“We love ourselves some John Farnham”: GOLD 104.3’s Gavin Miller

UPDATE: You know how we said ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get”?  Well, Gavin Miller has proved if you get the pitch right, it pays off.

The Gold 104.3 drive announcer emailed Glenn Wheatley about the possibility of an interview with Aussie  music icon John Farnham.

As we know, the singer doesn’t do many interviews these days, BUT  ….he’s made an exception and Operation Farnsy is a go-er.

Glenn commented on this story, telling Gavin “We were touched by your [pitch] and John will be delighted to do the interview with you. Just give us the time and it will happen.”

The details have yet to be finalised, but with a little luck, it’ll be sooner rather than later.

PREVIOUS STORY: Gold 104.3 Drive announcer Gavin Miller is a man on a mission.

He’s begun a campaign to get Aussie music icon John Farnham to come on his show.

There’s only one problem and it’s kind of a biggie. Farnham is notorious for not doing interviews. He just doesn’t do them much anymore.

But that hasn’t stopped Miller from reaching out in the hopes of snaring some air-time with Farnsy. He’s kicked off the campaign with an email to manager Glenn Wheatley.

Hi Glenn,

My name is Gavin Miller. I am a presenter on GOLD 104.3 in Melbourne, and we love ourselves some John Farnham.

I understand that John does not do interviews, and I totally get why he wouldn’t. I totally get that the guy is a dead-set living legend who does not need our radio station’s help to sell concert tickets, so if I were in his shoes I doubt that I would do interviews either. 

Having said that, I didn’t get where I am in life by automatically accepting no for an answer. Neither did you. Neither did John. 

I’m therefore writing to you, and by extension to John (Hi John! Big Fan!) to see if it would be possible to gently persuade John to give me no more than fifteen minutes of his time on the phone any weekday between 1 and 6pm for me to record an interview with him. If he wants to drop by the radio station in person, that would obviously be amazing, but I wouldn’t want to push my luck.

I’ve been on the wireless since 1988, and John Farnham is pretty much the only Australian singer I’ve never interviewed (well… apart from Johnny O’Keefe, but he has a really really good excuse) and without wanting to brag too much, GOLD104.3 is the top rating FM station in Melbourne, so John would be making a lot of Melbournians very very happy if he agreed to this chat. 

I will happily comply with any areas of questioning that you would like me to avoid (not that I could imagine there are any – I have nothing but positivity in my heart for this man!) and I can assure you that I would approach this interview from a superfan’s perspective and treat John with the utter respect that he so richly deserves.

I may well be pissing into the wind writing this email to you, Glenn, and if so, that’s fine… but it’s worth a shot. Thank you for taking the time to read it.

With respect,
Gavin Miller
GOLD104.3 Afternoon/Drive Presenter