No one’s ever going to replace Jackie, but I’ve got to put a show together: Kyle Sandilands

Kyle Sandilands has been off air for five months and is now itching to get back to the microphone when his new show begins on 10^th August.

Over the past few months of he has spent more time with his wife Tegan and son Otto, has lost weight and has taken a good hard look at himself.

Kyle told Steve Ahern about his time away from the microphone and his plans for what’s coming next.

Steve: have you lost the habit of getting up early?

Kyle: I have, but I still get up early. My son wakes me up every morning, usually with both hands and a couple of knees in my ribs. “Daddy, it’s morning.”

So I’m up first usually, which is great because I get time with him. It’s something I haven’t been able to do for years in the first three or so years of his life. Today when I left, I had a jacket on and a scarf and I said, “Dad is going to work,” and he went, “What? Daddy doesn’t work anymore.” And I said, “No, no, no. Daddy’s still going to work.”

It’s been school holidays, so the last four weeks we’ve been everywhere. We went to the Gold Coast with Ibrahims and his kids, then came home, then went to the Blue Mountains with Otto’s school friends.

I got up there and thought, where are the rest of the dads? The other mums said their husbands didn’t come, so I was the only dad there. The kids all hung off me like little monkeys, we had a good time.

Steve: Did you ever think of not going back to work and just sitting back and enjoying your 12 million and your family?

Kyle: No, I did not. My lawyers were very positive that we’d have a positive outcome in court, but there’s never a guarantee. I started thinking through the timeline — if we won in October, maybe the payout wouldn’t come until February or March, and it still might be appealed for another year. That would mean two years off the air and about four million in expenses. Then I’d be in my mid-50s.

I just felt I had more to say, more to do. I didn’t want to sit around and hope to win money, I’d rather earn it.

Because I had a wife and child, I didn’t want to risk anything for the family or put them in harm’s way. If it was just me, I probably would have fought to the death, but this was really about making sure my family was okay and that I could still do what I do.

Steve: You’ve brought some of your old team with you to this new venture. Tell me about how you’re forming your team.

Kyle: I’ve been able to rescue some of the staff caught up in redundancies, and a few others have left the radio station to come and work for me.

I’m going to steal another one from Channel 7 this week when I go in there on Wednesday.

Then Pedro and Josh, who left a while back to pursue their own dreams, have done pretty well with their online stuff. They’ve come back and we’re using their company. They’ve said I helped inspire them to go out on their own, to put their balls on the line, and they want this to work for me.

The first two we put on were the first two redundancies — young Alfie, our little Italian 23-year-old who thinks he’s Lebanese, lives in a Lebanese community and is basically the average tradie voice. Then there’s Bruno, who’s the voice of the mentally insane and many other groups, unhappy dads and lots of other types.

Mayo is a young mum with two kids, fantastic behind the scenes, and a great energiser for the other staff. She resigned from Kiss to come here. I got compliments from other network programmers saying we’d nabbed the best producer in the country.

Then there’s Hulk, our audio guy, the ex-military paratrooper who came to us full of PTSD. We talked openly about it, and he said since we had that big chat and everyone was open about their own messed-up personalities, he doesn’t actually feel he has PTSD anymore.

Everyone here has their own story. I often learn things from other people’s point of view that I hadn’t considered. You have to walk in their shoes to have that opinion. That’s why there are so many different types here.

Once the studio is built next week, we’re going to do a run-through. Mayo’s all over me about the format too. We’ve got a big whiteboard — really just a clear piece of glass — with all the hours written up, and it’s still blank.

Mayo’s been collecting news articles from here and there, because we’re going to do a fake show. Next week we’ll plan with all these articles we’ve gathered, and then the next day we’ll execute it like a real show.

Steve: When you talk about topics and collecting articles like that, is that the core of things to talk about, or is there more to it? Are you choosing them because they’re little snippets of real life or what people are thinking?

Kyle: It’s what I explained to them when they were all asking the same question: think of the opener for four hours. We usually had enough content for the half-hour opener we used to do on KIIS, and sometimes we’d only get two items into it and the half-hour would be gone. So we’re always going to have more than we need.

There’s still music. We’ll be playing songs, and we’re paying top dollar for it, but I want it to sound like a radio show. There’s already enough missing from the original without missing music. How much music we play is really up to me on the day. If I feel everyone needs a break, we’ll play a song.

The news will be more extensive, proper world news, not just whatever the local MP has emailed to the newsroom. It’ll be the big things happening around the planet.

Mary Madigan will do the news. She’ll still read the bulletin top and bottom of the hour, like normal, but I always interact with her. She’ll be included as much as the others… everyone will be encouraged to participate. Callers will also be part of it.

Steve: Will there be another co-host?

Kyle: No. There’s always going to be a seat available if Jackie wants to come in permanently or as a guest, but there is no one else. It’s just me. There’s no replacement to Jackie.

We both said if we ever stopped working with each other — if one of us died, as we put it — we would never replace that person.

I’m never going to replace Jackie, but I still need to put a show together.

Related report: