A heart attack, a radio show & a cubicle: How Christian O’Connell found calm in utter chaos

ARN's Christian O'Connell. Image supplied.

Christian O’Connell has opened up about one of the most harrowing days of his life and the lightbulb moment which came to him in – of all places – the men’s toilet at ARN Melbourne.

In this exclusive extract from his new book Unscripted – which officially hits the shelves tomorrow – the GOLD Network host reflects on the 2018 incident which left him feeling trapped and terrified, just days after launching his new Breakfast radio show:

A Heart Attack, a Radio Show, and a Cubicle: finding calm in absolute chaos

Why do so many of life’s breakthroughs happen when you’re at your messiest? I don’t mean on a nice meditation retreat or with a guru clearing out your chakras. I mean in the mud. In the chaos. In the panic.

For me, it came in the least glamorous place you could imagine: the men’s toilet of an Australian radio station, at 6.03 am, with a little bit of sick down my shirt and my life falling apart.

The mud was 2018. We’d just moved to Melbourne: me, Sarah, our girls and the dog. Ten days after landing, I launched a new breakfast show, and the city greeted me with a very Australian form of hospitality: a tidal wave of ‘no’ to some unknown English bloke on their radio.

But all that abuse was nothing compared to what came next.

Sarah was talking to her mum, Jackie, back in the UK one Tuesday evening when Jackie collapsed mid-call. Massive heart attack. We’d been in Australia for only a few weeks. Within hours, I had to put Sarah and the girls on a plane back to London, not knowing if Jackie would be alive when they landed.

Minutes before the next morning’s show, a call came from Dubai on their stopover. Through tears, Sarah told me the surgeons needed to operate on her mum for 11 hours. The odds weren’t good. She’d been told to say her goodbyes, just in case.

This cannot be happening

I felt trapped: stuck in a radio station nobody wanted to hear me on, away from my daughters who needed me, and terrified my second mum might die.

Sarah – my rock – was sobbing in Dubai. Then I heard the 6am news jingle fading and my own show intro blasting out of the ceiling speakers.

‘F***,’ I sighed.

Sarah, being Sarah, snapped back into Seal Team Leader mode: ‘I can hear the show’s starting! You’ve got to go, Chris. If Mum dies, I’m not moving back to the UK, so you need to dig in and make this work. I love you’.

I could hear the producers shouting for me. I yelled back, ‘Play two songs back-to-back!’

I needed time. I sprinted into the men’s bathroom, kicked open a cubicle door and threw up. Dry heaving from fear and adrenaline. And the anticipation of more lovely messages from wellwishers.

Somewhere between the tiles and the dry heaves, I remember asking myself, ‘What are you going to do?’ Not in the grand, heroic sense. Just … in the next three minutes.

I could feel the part of me that does live radio – usually accessible, usually game – was nowhere to be found. There was just noise. Fear. That old drillsergeant voice in my head barking orders that didn’t help.

And then an image arrived

Out of nowhere. An old-fashioned radio tuner. A dial.

I could see it as clearly as I could see the cracked paint on the cubicle door. My internal dial was sitting firmly on fear. I imagined taking hold of it and nudging it a few clicks to the right. Again. And again. Off fear. Past anxiety.

Towards something else. Click, click, click … all the way to joy.

Joy. Yes, joy – ridiculous as that sounded in a bathroom with bile on my jeans.

As I pretended to turn that little dial, something in me actually moved.

Unwound. My breath changed first. Then my jaw. And finally the smallest smile at the sheer cartoonishness of it all. My imagination being like a butler, serving me up a silver platter of salvation.

Choosing joy didn’t erase the ache for Jackie, or the terror for Sarah. It didn’t tidy anything up. It simply reminded me my heart could hold more than one

thing at once. Grief and gratitude. Fear and a strange, quiet courage. Joy, even here.

We can be connected even to feeling disconnected. Just by being with it and allowing it. Our pain comes not from our feelings and emotions but from the resistance to them. Emotional fluidity is a super skill that I’m still trying to practise more.

I chose joy

I wiped my face, met the team’s worried eyes and started the show. I gave myself permission to enjoy doing what I love.

Jackie lived. Sarah and the girls returned weeks later. The road stayed bumpy. But in that bathroom, I found something I still use every day – on air and everywhere else. I found my inner dial.

(If you’ve ever had a spiritual awakening in a toilet, by the way, welcome to the club.)

Edited extract from Unscript: The radical act of being yourself by Christian O’Connell (Wiley, $34.95), available from tomorrow (29 July) at all leading retailers.

Images supplied.