Hello! Right – big day.
This morning my good pal Alex Dyson and I have announced on the radio that, after four years of carrying on like an old pork chop, I’m going to be finishing up on the triple j breakfast show on Friday December 13th.
For some folks out there, this will be sad news.
For others, it will be glorious manna from heaven: a sign that there truly is a God, and ye, He doth love His children.
For me it’s a swirling, bittersweet melting pot of nostalgia, melancholy, terror and excitement, like a Badly Drawn Boy record or that bit in American Beauty about the plastic bag flying around.
It’s a big change. And change is weird.
Alex and I started this crazy adventure back in 2006. We were “doing” community radio together in our home town of Warrnambool. triple j Program Director Chris Scaddan saw me in the RAW Comedy finals that year and he very kindly asked if I had any radio experience. We recorded an episode of our ramshackle show (which was called The Breakfast Show even though it was on at 10pm lol) onto a cassette (!!!) and sent it in.
Scadds was very polite about how shit it was, welcomed us into the j family and immediately called in multiple reinforcements to teach us how to be actual functioning human beings on air.
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We did a bunch of demos at the Warrnambool ABC, travelled to Melbourne to experience the mindfuck that is a middawn shift (5 hours from 1 – 6am, no producer, collecting all the CDs from the library yourself, bizarro callers from other dimensions) and then we were lucky enough to be offered the Weekend Breakfast show in 2009.
As our dear friends and very nice mentors Robbie, Marieke & The Doctor called it a day at the end of that year, against all laws of science and justice, we got the weekday breakfast gig.
Since then it’s been insane. Like, good insane, but still…just fucking insane.
There was the time we wore those zentai suits
There was the time I danced like a cat
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There was the time our dads DJed in front of hundreds of people at my 21st
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There was the time we got Les Savy Fav to jam a whole new smash-hit tune about eating bats before our eyes
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There was that time we got on the Today show:
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There was that time we had a party in an elevator
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There was time people thought we were going to take over from Hamish and Andy
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There was that time I ate a really fucking spicy pie:
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There was that time we made the Prime Minister of Australia tell everyone the world was going to end:
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There was the time we interviewed Elmo and Cookie Monster
There was the time David Hasselhoff showed us how to model:
There was the time we talked about Airbud for ages:
There was the time I was near Michael Cera
There was the time we wrote a new national anthem for Hungary
There was the time a girl ate chocolate out of my belly button in front of 1500 people
There was the time we wore Daft Punk helmets and went to Woy Woy to launch our CD
There was the time I got a shit haircut and performed a stirring pop ballad
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There was the time Jack Black farted into our microphones
There was the time we surprised a listener returning to Australia after a year overseas:
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There was the time we taught Alex how to drive:
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There was the time we made a parody song about Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ “Same Love” and made it about bestiality and played it for them and they laughed:
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There was the time we interviewed Steve Carrell and then we sang “Afternoon Delight”
There was the time professional cricketer Stuart Clake bowled an actual cricket ball at my actual head:
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There was the time we got naked and sang Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” for money:
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There was the time I was a kewl dude:
There was the time I interviewed Abz from 5ive:
And there was the time that I was very proud to be a part of this:
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And there were all those times I got to talk to my comedy heroes and there have been Hottest 100s and One Night Stands and Big Days Out and Splendour In the Grasses and comedy festivals and gigs at high schools and outside broadcasts and, er…a complaint or two.
Heh-hem.
Oh and there have been heart-wrenching Like A Version performances like these
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Gosh.
For the past four years, I’ve considered myself one of the luckiest guys around. I’ve been paid to get up every day and go to a job I love with one of my best friends in the whole world, talk shit, laugh heaps, learn a lot, play music I love and think is important, meet some of my comedic and musical heroes, work alongside passionate and talented legends and – quite honestly this is the best bit – feel like I was part of a huge community of people from across Australia and the world who love what this radio station is about. The humour and enthusiasm and weirdness of the people who have tuned into our tomfoolery every morning makes me happier than I can say.
Thank you so very, very much for that.
But for me, now feels like the right time to try some new stuff and see what else I can do as a stand up, as a writer, as an actor and just generally, as a professional dickhead. I’m not being teased away by a big fat paycheck to be the new Kyle or member for Griffith or anything: I’ve just made this tricky decision for myself. I may well regret it intensely in a month’s time and be back at the triple j offices, staring through the glass door longingly only to be (quite rightly) escorted away by security.
We’ll just have to wait and see.
I’ll be doing lots of hugging and crying over the next little while, but here I’d just like to say a heartfelt thanks to a few folks in particular: gut-busting producer Alex “Lolly” Lollback and pocket rocket former producer Amelia Chappelow; former producer, Program Director and dear friend Ollie Wards; station manager, mentor and all-round good sport Chris Scaddan; my family and everyone at Token Artists, specifically my manager Kevin Whyte and my agent Erin Zamagni.
I’d be nowhere without the help of Wil Anderson and Scott “Dools” Dooley over the past four years and I am forever indebted to Zan Rowe, Robbie Buck, Marieke Hardy and Lindsay McDougall for taking me under their soft feathery wings.
Lewi McKirdy, Tom Tilley, Richard Kingsmill, Fenella Kernebone, Hannah Wickes, Jonno Harrison, Vijay Khurana, Sam Simmons, Craig Schuftan – these are all top shelf people who I feel extremely lucky to have worked and pissed around with.
Plus there’s a million more who I’ll be sure to thank personally ASAP, fear not.
But the most thanks must go to this man:
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Alex and I have done over a thousand shows together, and whilst there have been uber fun times on air, we’ve also had fights, made new friends, fell in love and broken up with people, mourned friends and family members, traveled, panicked, laughed together – it’s been the defining experience of my adult life and I can’t think of someone I’d rather have by my side for all of it.
Alex makes me laugh like no one else and I know that the new show come next year is going to be fucking awesome, even if it will feature less discussion of musical theatre and fewer airhorn blasts.
We’ll let you know who’s joining AD for the new show on Tuesday December 3rd. And stay tuned for the details about my farewell show on the 13th, I’m proper excited for it.
It feels like there’s no better time than now to plug things, so I will unabashedly direct you to our ARIA-nominated CD of highlights, The Bits We’re Least Ashamed Of. I’m quite proud of it.
I’d also love you to sign up to my mailing list so that I may let you know about me forthcoming little projects and schemes. I’ll be touring my new show to Adelaide, Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Perth in 2014 and will be trialling new jokes (for free!) mighty soon.
Finally – and it’s debatable as to whether I deserve such a thing after all this arrogant wankery – a small request. To everyone out there who loves triple j as much as I do, I ask you for a small favour: please don’t take it for granted. Through working here, through my broader listening and through conversations with other people in broadcasting and the media at large, I’ve developed an even greater appreciation for this place’s sense of ambition and sense of spirit than I had when I was listening obsessively in high school. That may sound all company-man-ish and “right ON”, but I don’t care – it’s the truth. There is nothing else like triple j in the whole wide world, and the fact that we live in a country where the government actually funds something like it is pretty extraordinary.
So by all means, take the piss out of it, criticise when appropriate, give feedback, call in and complain when you feel strongly enough – it is your ABC, after all. But please also just keep in mind that we are all truly fortunate to have the js kicking around. I’ll be thankful and proud of the place until the day I die.
I certainly don’t hope to be a stranger: my heart is full of dreams of working in lots of different ways at the ABC in the years to come. At the very least I’ll tell them they have to let me on to hock my stand up shows.
But anywho – we still have two-and-half weeks of breakfast radio together. I hope you can enjoy them with me.
Much love,
Tom xoxo