Silver tongued Dear Bill celebrates 20 years

To paraphrase Sergeant Peppers, “It was 20 years ago today, Dear Bill gave his first movie spray”.

Yes, unbelievably, radio’s favourite grumpy, old critic Dear Bill is celebrating his 20th year of broadcasting

It was in 1994 that Australian radio audiences were first introduced to Bill and his insightful ‘cut to the guts’ movie reviews. And who said he wouldn’t last? Well, everyone did actually, including Bill himself. But Hooley Dooley! They were all more wrong than Nostradamus.

But look, just who is this faceless japester, this mischievous fool, this crazy mix of Margaret Pomeranz and Kim Jong-un, who so successfully has dominated our airwaves for two decades?

Well, let’s travel back in time to the 70s where we find a young Dear Bill sitting in a canvas seat at the Hoyts Inverell Picture Palace, clutching his 20 cent lolly bag full of cocktail fruits, black cats and cobbers; And wizz fizz. Oh! Remember wizz fizz? It came with a liquorice straw and when you sucked the sherbet up, it made your mouth all tart and tingly. These days of course the kiddies use cocaine. Anyway, where were we?

Oh yes, Hoyts Inverell. Dear Bill.

‘It was a screening of The Way we Were recalls Bill ‘I remember gazing up at Barbra Streisand and marveling how her nose always arrived in a scene several seconds before the rest of her… that was the start of my love-hate relationship with the movies’

Fast forward a few years: It’s the 90’s and something is missing in radio. A voice. A voice that can cut through the glitz, glamour and glob of Hollywood and deliver the horrible truth about movies

That voice is Dear Bill.

And here we are 5,000 movies, 8,000 buckets of popcorn and 3,500 imaginative uses of the word ‘tit’ later, still listening…

‘The last 20 years has been a wild, crazy ride’ says Bill ‘but honestly, it’s been more fun than a bum full of Jaffas’

We couldn’t agree more!  We salute you and your 20 years of radio, Dear Bill

‘Dear Bill’ is written, voiced and produced by Ian Calder and his Company ‘Comedy Relief’ and is distributed through MCM Media’s The Hub which is Australian radio’s premier content delivery platform, providing the hottest entertainment, news, sport and reality show audio, vision and text content on a daily basis. The Hub combines material from MCM Media’s global content and production partners as well as worldwide news sites, blogs and TV programs, together with its own locally generated content (from Australia and L.A.) and vast archive.