible experience and one
00:26:14
of the great experiences in my life but it was is a different job completely different job and not just the different
00:26:19
hours of the day but suddenly you know things are about selling ads and you know promos to crush cars and get people
00:26:29
to eat [ __ ] that they shouldn't and all we a lot of that the Jack yeah put
00:26:35
you know we had this thing where box of mystery you know you put your hand in the box and it could be a snake in there
00:26:40
or it could be a dogs to it you know just in Australia you know it's a dog to
00:26:44
there's a lot of dangerous snakes around so how I this is a redundant question
00:26:50
because I'm probably not going to get an answer of you but how much was the money
00:26:52
at the time given surely it was over 20 years ago surely you can answer it now what is it like half a million what
00:26:58
I can't remember a show in Australia at the moment significantly more than I was
00:27:04
making at at the ABC yeah yeah ABC the Triple J is like a government station government funded so the money would be
00:27:10
sh you'd assume um yeah but can you not remember or you choosing not to remember
00:27:16
I just think it's rather vulgar to talk about you know but there's a there's a
00:27:21
what how come we we hear about Kyle and Jackie O now they are the number one Sean Sydney and that like whenever they
00:27:28
sign a new deal it's like um oh they've just signed a 10-year deal with $100
00:27:32
million why um how like how is that so public now cuz they tell you they like telling that stuff I mean that's their
00:27:39
stick you they're really good at it um did did you we cuz heish and Andy I think in the same camp as you and
00:27:47
that they'd find it vulgar and you they they've never even though I mean some
00:27:51
people do and like it's just a personal thing you know like I just don't think
00:27:55
it's anyone's business and um never been driven by the money though I whereas I
00:27:59
feel like mir's probably more like me in that respect I can't talk for M but no I
00:28:04
think M likes the art of things he's he's he um no he liked the he he liked
00:28:11
the creative stuff he likes you know he likes he likes the fun of it he likes the he loves the joy of being in a room
00:28:19
and making people laugh that's that's he's a he's it is about the
00:28:23
entertainment for him yeah 100% yeah no no but I suppose what I'm saying is it's
00:28:28
seems like a no-brainer that if you're at one place and you're getting x amount
00:28:33
of dollars then you can go to the another place oh don't get me wrong I was never going to start the
00:28:38
ABC no CU you you that said I have knocked back you know considerable money since then to do
00:28:48
other things because Life's too short to do [ __ ] you don't want to do um but rightly we made that decision
00:28:57
because it was incred R exciting time you know Sydney had just come off the back of the Olympics um there a brand
00:29:02
new station we were going to be the face of it they were you know um the music wasn't too in those early days it wasn't
00:29:12
remarkably that far removed from what we're playing at Triple J in some ways
00:29:18
um and it was a great Challenge and I think that's ultimately too it's like you know
00:29:25
if we if we stuffed it up we couldn't go back that would be it and we but yeah I mean it was and being on
00:29:35
there launching the excitement of and everyone was interested in it and it didn't it didn't take off hugely
00:29:43
straight away but in a short period of time you you guys did very well I think part of the success is that you were you
00:29:48
were you were the the station slogan was sounds different and you were so different your main competitor was um
00:29:54
was it that Wendy hmer lady Yeah Wendy hmer lady that was so rich she used to like import tea bags from India or
00:29:59
something didn't she was there all sorts of Y know wend he had been there forever
00:30:04
and um you know really really great comedian a really good broadcaster but you know you come in as
00:30:12
new and you you know that there's there's always a challenger coming on and you know and like when K and Jack
00:30:19
came along that you know they had a certain stick at the right time and nothing we could do could compete with
00:30:26
that yeah a good how long were you guys on Nova for 10 years yeah about 10 years
00:30:31
I suppose yeah what are some of the memorable like radio moments from that time stuff that you look back on now and
00:30:36
go now that was good or that was memorable or that stands out we did one of my favorite things was
00:30:44
that we were doing this prank call to oh actually Merck was doing it we was doing
00:30:49
this prank call to this guy I don't know why we just after the studio we just
00:30:53
ring hotels and overseas and because if you rang overseas you didn't have to get
00:30:57
permission because at the end if you run within Australia you have to get permission to put on here and we ring we
00:31:02
just ring reservations and just use stupid names and so that have to you know read it back to you you know and
00:31:10
you say you know can I have a book of room for 15th of February and what's your name and it's like Darren [ __ ]
00:31:16
Buster you know it's all that stuff you and can you read it back for me yeah
00:31:23
and so we got this guy Kenny and he was working at the park height in Tokyo and he was the sweetest guy
00:31:30
and we actually felt so bad about I think Amer felt so bad about it that we I think we rang him back to say that we
00:31:36
were a radio station from Australia and because he was so helpful and so polite and he said my dream oh you're from
00:31:43
Australia my dream is to come to Australia and so we thought we should bring him out right so we did this thing
00:31:50
we got airfare sponsored and we had an outside broadcast we wrote songs about him
00:31:58
and we had a at the opera house at the front of the Opera House thousand people there so this guy comes straight off a
00:32:05
plane and there's people screaming his name and he's a celebrity and he just
00:32:10
loved it but he the thing was he couldn't work he thought everyone in Australia knew who he
00:32:17
was and we took him to the races he met Bob Hawk one of our most famous Prime Ministers I said and and then he he's
00:32:24
just waving at everyone and like it was huge and it was one of those also in at a time when you could you could own
00:32:31
these things um that was great I I love that stuff um we just do dumb stuff as well we just bike you know we have a
00:32:38
station car we had a dutson 180b as a station car when everyone else had you know missing patrols and all that sort
00:32:45
of stuff it was it was sort of anti-commercial radio in some ways but yeah it was it was sort of um yeah it
00:32:51
was was Anarchist in a way wasn't it for the time like you hear it now and anyone
00:32:56
that's listening to this be like oh it's it's like heish Andy like you talk about
00:32:59
the love bus thing it's like the Caravan of colage yeah mean yeah they they definitely took that from us but you
00:33:05
know there nothing's new but I mean we were we'd come from a different time
00:33:09
than those guys um and so and we were different generation and we we what what was interesting we'd started in a doing
00:33:20
standup during you know in a recession and that in a different time and a different place and then we had and we
00:33:26
we just had a different to us I think we're a bit we're a bit n here yeah I I
00:33:31
think it it's just you you're very you're just very likable like just
00:33:35
Aussie leads well that's what they say you know they would just go we just want
00:33:38
you to you know call people tiger when they call in oh thanks for calling in Tiger I was half yeah I I started doing
00:33:43
that for a while here to on my radio show calling people tiger made absolutely no
00:33:50
sense but don't don't come for me come for [ __ ] he miss Andy but I the rest
00:33:54
of it I I don't know I mean there was plenty of stuff um that was fun but I just I mean I like talking to people up
00:34:01
hearing people's stories but you know like it's just it's all I don't know
00:34:05
it's all it's all I'd have to go back and listen to the Tes it's it's funny
00:34:09
that isn't it because it's um people come up to me mention things that they
00:34:12
we over the 20 years and I've got no recollection of the [ __ ] they're talking
00:34:15
about you remember the big things the mess I suppose the mess of what you'd call in radio story arc like you calling
00:34:20
the guy and then getting the E is and bringing them over to Australia and doing a whole thing because it goes for
00:34:25
more than one show but otherwise it's just a f minute bit yeah I mean it was just all fun and it
00:34:30
was all and it was all loose and yeah it was good geig yeah all right let's talk
00:34:36
about some of the celebrity interviews because it's um you know Australia and New Australia
00:34:40
is a big territory New Zealand's on the it's on the oh M you met edir come on
00:34:45
your mates but in terms of um like movie stars and big stars like if we had if we
00:34:50
had a movie star on our show we knew that the especially if it was a big star we knew it was a [ __ ] movie they really
00:34:56
had to promote it hard so let's about some other the people you David Bowie you met David
00:35:00
Bowie briefly or was this like a backstage thing backstage and it was great cuz I was going out with this girl
00:35:07
at the moment used to work for Sony and she organized it and then I bumped in and made him M Robbie Buck I used to
00:35:12
work at Triple J with and I said we're going for meet and great with David Bowie and he had that one of those great
00:35:18
suits on you know on stage we gonna get a photo just beautiful and then someone had given him this terrible orange Mambo
00:35:25
shirt he looked like a [ __ ] C driver in it and so so there we go backstage what
00:35:33
are you wearing that for Bowie and um someone introd was introduced and said this is you know this is Tim and I can I
00:35:41
can still hear it he just please to meet you Tim in that David Boe Voice who just
00:35:47
sits there just forever he was so charming and it was just the smallest moment and I was like a and and I'm so
00:35:54
glad that happened and I didn't need to interview him in that way that was enough he he said my name and plenty of
00:36:01
them don't Tain didn't T and then asked if you want a photo and you're like not
00:36:06
on the 100% membo [ __ ] [ __ ] no no thanks no but the there was all sorts of we ended
00:36:14
up cuz you get a photo with other people oh meeting greet photo the worst so yeah
00:36:20
but I was on one side then my then girlfriend maybe was closer to him or something I can't remember and then
00:36:26
there was another guy there and then he sadly died he was a journalist and then a friend of mine was
00:36:32
at at his funeral and then they flashed the photo of up at the funeral with me and my ex-girlfriend David Bowie in the
00:36:40
shitty orange T-shirt and then my ex-girlfriend I think she someone told me cuz she Banned Me on blocked me on
00:36:47
Facebook but um she she always posted it all the time because it was she was a Bowie fan but I think I might have been
00:36:54
closer or something but anyway she cut me out of the photo because that's so
00:36:58
I've got a friend that's got a photo with the Rolling Stones but it's there's
00:37:01
like 20 people from Universal Music whatever so everyone's like rushing to be with their armor on MC Jagger you
00:37:08
don't want to be the person on the AR back no I had that with um with Nick someone I worked with the the radio
00:37:14
station and they had a photo with r but everyone had their their arms around RM but she put her arm around the guy like
00:37:23
the assistant program director was like what are you doing put your hand around stpy um Russell Brand you guys opened
00:37:31
for Russell Brand yeah yeah really interesting experience like um you know this is the top of the pops for Russell
00:37:38
Brand time and he was coming out and um somehow I was chatting to the promoter and I said oh we can do the support if
00:37:45
you like and uh we did two gigs with him first one wasn't amazing it was because
00:37:51
he was just super super super deep Russell Brand fans in a 2000 C the second one was bit more mainstream of
00:37:59
5,000 CED and we actually killed on that one but the first one was was a bit tricky cuz people were like what are you
00:38:04
doing here but he' he'd come on the show and he was good fun and and we said we
00:38:10
said oh we we're supporting you and he said um you know he should should come
00:38:14
and hang out you know after the show and um the first night he wasn't even at the
00:38:21
theater when we when we're gone and he I said where's russling s he's not here
00:38:25
and then the second one was thought we were going to sort of hang out um that actually moved us like we W it was a big
00:38:33
theater and it it was backstage areas and we didn't get any of those they put
00:38:38
us in the sort of car Park area next to this John's ambulance guys and he clearly didn't want to see
00:38:45
us at all and I remember going to sort of see where he was and I went what are you doing I said I was just going to say
00:38:50
good day to Russell it's not going to happen that's going to happen wow yeah
00:38:54
he was an interesting guy but I do remember at the the time some of the material that had come up more recently
00:39:02
and those was 2000 I'm going to try to think this 2006 or 2007 oh some of the
00:39:06
sexual stuff that hasn't aged very well really aged and like all of us have you
00:39:10
know I've spoken a lot about some of the material I've done that have has an AG
00:39:13
well that I'm embarrassed of and it's not horrific stuff but it's just it's
00:39:17
time and place and you know you mature and you learn and you move on but that stuff for me even then I'm like ooh but
00:39:24
on the night yeah U it surprised me to be honest but then you part of it is is like those English Comics would always
00:39:32
push the boundaries far more than we did in Australia isn't that funny though CU
00:39:37
English radio is so conservative like insanely conservative compared to but but when you're live in terms of
00:39:44
language and concept and yeah like even their books you know those huge comedians write these Memoirs and they
00:39:51
talk what they talk about sexually and with who and I was with some news reader and I did this to them and I'm like whoa
00:39:57
whoa that's yeah um who else oh Stallone sesta Stallone you you you got have to sign
00:40:05
some like weird fan art or no what was actually yeah yeah so he he someone had sent us a like a painting of Rambo you
00:40:15
know you know what listeners just send you random [ __ ] I can't remember why you
00:40:19
know it's like listener food you know they oh such and such from parata loves
00:40:24
the show she's made you some lamington you go I'm not eating the list you
00:40:27
probably ate the listener food did you never did never did you just I don't know what I don't know why you just
00:40:34
you're not sure what the kitchen they're operating no no no no no it's
00:40:40
like but it's like when you go we talking about listeners because I I'll
00:40:44
come back to to the Stallone stuff but you know like going to their houses when we do some sort of outside broadcast or
00:40:49
some competition to go to someone's house and listen his house and you end up and like we were doing a thing and
00:40:56
this guy had snakes and like a wall of snakes and then he had a wall of rats that he was breeding
00:41:03
to feed to the snakes like okay uh so yeah they this someone had sent us this painting of Rambo or maybe
00:41:11
we bought it some I can't remember anyway but it' been in the office forever and we thought oh we better get
00:41:16
that and get him to sign it and then so we we had a photo of him signing it him holding the photo and then I think we
00:41:23
had a photo of that or some [ __ ] like a whole Inception thing pre Inception thing yeah but he would
00:41:30
he he'd been taking steroids and he'd got busted for having steroids on him
00:41:36
because he'd been doing the movie again so he had to bulk up and so there was a
00:41:39
bit of controversy around that I think they were not going to let him into the country for bringing in illegal drugs at
00:41:43
the time and he was wearing like cuz he's a tiny man he was wearing little like
00:41:51
platform Runners that were probably three or 4 inches these sort of High Heeled Spice Girl type Runners which was
00:41:56
interesting but then you know like he just we making he did that film Tango and cash with
00:42:02
Kurt Russ right America had a fixation with the movie or whatever like for whatever reason liked it and so he
00:42:09
brought the movie up and then he just sort of went like just sort of completely deep on it and he went
00:42:16
all oh that was a bad idea I should have taken the Kurt Russell role they offered
00:42:22
me that but we were trying to change my image I was wearing the glosses playing the straight man bad move oh so that
00:42:29
that wasn't the movie he was promoting that was like no that was like a that
00:42:32
was like a movie from 1985 like cut deep yeah still cut deep it's like dude it's
00:42:38
in the rear Vision M I watched it on VHS in 1985 you know move on I can't I think
00:42:44
it was it must have been Rocky 17 or something that he promoted nice guy but he was sort of he was he was he was
00:42:52
quite humble and that that moment really shocked me but those earlier days sort of pre- inter
00:42:58
they were a bit more open like I remember chatting to Jody Foster who was lovely and she was quite unreserved she
00:43:06
was she was speaking quite open unguarded she really unguarded and I think you know two years on the other
00:43:12
side of that she would have been completely different but I remember being quite surprised I was quite taken
00:43:16
by her actually yeah I was I always found that like um an artist at the beginning of
00:43:22
their career someone that comes to mind is um like Charlie poth you know Charlie
00:43:25
poth the singer no don't no the first time he really taken off has he she hasn't made it to Australia yet
00:43:33
obviously um we had an interview with him in the early stages of his career and he was talking about yeah which
00:43:39
which Jina girl had likeed to date the most then we had him on a year later he was just jaded yeah like obious
00:43:45
obviously had said some stuff in interviews that have come back to haunt him or bite him in the ass and they
00:43:49
become guarded yeah there was always a few of them you'd get early on the career that um it's wonderful yeah and
00:43:54
then then you and they'd come into the studio and then wise you're in a hotel
00:43:58
room interviewing them but I I I did a sketch with Will Ferell that was cool and what was that um so i' met him a few
00:44:07
times we got him quite well and then we got him into when I was doing a show for
00:44:12
foxel and Merrick couldn't do the interview he had I can't remember what
00:44:16
happened but so I thought I'll I'll do this thing where I'm auditioning people
00:44:21
for new comedy partners and we'll audition will Ferell to do that um just by luck heish and Andy were in the
00:44:28
building doing something with him as well and I said can you be part of it as well so I think you know they they came
00:44:33
in and you know one by one to audition first and like said no you're not good
00:44:37
enough and then you know will frell came in and he was great you know that was quite was quite a buzz I'm not going to
00:44:43
say the sketch was amazing cuz if it was that amazing you would have seen it because it would be all over Tik Tok but
00:44:48
um yeah but this was this was sort of pre yeah but I mean someone would have posted or whatever but it was but you
00:44:53
know like so when I'm watching you know some movie like Step Brothers or something with my kids and
00:44:59
then realizing it's actually content's not quite right have to turn it off but you know or they're
00:45:04
watching Elfie God you know Dad did a sketch with him once dad met him I met him you know they don't care but you
00:45:11
know yeah it's cool okay Dad cool a lot about well fi though and and and for
00:45:16
those years he'd you know he'd come back and you know and go hey Russell you know
00:45:20
which is nice you know which you didn't have to and um the Charlie's Angels cast
00:45:25
you had a memorable experience with them right so that was um Drew Barry Cameron Diaz
00:45:30
and Lucy Lucy Lou yeah and it's big it's a big lineup yeah and they were hot and
00:45:37
amazing and it was the big film remember that was huge that Rive I think the film
00:45:42
was [ __ ] but I can't remember um but they were sort of cool and one of them
00:45:46
you know they we used it a promo for years but it was um who were the three again Lucy louon Diaz Diaz
00:45:58
Diaz looked at Merrick and said I wonder if you've got a big [ __ ] or I think I bet he's got a big
00:46:07
[ __ ] and so yeah I mean that thing they were playing every two minutes or something yeah for years but it was a
00:46:14
big moment of course they wouldn't say it today but they absolutely not not and
00:46:19
also you know there was a rich tradition of you know celebrities coming up and go
00:46:24
out and going oh it doesn't matter like no one's ever going to hear it out here
00:46:28
you know be on radio once and you know you talk about stuff in Australia that you wouldn't talk about and the you know
00:46:34
like some about Boe used to come out to Australia and you know spend his sumers there and Elton John would in the 80s
00:46:40
you know got married there on a whim you know this to a lady you're lady yeah and
00:46:45
they didn't have enough French champagne in the country for his wedding that's
00:46:48
how backward everything was then um because there was no Paparazzi and there you could do whatever you wanted with
00:46:54
whoever you wanted without anyone really realizing so um it was quite an interesting experience but
00:47:01
they some of them were more interested in the country I always thought it was and we're
00:47:06
interested in the Dynamics of what was going on I always thought it was fascinating that pink used to spend so
00:47:10
much time in Australia and but still really didn't know anything about the country um whereas other people would
00:47:16
would come and they remember who everyone was and they'd be deeply interested in how can pink not know like
00:47:22
she she she'll go to Australia now she'll do like 50 days yeah but I think
00:47:25
whatever version of Australia she lived in she wasn't didn't she was just busy
00:47:29
and whatever not I just think I mean she was always Pleasant um really pleasant but I she wasn't wasn't a person who was
00:47:36
she she had a shtick and she talk about VB you know and that and that sort of stuff a couple of cultural but not not
00:47:42
nothing out of a deer but you know she didn't need to she was you know selling every everyone went and saw
00:47:48
those tours yeah 100% And they still do like she'll do eight dates and Perth or
00:47:52
something it's crazy what about um Kathy Griffith so she's the comedian she
00:47:57
the most famous iist reference point for who is like holding up a uh like a Donald Trump's head yeah yeah yeah
00:48:04
Donald Trump's head in a in an Instagram post and she got canceled for that but I
00:48:07
think she sort of bounced back was was your you had a memorable interaction with her yeah I mean she was asking
00:48:13
about we're doing a phone interview it was a pre record and she was asking about Australian sayings and there's a
00:48:21
very famous Australian play called Don's party uh from the 1970s and sort of um
00:48:29
you know sort of M toxic M culture and there's this character in it called coie
00:48:34
and he's famous opening words they turned into a movie I studied at University but Don opens up the door for
00:48:40
this party for the 1969 election and and and coie says to Don get a [ __ ] features right and
00:48:54
so well I don't know what's happening Kathy Griffin's coming to Australia on
00:48:58
tour she goes I need to know some of I need to I need I need to know some of the local Australian words and so we
00:49:04
just did that as a joke you know we're never going to put it to where no didn't think anything more of
00:49:09
it few years later I was in America and I Kathy Griffin has this show called my life on the D list cable
00:49:19
show and she is interviewing Olivia Newton John you know fabulous Australian dear departed Olivia Newton
00:49:28
John they sit down for the chat and she says oh I've heard you know um Olivia
00:49:35
I've I've heard that you know I've been doing a bit of research about Australian
00:49:40
welcomes and apparently a very popular one is to say get a [ __ ] features and I was like oh my God to
00:49:49
Sandy from Greece De John and then I years later I interviewed I interviewed her and not
00:49:57
Kathy again for the first time I met Olivia Newton John and I apologized I said I'm you're the reason that Kathy
00:50:04
Griffin said get a [ __ ] features did she remember you'd remember that she must
00:50:07
have remembered the oh she remembered it yeah she remembered it she didn't blame
00:50:11
me for it but and but she didn't I mean she's very she's a lovely woman I
00:50:16
shouldn't have brought it up but I wanted some sort of closure for it but it was very peculiar thing to happen and
00:50:22
like cuz I had no idea that it happened I you know show I think the show ran astray but no watched it but then I just
00:50:27
managed to catch it and I was like by chance that's amazing by chance yeah that's incredible and what about um I
00:50:33
think they play they played the audio of the that's what she was because it was a
00:50:36
you know observation oh they were recording on her end her end yeah and so it went from that going oh [ __ ] we're on
00:50:42
the TV show to her using it me saying good I can't features that's amazing
00:50:46
that must have been yeah how did that feel sitting in a hotel room in America seeing that was it quite satisfying or I
00:50:52
was so embar I was deeply embarrassed by it you were done with radio by by you know I wasn't really comfortable
00:50:58
about saying it on your show but you know you I work out whether you're going
00:51:01
to bleep it or not that' be an interesting question for you won't it bleep it absolutely not okay unless you
00:51:06
want unless you request it um what let me think about it whether I approve any of the content we're doing oh when you
00:51:11
go you that's I've stopped doing any editing I I I I edited it but I found
00:51:16
all I was editing out was my stutters and stumbles and I'd get to the end of a
00:51:20
an editing session I'd just be full of self-loathing and why bother you but if
00:51:25
the guest wants anything taken out I will um oh what about um one of the nicest new zealanders imaginable I don't
00:51:32
think there's anyone that doesn't like this person um you were MC at Sam Neil
00:51:37
and an Australian Guy Brian Brown's 6th birthday party yeah we talked our way
00:51:43
into that um how do you talk your way into him seeing someone's 60th birthday
00:51:47
part I think I can't remember it was Brian or S must have been Brian was on the show for some
00:51:52
reason and we just s be Brian Brown um I'm just trying to a reference point probably probably the Tom Cruz movie
00:51:58
Cocktail yeah cocktail was the big one for him and oh God you name it just Google um but you know he he did FX
00:52:04
remember that movie American Special Effects movie yeah I mean he done anyway absolute Legend yeah and I can't
00:52:12
remember how it all happened but I think we sent an email we said we just invited
00:52:17
ourselves to do it on air or something and then we got an email from his assistant or something and said yeah do
00:52:22
you want to you know MC 60th and then we didn't really think about about the
00:52:28
implications of that I'm not sure that we did a great job what you what do you
00:52:32
mean what do you mean the implications well I just don't think we were that prepared for it right um yeah because it
00:52:37
was was like a it was like a festival there Wasa there Tim Neil morrris yep they were all there um and I remember we
00:52:46
sort of I remember Sam being quite upset because bck was about to sing or something and everyone was talking and I
00:52:52
think he felt like not everyone knew it was was as aware of some of the other guests or something weren't as
00:52:58
famous in Australia as as the um as the as the Finn brothers or whatever it was a great night but I think I think we
00:53:06
just turned up and I went oh my God you know there's all these people here and
00:53:09
lots of auss these celebrities and I was like oh oopsy yeah we weren't terrible
00:53:12
but you know Sam still Sam will still reply to my emails from time to time is that so [ __ ] he's he's a he's a great
00:53:19
news he's a lovely guy he's an architecture nut is he yeah but he's making just making wines with his uh two
00:53:26
pedics no I was on a I was I got an email out of the blue from him one day um I'd gone to see some building in
00:53:33
France and he'd been to see it so fam Emil oh he's he's a fake AR architect
00:53:40
like you yeah he's exactly the same he doesn't ever degree or any P just lik
00:53:44
looking at building likes looking at buildings so he sort of mildly mildly uh bonded on that yeah oh how good what
00:53:51
about Russell cry what were your interactions with him you used to do you you look a lot bit like Russell Crow
00:53:57
you've got the same sort of I suppose tone or Cadence of spe for a period of
00:54:01
time that you know I used to get we had similar haircuts and whatever and so we thought we'd use it to our
00:54:09
advantage and so we were doing a TV show and I would dress up as Russell CRA even
00:54:13
though I'm much shorter than Russell you're like rabido Jersey and because he
00:54:16
wore the same thing all the time at that um yeah he wore the because he thought if I wear my rabbito jersey in the same
00:54:24
cap every time they can't sell the photos cuz they look the same as every other photo which is really clever which
00:54:29
made it really easy to impersonate him and we went to America First up and we did a whole bunch of things where I was
00:54:34
going into music stores and you know pretending to buy guitars and stuff like that and then like saying you're Russell
00:54:40
Crow CR yeah yeah and just playing really [ __ ] songs and stuff and there's
00:54:44
one one sketch in particular that I I remember was stand out for me so you'd
00:54:48
be um dressed as Russell Crow baby stroller this is when you had a baby and fans would stop you for autographs and
00:54:54
you'd let the prayer down hell you end up in a pond yeah no we're at Bondo Beach and yeah stopped to
00:55:02
say hi Russell and then I just there's nothing in the pram and then I just let
00:55:05
the pram go and every and then like it made the paper that Russell Crow had let you know almost killed his child at the
00:55:13
beach he find it funny that could have backfired no and then no actually cuz that we that was the first sketch we did
00:55:19
and so and then he sent me a note saying if you're going to do it you need the
00:55:25
proper gear and he sent me his own hat and his own you know Russell Crow top and so we he was sort of interested
00:55:32
in us for a while and then he rang up one day and um he goes well get out it's
00:55:38
Russell here just um going up to Cops Harbor because he's got this Farm there's going to be a few of us it's
00:55:44
just going to be me Kevin spacy Chris Christopherson and you guys and I was like okay and then we
00:55:53
couldn't go we had to work and we never went but I mean then you hear stories
00:55:57
and it's not just him there's a million other people that go as well but it was
00:56:00
it was pretty surreal yeah that's amazing but you know and I love Chris christofferson I think it would and
00:56:05
Kevin Spacey well you know um that would have been interesting yeah or you you would have been safe you were well out
00:56:10
of his demogr by then um W touch that um and I haven't thought about this stuff
00:56:15
for years it's interesting you bringing up yeah well this is what I like about
00:56:18
the podcast like a couple of my guests have said to me I like you know great greatest Greatest Hits and and sort of
00:56:22
greatest shits as well like the good and the bad that everyone has in their life
00:56:25
um but it's nice to reflect on this the stuff sometimes it's something that uh I
00:56:29
think especially if you've got like a growth mindset which you you definitely
00:56:31
do you're always looking forward so you never forward yeah I mean this time I'm
00:56:35
I'm a nostalgic person but not necessarily about you're more nostalgic I think about things yeah I am more
00:56:42
nostalgic about things rather than you know it's like your your house is amazing because it's almost like a
00:56:48
museum it's like a house that's stuck in time and the best photos of me and sylv
00:56:54
I mean like the the dinner sets have and the furniture and everything it's all
00:56:58
like from sort 1950s but it doesn't look like a house where you've got two boys
00:57:01
running around no they're not to touch anything they're not allowed to touch
00:57:05
any they learned the hard way jug cord bang um so you so why did you end up calling it on the radio show you guys
00:57:13
weren't push day like you you decided to end the American Rosso relationship it
00:57:18
was just what was the straw that broke the camel's back paying off paying off
00:57:22
your mortgage or was there like a a moment on the a where you're like h i just can't do this anymore I think at
00:57:28
some stage I got to the point where um that sort of Showbiz cycle that was huge and um and I was re-referencing things
00:57:40
and you know you'd be talking about some movie that was you know you pretended to
00:57:43
be younger than you really are which was part of it and it's so is the world was
00:57:47
sort of pulling me in another way and you know America and I had lived a lifetime together in a short period of
00:57:52
time we did a lot we did too much we were done breakfast radio and TV shows running you know production company
00:57:58
working live and yeah and I mean it's just sort of there was sort of you know not
00:58:04
everything can go on forever and you know I'm incredibly proud of that time and it's just meds you know we've got
00:58:11
that for us forever but it was it was it was it was time and um you know and and
00:58:20
enabled me to truly just to do what I wanted to do and but there must have be been terrifying terrifying I suppose I'm
00:58:28
predicting here it's a golden handcuff situation yeah I mean I you know I had
00:58:33
half an act and I just didn't want to do half an act so I had to start again and
00:58:36
I mean I went back to radio a few years later after that um you know in a couple
00:58:41
of different you know when I had my second child um so I was at home and I quite enjoyed that and um and doing it
00:58:49
in a different way it was really interesting I did like I went did a breakfast show didn't work so well but
00:58:54
then I did a drive show K and Jack came to I was at the station that turned into
00:59:00
kiss um and um I did the drive show with them uh which I quite enjoyed it was nice to see what they did but I did it
00:59:09
with Matt basley who was who who used to been my panel operator when I was at Nova and so he knew all my tricks and
00:59:16
everything and it was it it didn't have the high moments of working with MES you
00:59:22
know um Mees is hysterical you know like on his day you won't me a funniest per
00:59:29
funnier person um but enabled we because we didn't have we couldn't rely on that
00:59:35
sort of manness of what meds and I had you know we had to craft it a lot more and in many ways it was
00:59:42
probably uh it was the best execute it might not have been the funniest but it was the
00:59:48
best executed show had the best ideas had the best thought processes in some ways it didn't
00:59:54
have you know those the you know Mercurial moments that American Roso show had but yeah I
01:00:02
was really proud of that too and that you know that show went to number one as well and so and I I was quite I was
01:00:06
quite proud of in my in my radio career um in that part of my life that I had a number one breakfast show on a
01:00:16
number one drive show in Sydney and you know and that's that's rare yeah oh it
01:00:20
really is it's something to be proud of actually if you if you Google uh Tim
01:00:24
Ross um you know Google comes up with a bunch of I suppose frequently asked questions one of the top ones is what
01:00:30
happened to him what happened to well that is that is number one number two why did amican Roso split and
01:00:38
uh you click on that this is the a paragraph of the answer here when they parted have you read this by the way or
01:00:45
you know this I don't know I find out when they parted ways in 2009 mer said
01:00:49
this has nothing to do with Rosso and I not liking each other no fights there's
01:00:52
no carry-on there's nothing like that however other sour in the radio industry
01:00:56
said at the time that Tim was jealous of mir's success as a solo performer yeah there was more to it than
01:01:05
that I mean um no I can't I've forgotten about that yeah but I mean that's like
01:01:09
the that's the gossip page of stuff and I think that was I yeah I read that just yesterday
01:01:17
I've never known you to have a jealous phone there not enough reason to um to to not not continue with something
01:01:24
I think it's ludicrous but um no I think I mean I I supposed don't really think
01:01:28
about it it was a long time ago and [Music] um the My you know and part of it I can't you
01:01:39
know like I describe it once we're doing it and then we weren't you know like in
01:01:48
um we the best way is like I said before is is that we we put too much into everything I was always incredibly
01:01:57
jealous of those bands that could write a record then tour and then go and do their own thing for a while M and we we
01:02:06
just never had that option and it was our it was all our own doing um and I think if we W weren't
01:02:15
doing breakfast radio we could have gone and made some really interesting TV shows or we could have toured live MH
01:02:21
and um just the day to day of doing what we're doing and um you know I fell I fell out of
01:02:29
love with it and it showed yeah I think you just get exhausted don't you it's
01:02:33
very few people that would understand it but when you've done this radio for a
01:02:36
while you and and the show had changed and the time had changed um they bought in someone else to the show and that
01:02:43
didn't that that made it that changed the dynamic as well so we couldn't do
01:02:48
exactly what we wanted to do and it's just was that was that a consultant's
01:02:53
idea I don't I can't you know like they just exercise in compromise and so
01:03:00
I always say and this is it makes total sense for you like you you rattle off all those people that you meet you meet
01:03:06
everyone but no one and in the time that I've stopped doing radio the people I've
01:03:12
met people and you properly meet people and you hear their stories you become friends with them but that you know like
01:03:18
a radio you don't so you you meet people in a in in a room and you've got two
01:03:23
other people in there trying to get their little bit in or one other person and so if you're deeply interested in
01:03:27
people it's really unsatisfying and you know the world was pulling me in another
01:03:31
Direction um and uh you know and and that Direction's been you know been amazing
01:03:41
yeah which is um which is what you're doing now um and you've done for for
01:03:44
many years um a comedy series called man about the house uh where you combine uh
01:03:50
your I suppose talent for stand-up comedy with your love of architecture so you select houses um usually
01:03:58
modernist 1950s yeah all all eras eras I started doing sort of the modernist you
01:04:03
1950s and 60s houses cuz that's my thing and I like architecture and you fill it
01:04:08
up with people it's like a house party week and you know see a see a show with
01:04:13
my best mate kit um and it's great it's a fantastic thing to do um but you know
01:04:20
that just branched out to all sorts of things being able to do TV shows and do and um create exhibitions write books
01:04:30
anything design and architecture Focus which has always been my love you know I I collect furniture since I was in my
01:04:36
20s and um you know I still do the funnies but there's always comedy associated with stuff and my latest show
01:04:42
that I'm doing in houses is got very little architecture at all I've just
01:04:45
gone back to doing writing funny songs and telling funny stories which I think is really important so you know you
01:04:52
don't it's just doing it using comedy to tell stories that I think important yeah
01:04:56
it's it's been I'm I'm incredibly proud of you and it's been it's been it's been
01:05:00
really good to watch this um it's [ __ ] it's [ __ ] weird people don't
01:05:04
understand it but it makes sense for me and and I don't know like I I oh no no
01:05:08
but it it it is weird and it's so unique and so different but you've um you've
01:05:11
made it work and you've been grafting away it for a long time yeah but it's
01:05:14
completely different to what you were you doing and I think I remember when I um you when I
01:05:21
when I stopped working with Mays you know I did a couple of couple of things and I did TV show that didn't work so
01:05:26
well and you I didn't quite know what my Act was um and then I just sort of I chucked
01:05:32
out all my material and I started again and you know worked out what I really wanted to do and and then you know years
01:05:40
later I'd sort of I was doing all this design stuff and doing shows and houses
01:05:45
and I was doing a little travel you know going to America with it going to the UK
01:05:49
with it and I met this guy called um am Demetrius and his um Grandparents were Charles and Ray famous American
01:05:56
furniture designers and he gave me a book when I saw him in LA to have a cup of coffee and and then that book was a
01:06:03
series of quotes from his grandfather and I opened up on the first page and the quote was you know um take your
01:06:10
pleasure seriously and I'm not a big fan of quotes you know you know there's
01:06:15
always people got [ __ ] I know you do but you don't like people I got this mate as a personal
01:06:20
trainer and he's got his you know you know fatest what's he what's the quotes
01:06:24
like um yeah sweat is your is your fat crying you know it's all that rubbish you know
01:06:30
pain is weakness there's no need to share them I know you do a lot a lot of quotes it's
01:06:35
um often it's a penny drop moment because it's it's a way to um often
01:06:39
explain a complex yeah and important I I have done you know I mentioned one at the start about you know comparison
01:06:45
being the thief of all joy which is really they're really important but the the idea was um you know take your
01:06:51
pleasure seriously and what Ames meant by that was that we often give too much to the things that
01:06:58
don't and I would constantly say I met people who used to play the piano they
01:07:01
used to ski you know man of people go I used to scar I don't do it anymore I
01:07:04
used to paint but I haven't painted for 20 years and our guilty secret is always
01:07:09
we give our jobs far more than we should and the things that we love we don't
01:07:12
give them the respect we deserve and so and then I realized that what what had happened was
01:07:18
that you know in that process of meeting am Demetrius I'd done exactly that I'd
01:07:23
been taking my pleasure seriously the things that I love I just like life is short and people who work in the media
01:07:30
so addicted to having a job or you know but you know i' when I my last my last
01:07:39
radio gig I read it recently you know the headline was you know Rosso was happy to be
01:07:46
sacked and I was because I'd had a I had a documentary up my sleeve I'd been to
01:07:52
America doing this show I liked Broadcasting I was a really good broadcaster but I I don't I don't fit
01:08:00
well in radio stations like I don't like having a job I I I believe that you know
01:08:06
part of you dies when as soon as you have a swipe card in your life so you know like um so yeah to be able to go
01:08:14
and do something else and in that article I was rereading it cuz my mother-in-law was going going through a
01:08:20
whole bunch of stuff and she'd cut it out you know there was no [ __ ] about
01:08:24
what I wanted to do I happy to say that I was happy that they decided not to sign a contract a relief or yeah because
01:08:32
I didn't I I had you just just indifference I I was out growing the job and I wanted to do it successfully you
01:08:41
know like I really liked the craft of radio more than anything else I liked putting things together but you can do
01:08:48
that with anything you know they're the things I liked I like telling stories on
01:08:52
air but I can tell stories anywhere but I you know I didn't like I've been really
01:08:58
blessed with M cuz we've been successful for a long time and no one really told us what to
01:09:04
do and then I when I went back to radio when um you know I was working on a show
01:09:10
that didn't do very well and like they just stick us in a room at the end of
01:09:15
after the shift and you weren't allowed to leave you didn't have a window and
01:09:19
you weren't allowed to leave until you came up with content ideas for the next
01:09:23
day and was ludicrous you know like the the content it's not how creativity Works doesn't work you know um and I
01:09:30
said I don't want to be part of that and you know like I think remember doing and
01:09:35
the and the and your and your privacy goes out the window mining your life you know I shouldn't known what JJ's boobs
01:09:41
look like but I do because of your [ __ ] radio show you know um but but so you and it
01:09:49
becomes taken for granted that you have to M your personal life and your friends and every weekend
01:09:56
where you're listening to stories and you're wondering oh I'm going to tell
01:09:59
that story and suddenly story someone told you to barbecue talk back and um and that's cool for a period of time but
01:10:04
it's not for me forever and and you know talking about your kids you know you end up that would
01:10:15
would have been on the and I started doing that when they were little but I wouldn't I wouldn't it's not fair on
01:10:20
them the way you have to and this particular program director is just doing his job but you we're doing this
01:10:25
thing on bullying and the irony of it was you know and I'd mentioned that you know I'd been bullied
01:10:33
at school and then there was I was basically bullied into talking about it on air because you can cuz the more you
01:10:40
care the more the more you share the more they care yeah and it's exploitative yeah and you and you you're
01:10:46
um you're sort of selling your soul in away once once you've once you've got
01:10:48
the stuff out you can't you can't take it back and I probably regret that in a
01:10:52
way I mean it's a it's a necessity in a way I can see why they encourage you're
01:10:56
all to and no one has any sympathy for breakfast announcers that do whatever you do yeah um but they
01:11:04
don't yeah it's you know it's it's a good gig for a period of time it's funny
01:11:09
my um my partner now she's not from a radio household um I was driving her to
01:11:13
work one day in the car and we were listening to a radio show here in New Zealand and um they they told a story
01:11:18
that was to me clearly fake you know how you have to you have to we had an old Australian boss Ryan he said oh nothing
01:11:24
wrong with adding GST a story like basically giving and they this guy who I know reasonably well and he would never
01:11:30
do this he talked about driving home from a meeting and he was busting for a poo so there was an open home so we
01:11:35
stopped down and went for poo um but my girlfriend was like when you were on radio like did you do [ __ ]
01:11:41
Yarns like this and I actually got into defensive mate I was like listen in respect to these guys like you have to
01:11:47
come up with like 20 stories like this everyone's making stuff up or remembering stuffing or reusing things
01:11:53
or um it is exhausting yeah and like it's great but yeah like this this the world's full of other things to do and
01:12:02
um the world's are far more interesting and and also you know like radio isn't
01:12:07
what it what it was and so no well go well going full circle to like when you were talking about Triple J and the uh
01:12:14
the promotion you did with 3,000 people turned up um you just you're not you're
01:12:18
not getting that now no one's getting that now no unless you got Taylor Swift
01:12:21
coming to do a live show or that you you know some YouTube sensation you don't
01:12:25
know get a bunch of you know but also uh you know I'm not 27 anymore so you know
01:12:31
you shouldn't get 3,000 people turning up for anything you at that at my age I
01:12:36
came over to Australia for your wedding you're still married to Michelle yeah
01:12:40
yeah yeah I've been married to Michelle for 16 17 years or something yeah yeah I
01:12:43
I I came to came to you winning I was sitting next to Kate Richie who you sit next to Kate Richie see there you go
01:12:49
yeah at a moment did you get a story out of that oh yeah talked about that when I
01:12:53
came back home yeah yeah see you would have done a bit of gear on that yeah it was good she was in home and away like
01:13:00
yeah so she was she big star um how old are the kids now so you got Bugsy and bugs just gone into you seven so he's 12
01:13:07
and bobb's just turned 10 and he's having a I'm in New Zealand and he's
01:13:13
having his birthday party with like 11 boys in the backyard camping and I've
01:13:19
escaped it I should be there for it but how did you well he you know what happened was he wanted to do it this
01:13:24
particular week as close to his birthday as possible his birthday's on Australia
01:13:27
Day so it's always a holiday um and he didn't want to wait until I'm not
01:13:31
touring or whatever and so my mother-in-law's coming over Michelle's doing the whole lot I'm sort
01:13:38
of pretending that totally um they're very cute kids and you guys are doing a
01:13:44
great job raising them I'm not sure if it was Bugsy or Bobby but um I was over
01:13:48
in Sydney for something a few years ago when Bugsy or Bobby whenever they were like maybe three or four um you met me
01:13:55
the hotel for some brunch and just out of the blue he was like um I think he was holding like a little stuffed
01:14:01
[ __ ] koala or what and he was like oh this is a koala it's a mupi or the nocturnal and and I remember saying to
01:14:06
you but your kids are [ __ ] genius and you're like no no no can you remember
01:14:10
what you said yeah you teach them one thing yeah teach them like one one big word or one fun fact fun fact and they
01:14:17
just roll it out you know that old addage mate don't change your material change your
01:14:21
audience how good so what are you doing here what what is uh big enough to and important milestone in your kids
01:14:27
life I'm I'm going to napia for the first time uh Deco City yeah um I'm here uh
01:14:34
with my friend Kevin McLoud from Grand designs and um he one of the people you know who I met through my you know so
01:14:41
many people have met through architecture and design and he's on tour uh he starts on a couple of days and so
01:14:47
he said oh look we're just sort of hanging out in Sydney and he before that he said do you want to do you want to go
01:14:51
to napon I'd never been and um so we go to that and I've also been organizing
01:14:56
for us to do some House tours and there's um John Scott who's one of your
01:15:00
great Architects his own house is in Hawks Bay and so it's it's a wonderful
01:15:05
thing about your country is that you know like I I know these people through Instagram and so was just messaging some
01:15:12
that I've met some that I have in here in New Zealand Architects architect lovers photographers and I was talking
01:15:19
to this particular person said I reckon there's any houses we can we can get in
01:15:24
to see this you know by this architect John Scott and they said oh this one should be fine um here's their
01:15:32
email I love you guys don't introduce people do you in emails you just give you an email and just go oh yeah here
01:15:37
they go just email them yeah I always do I do really do other people not do that yeah I've
01:15:43
noticed a lot em them C just give them the email so I just emailed this woman and just said oh look you know my name's
01:15:49
Tim David gave me her email you know we just wondering whether we could I'm an
01:15:54
architecture fan you know and you know from Googles or whatever and I got an email straight back and she said you
01:15:59
know yeah no problems come over and I haven't told it Kevin's coming oh but she'll love that though
01:16:05
right well I I didn't want to I didn't want to drop his name to think that's I didn't want
01:16:10
Kevin to think that I dropped his name to get into the house I wanted to prove that you know I could call call someone
01:16:15
in New Zealand you can get a house on your own and then I thought well if I then I talked to him about it and I was
01:16:20
like if I tell I should spend two days cleaning up the house but she did suggest that it's full of Lego anyway
01:16:26
and it's not but then I'm I cannot wait to see the look on her face when she
01:16:31
opens up the door cuz all she knows is I'm coming along with a couple of friends so yeah we're going to do that
01:16:35
and um you know maybe do some we've been talking about doing some podcast stuff
01:16:38
we might do that depends on how many wines everyone has and that well how did you you you don't drink wines anymore
01:16:44
though right you um you've been alcohol free for a couple of years I'll be I'll
01:16:47
be D I'll be the I'll be the driver right how what was the Catalyst for going uh going just you know you get B
01:16:54
of it or you know when you run over the next door neighbor's cat when you're
01:16:57
blind no no I I I I like a lot of people you know you drink start drinking a lot in
01:17:07
your 20s and is a bad habit you get into and you don't stop and it's been a huge
01:17:11
part of my life in terms of working live and being a comedian and you can and um
01:17:16
this wasn't feeling great and I stopped for a little while just to get my health
01:17:20
back into TR check just didn't miss it and then i' haven't missed it ever since
01:17:24
it wasn't hard I didn't find it hard to give up I didn't get the shakes or have
01:17:28
to be locked in a rumor or anything but yeah I just it's just um you my my age
01:17:33
and it's much more common now like very few people give me a hard time about it
01:17:37
but you know 10 years ago if you gave up the booze you know you're on Australian
01:17:41
yeah I was listening to an audio book just last week about Wayne Bennett you know the famous Australian Coach and
01:17:46
he's been he's in his 70s now he's been sober his whole life I can't imagine
01:17:50
what it was like being a league coach in the' 60s 7s or ' 80s and saying no I
01:17:54
don't I don't but if you never have it's like you never have but if you were
01:17:57
suddenly that person and I was always drinking you know like I you remember where I was doing this in the early days
01:18:04
of podcasting we americ and I came over here and we were doing like a podcast a live show live podcast meet your
01:18:10
audience and you yeah and there was like five people came to this joint in Pon penbury or wherever it was you know yeah
01:18:15
yeah malt and and greyland by the way this is like um I suppose 15 years ago so this is this is be probably before
01:18:22
Joe Rogan even had a podcast wasn't even really at the time that was the the
01:18:27
charts the podcast charts or the Apple podcast was the only chart then it was like Ricky jaas and we were number two
01:18:32
with this thing called we had called Original pirate material and cuz what I I lik that we could go out of the studio
01:18:38
after 9:00 and just do whatever we wanted so we started this new podcast cuz I really felt that there was
01:18:43
something creatively interesting that we could do and you could do prank calls and you could swear and you could do
01:18:47
whatever you wanted to do and then we started getting emails from people like who were listening in New Zealand and
01:18:51
then we thought oh why don't we just fly over and we did a podcast on the plane
01:18:55
on the way over and we did you know you were on a you podcast at the pub and you
01:18:59
know the five people turned up that listened to the podcast and it was there's something really cool about it
01:19:05
um and then the radio station got funny about it that thought we were putting too much effort into the podcast and N
01:19:11
enough into the show cannibalizing your radio show yeah and whereas I I thought they were great companion pieces 100%
01:19:17
And you know you wouldn't do an hour you would do 15 minutes and um sometimes we'
01:19:23
you know get guests so and I remember where Pete helier and and Ro mcmanis were feeling in for us when Mez and I
01:19:32
went on holidays and we asked them if they could keep doing this original pirate material as well and they really
01:19:37
loved it as well they went oh this is really this is really interesting and because you could get some feedback and
01:19:44
you might get 10 emails a day but there was some there what you couldn't do calls but you would get some feedback
01:19:50
and people really started to like it and people could listen all over the world and you weren't wasn't about music or
01:19:57
celebrity or whatever and probably should have gone but you know um I think I had a pretty
01:20:04
reasonable knack for understanding what was what was in the Zeitgeist or what was about to
01:20:10
happen um we did a similar thing like I loved with in the in the days of my space and you remember how you could put
01:20:17
a song up your favorite song up upload we used to do a thing called the top seven remember there was the top seven
01:20:24
people top seven friends yeah yeah yeah and Tom my my was one one and so what we
01:20:29
would do is we would randomly get people from our Myspace followers and put them
01:20:34
in our top seven and then every week this before podcasting we' do a top seven show so we would record in the
01:20:40
studio we just go to those seven people and look at their pages and sort of character assassinate them and talk
01:20:46
about their [ __ ] chased and music and then we would uploaded as a little thing
01:20:49
to listen to which was sort of cute so there were there that shift around around you know 2006 2007 where you sort
01:20:59
of YouTube came into play and there was suddenly it appeared to me that there was just a a different chance to do
01:21:06
different things in different ways which I still do to this day like I'm very
01:21:10
driven by the idea of doing things differently and being fresh and being Progressive in the way that that I that
01:21:18
I make my content yeah I I like that I like that a lot on um yeah I um learned this yesterday when
01:21:26
I was doing some research for this but um yeah you lost your mom a couple of years ago yeah how how's how's you dead
01:21:32
I I met I met your mom at your wedding but I I know you did quite well because you've taken him on holidays to New
01:21:37
Zealand and stuff is he okay yeah no dad's terrible thank you um yeah now dad's got Alzheimer's and he's in a home
01:21:44
and it's horrific mate it's the worst how old is he now dad's 86 or 87 or
01:21:49
something um both my parents had it and Mom mom escaped the worst of it but Dad is
01:21:57
you know doesn't talk and it's it's terrible but he he left me all these
01:22:02
things you know like he was putting everything into place before he you know completely lost his mind but I found a
01:22:08
diary entry from that time and because we we were taking abroad a trip we I took him to eastar Island because he
01:22:15
always wanted to go when he was a kid for his 70th and so we on the way we came here and you know caught up with
01:22:20
you and and JJ and had had a lovely dinner and um Dad wrote in his sort of very very you
01:22:27
know simple and notes as a sort of travel diary you know caught up with Tim's friends Dom and JJ lots of radio
01:22:38
talk oh that's all it would have what a punish could being you know the the loss
01:22:46
of my mother you know um wow nothing prepared me for that really no no it's so you were how old
01:22:56
win died like 40 no was 50 50 but you know like I think that that's a blessing
01:23:01
right if you can get to 50 yeah it was more about I mean knew was kind it's just i' hadn't felt the grief like that
01:23:08
and was um I was glad I was sober I I found the beauty in the grief someone sort of told me that it was you
01:23:16
know you get all these wonderful emails when you're in this situation you friends come out of
01:23:21
nowhere and someone had said to me that uh you know I I see it as my dad's final
01:23:30
gift and because when those early days of the grief with the Deep gutural there's this enormous sense of
01:23:39
love that I could only compare to you know having a child or um interviewing Sylvester
01:23:47
Stallone um both both very memorable moments no some ofar side too no so and I and I I
01:23:57
love that idea of finding the Beauty and the grief and I what does that mean um because of that there is this sort
01:24:07
of in this deep despair you understand how much you love that person with all your
01:24:17
heart and it's um it's a it's a it's a deep feeling in your soul
01:24:25
um and I was putting together all the photos for Mom for the funeral it's like oh
01:24:32
watching it over and over again you know every time you check it for glitches or
01:24:36
whatever and think oh what music am I going to use is that going to be too much is that um and I'm
01:24:43
just go for a walk go for a run cry cry watching my brothers you know grown men beautiful
01:24:51
men just falling a piece and they both spoke so beautifully did you um and then watching
01:24:58
a sun you know helping put push the casket out yeah it's it's a great order of
01:25:05
things though isn't it yeah um and then and then it sort of and then you then
01:25:11
you realize yeah you're it you're the top of the tree um and I think I I think I spent
01:25:20
you know a lot of time trying to trying to make my mom happy make it proud of me she was she was you
01:25:26
know she was incredibly successful academically incredibly bright woman you she was a doctor
01:25:33
and um and I felt for a long time took me a long time to get my [ __ ] together to do what I was doing how how do you
01:25:41
mean you've always sort of had your [ __ ] oh no not you know it took me it took me
01:25:44
five six years to finish University I got kicked out of one University um and then when I you know I
01:25:52
was lucky enough to make a couple of documentaries that were on the national broadcas and which she loved and my
01:25:59
father loved when my father was still making sense you know I sat down and watched one of them with him and
01:26:07
involved me going back to our old Family Home and um which was quite moving and I'm like I'm tearing up on screen and
01:26:13
then Dad you know just looks at me and you know he said just just keep making films like that son and so
01:26:24
that's probably from a vocational point of view you know like dad mom and dad
01:26:28
never really heard me on the radio because they're in a different city and nor are they that interested you know
01:26:33
and they' come and see me do stand up not really their stick no not really that stick no but I'm sure they they're
01:26:39
um wise enough and smart enough to see other people enjoying it oh and they totally in you know and had commercial
01:26:43
you know television shows and they understood that people like them but then you know like the if you
01:26:50
you if you're you know lucky enough to be uh in a situation like I've been a
01:26:53
couple times times to get money from you know funding bodies bodies to make what I think you know culturally
01:27:03
significant television shows that you know Mom could go to church and every when I real like that
01:27:11
show your son did you know it it was that was incredibly important to me but if I hadn't done it she wouldn't have
01:27:17
cared but they were the things I think she was the most proud of oh that's among amongst my children I suppose yeah
01:27:24
um yeah I read some some article online I think it was from the guardian and uh you talked about how you've got a
01:27:30
necklace of hers that you keeping your bedroom so every every morning you you see it it's like a reminder yeah I mean
01:27:36
I I um mom's mom's house is still there with all that stuff there cuz her
01:27:41
husband still lives in the house but on the day most of the things I wanted from
01:27:48
Mom mom had given me you know um you I'm quite sentimental about old pots and
01:27:54
things like that so when we come to clean out most of her things you know I've taken everything um but that
01:28:01
particular necklace I didn't talk to my brothers they'll never listen to this
01:28:04
but if they do I'm sorry um but I went into her bedroom and I and I sorted out
01:28:09
because I just didn't want you know a cleaner to come in or take it and it's
01:28:12
not it's only pure sentimental value nothing else but you never things just go missing you know anyway I always
01:28:17
looking for it I found it I'm I'm a I'm a I'm a letter writer I write notes and cards to people all the
01:28:23
time but I'd forgotten this one but next to it in Mom's socks and undo straw was
01:28:29
a note that I left I'd written to mom only a couple years ago just simply saying Mom I love you has not been a
01:28:37
time in my life that I haven't been proud of your achievements and so I just like on the
01:28:42
day of like oh but then I was incredibly touched that you know that sits there that was sitting there that mom kept she
01:28:50
could have kept it anywhere but she was kept it somewhere where she could see it
01:28:53
every day that's um that's satisfying though that you didn't leave um things
01:28:57
unsaid you know so you said things while you had the chance I was really I think
01:29:03
because I'd moved cities and I I was mindful of doing lots of things with my
01:29:07
parents in terms of travel speaking to them 6 months before mom died I remember you know making her give me the longest
01:29:15
hug ever and then I started was she quite ill by then no but it was just oh we don't we don't have to stop
01:29:24
this hug let's keep hugging and I can still feel that hug and then I I used to
01:29:30
go and see her every time I was in Melbourne for work I go someone say I'll put you up in a hotel I go now just give
01:29:35
me a High car I'll go down and stay at my mom's place and then I started getting my
01:29:39
brothers to come down and then Mom wasn't cooking as well as she used to so I used to make all the dishes that Mom I
01:29:45
love cooking and Mom tght one of my favorite things to do was cook with Mom on Christmas day and then
01:29:51
um I would I would cook the thing things that mom used to make for us and and just my brothers not our partners or
01:29:57
their kids would come which is you know really intimate and um I value those times so they're really
01:30:04
important for all of us um yeah it's it's um it's quite a transition in your life and she was a
01:30:13
she was a fantastic woman and you know I miss her very much I'm sure she's immensely proud of
01:30:19
everything you've done even even even the radio stuff if she didn't understand
01:30:23
it to to oh yeah she would have loved you know you know Tuesday oh she she was she was she was right up until uh she
01:30:33
was right up into saying get a can't features to people oh mate oh that's
01:30:40
rough it's um yeah it's the trade-off though isn't it for for loving someone
01:30:46
yeah it is and the cliche to go with it and but it makes you understand people and when I one of the
01:30:53
things I think I love and I I can't do it cuz I I I don't I don't have it in me
01:30:59
but I do love people who post photos of their parents all the time on socials you know just once in a while
01:31:08
they go I miss your dad and they post a photo I love that why don't you do it
01:31:13
um I know it's not your sort of Instagram aesthetic but why can't it be I just I think you can I think you sort
01:31:19
of internalized that I think not everything has to be shared M I think you just H yourself you
01:31:25
like it I like other people doing it yeah and I and I and I'll often say please don't stop doing that I cuz I
01:31:31
prefer people not to feel like I do I feel that oh God he's banging on about
01:31:35
his mother again but I write a lot about her um and I have written a lot about her wrote something about her last week
01:31:42
you know about like a public piece or a private yeah I got this newsletter that I I sent off to to you know I got this
01:31:48
huge mailing list of people and I just I think I'm on I must check out my spam
01:31:51
pholder I write I write stories all the time cuz I like writing and um because my son was
01:31:58
going off to starting high school and I wrote a story about my brother went and started High School in 1978 I started
01:32:05
High School in 1982 but I went off to school in his hand me- down Levi California jeans and a lot happened in
01:32:14
that four years in terms of fashion and they basically flares and they'd been
01:32:18
taken up and taken down and they like like they were like a concertina in terms of the we marks and my brother had
01:32:23
warn and whatever and I said to my mom you know I can't wear these I can't wear
01:32:28
flares in 1982 they're deeply out of fashion and so she said you're right and
01:32:34
I was really surprised by it and then so I went off and played Cricket with my brothers and then I came back and they
01:32:40
were lying on my bed and she' just taken them in with the S machine she can go
01:32:44
buy me a new pair she went this really says a lot about the times and you know my children this wastage wasn't
01:32:53
it yeah my children would crack the absolute [ __ ] if I did that you know they've they've thrown out more clothes
01:32:59
than I had had in my whole childhood already you know you know that's just it's crazy but that's a perk of being um
01:33:06
our age I guess in our 50s like we remember that time where actually actually I've got some friends that went
01:33:11
to the UK this was I guess in the '90s or early 2000s and they took a shipping
01:33:14
container over there and then back home with you Furniture in and Cutlery and plates now you just wouldn't do it it's
01:33:21
like you just go to no everything I mean everything was so expensive um you'd never transport a TV from the
01:33:28
UK it's like you can't you know no one breaks into your house they don't steal
01:33:32
the TV cuz they're worth 100 bucks they're not worth carrying you know it's um they don't
01:33:38
break into houses for that reason they take a bit of jewelry they want your car keys how do you feel about um aging are
01:33:43
you quite comfortable in your what are you now mid-50s yeah I'm 53 No I um you
01:33:48
feel good about it I do like I had this fantastic moment I turned 53 in per and I was doing a
01:33:54
show and I came out on stage and I said oh it's my birthday and everyone's like
01:33:59
oh happy birthday and I went yeah I'm 53 and this woman in the front row went oh
01:34:07
[ __ ] and I I didn't ask her why it wasn't like i' had sex with or anything
01:34:11
but um I think sometimes people forget that you know it makes them feel old if they
01:34:18
went you know they listen to you on the radio and they think whatever um and then it's really surprising so and then
01:34:25
everything evens up the older you get like this is really fascinating I am four years younger than
01:34:33
Rick asley so he's 50 577 yeah they're never going to give you up guy yeah amazing he
01:34:41
he looks a lot younger than you still that's true but you know he dies the hair red but you know you think well
01:34:47
you know like who else is it like um I'm only five years younger than Robert
01:34:51
Downey Jr and there are people but in when they were huge they were adults when I was a
01:34:57
teenager but then that the difference between 15 and 21 is narrower and narrow it's crazy it's crazy so yeah I was
01:35:06
watching um a new documentary on Netflix um last night called the best night in pop or something it's about us Africa
01:35:12
and where the world and I was I was um I don't know I suppose I was like 12 or 13
01:35:16
when that song came out so I was a I was a teenager I was you sort of in puberty
01:35:19
I guess and you look at the old footage of the cars and Lon Richie had a a car with a phone in and that was a big deal
01:35:26
at the time makes you feel [ __ ] old oh they do and then like you know and there's you know that classic footage in
01:35:32
that of Bob Dylan just not wanting to be there but he was not even 50 he was younger than me there's that there's
01:35:38
that Meme that goes round of all the members of The Traveling wbes when they were in at their Prime Roy alberon
01:35:45
George Harrison je Roy alberon was younger than me when he was in the traveling Ms he was
01:35:52
52 like that that's [ __ ] up it's crazy you know like I think uh yeah George
01:35:58
Harrison was 41 or 43 or something like that so you know you think that in the 80s when they when those 60s pop stars
01:36:06
you know you know having another go at it and you know um Jagger was growing the mullet that he would be 50 or
01:36:13
whatever but no he was in his he was in his late 30s early 40s yeah well I remember starting in radio in the the
01:36:17
early '90s and um I heard another guy on the same station use this joke so I
01:36:22
thought I'm going to use that so every time my back announced a rolling stone
01:36:25
song I'd call them the strolling bones oh Jesus and but they would have been um
01:36:29
they would have been like early 40s at the time Yeahs yeah I mean those guys like you imagine someone like Christ ber
01:36:36
or someone like that you know bald you know Phil Collins coming along and getting a a career um you could be sort
01:36:43
of you know you could be in your early 40s and have a really really really big career in those days Peter Gabriel in
01:36:53
and wouldn't happen today if you're You're gone it's music really is a Young
01:36:57
Person's g game unless you have made yourself so successful in those early years it's absolutely it's hugely
01:37:04
changed hey thanks for coming over today that's all right been it's really good
01:37:08
to see you know you're looking so fit you know we didn't get to talk about my
01:37:12
running career but that's yeah we went for a run do you remember yeah I do and I it was really
01:37:18
embarrassing because you know we were running we did about 10K I was running a bit in those days you were running in a
01:37:24
full length track suit as well and then and then you went well I'm just going to
01:37:28
go keep going for another 15ks and I went back to your house and then I I made some joke about it or something on
01:37:34
Facebook on your Facebook page and one of your listeners got all angry about it and I don't think they realize we're
01:37:38
friends or something around I was like that stuff but yeah no yeah no you're
01:37:42
but the big surprise for me is he's come up a bit in this chat today um Mir your
01:37:46
old co-host he's like super fit he was in the the news in Australia a couple of
01:37:50
years ago for winning that SAS show he's it's just a complete transformation and
01:37:55
I find it quite inspiring actually what both you guys have done yeah he's um
01:38:00
yeah he looks great and I think he's found found a lot of joy out of it you know um and but he you I mean you both
01:38:08
seem kind of like um I maybe the part of this was the shtick at the time but you
01:38:12
kind of ly like Aussie s bogans um and he I remember when we went to the conferences he always had like a yeah
01:38:19
always had like a little bit of a gut on him and beer handles or whatever and now
01:38:23
he's just spel yeah and his skin looks amazing yeah you know and he's he looks
01:38:28
good for 50 he looks really good for 50 you know he's always had he's always had
01:38:32
good complexion old watsi um but you know certainly he certainly looks amazing would you ever do something
01:38:39
together again or is that door shut now you think look you never say never on that stuff at all
01:38:44
um you know like we do we enjoy the reminiscing a lot you know only it's really only us and you
01:38:53
know you know we had some really great producers um you know the people that were in there at that time and so we
01:39:00
laugh a lot about that stuff and you know he was great he came and did I was doing a car podcast and he came on that
01:39:08
and he was fantastic um and whenever we whenever we sort of guessed on something hello sh um
01:39:16
sh whenever we guessed on something together you know I really I really enjoy it the feeling comes back or just
01:39:21
that just the mus the muscle memories extraordinary um I think the first thing we we did in
01:39:28
years was something like a radio industry podcast and it would just we got in front and we just doing the AL
01:39:33
sck again so yeah um but if you ever did something we get asked us a lot um yeah JJ and Mike Peru
01:39:43
I don't know if you met him but the three of us were at the age together for
01:39:46
like 10 years nice guy yeah lovely guy um was the other you got there was there was a few of them yeah we turned through
01:39:52
a few car yeah Mike was the longest standing one I wasik he he was my favorite yeah he he's
01:39:58
great but people ask all the time yeah for you get back together and it's like
01:40:02
you want to make sure you're doing something that's good now you don't want
01:40:04
to get back together and there's that excitement or wave of nostalgia and then
01:40:07
people go oh [ __ ] no I just do it for the money really I was you're you're joking but that would
01:40:14
be my motivation for doing it that's the difference between you and me he don't
01:40:17
know you just don't I I think it's really life is really interesting I I
01:40:21
remember thinking um when I was back doing Nova and I'm there with me and if someone had said
01:40:31
you know in eight years time you're going to be doing drive with Matt basley
01:40:36
who is my panel operator with kle and jackieo at another radio station I'd go
01:40:41
what are you talking about it's like my you know my wife used to be my publicist
01:40:45
and we hated each other and so it wasn't until years later that we got together
01:40:50
and if someone had said to me the same thing you know if you one day you and Michelle are going to get married are
01:40:54
you like what are you talking about so you just don't you don't know what
01:40:58
opportunities will come up or what what and if we feel something what I would say is I think you know wouldn't be
01:41:04
radio be something fun for us I think but as you said it's amazing what happens over a period of time everything
01:41:09
happens for a reason like he could never have I mean I don't think anyone could
01:41:13
have envisaged him winning that SC show so for anyone that hasn't seen it it's
01:41:17
like an extreme version of sort of survival or something it's jump out some helicopter and stuff and yeah all sorts
01:41:22
of [ __ ] yeah but rods up your ass or something I think he would he would have probably been
01:41:26
selected as being like the Goon the radio goon you know the Joker or something the guy that that was going to
01:41:32
be put out of his comfort zone and not last and um Mally pretty tough very tough as he showed yeah hey um and you
01:41:40
look like an sas instructor actually with that old military suit on this is my this is my latest modernist suit
01:41:46
thanks very much it's first outing I put it on for you um yeah this is my uniform
01:41:51
I normally wear a blue one but I've got this this new one which is you you kindly called the um Steve Irwin out big
01:41:57
Steve energy my my wife who desired it for me is going to be devastated by that you know like I got a compliment on the
01:42:05
plane I love your suit I love your suit Mr Ross and then I get Steve Owen when I
01:42:10
get in here M really good to see got to got to keep your mates grounded hey um [ __ ] it's been an hour 46 it's crazy I
01:42:17
remember the first podcast I did you know you talked earlier about radio break length um the first podcast I did
01:42:22
I was talking to the New Zealand singer Mitch James and for maybe like 10 or 11 minutes and I was looking at the my
01:42:27
watch thinking [ __ ] I'm ready to wrap it up now um but you actually get quite
01:42:32
comfortable with the pace of podcast after a while oh I'm sure no one's still
01:42:35
with us but you know like you can split it into two or something this is I've
01:42:39
had relationships that have been shorter than this podcast thanks Ross I love you
01:42:43
good to see you buddy love you oh