'Golden tonsils' John Laws says farewell
The veteran broadcaster is set to hang up his golden headphones so he can catch up on life.
Depending on where you live, you’ll either remember John Laws as the “golden tonsils” of Australian radio or the man who moved a mountain of fly spray and motor oil through TV advertisements.
Laws, 89, has set 8 November as his retirement date after an extraordinary 71 years on air.
Along the way, he reinvented himself from a disc jockey to the most powerful voice in Australian media. He recorded albums of songs and poetry, and recorded thousands of ads for radio and television.
But it was in the 9am to midday shift that he made his mark as what we’d now call a political and social influencer. When Laws spoke at his peak on Sydney’s 2UE in the 1980s and 90s, prime ministers paid heed.
It’s been a long while since he’s topped the ratings in Sydney and on networked stations across the eastern states, but he has spent the past decade plying his trade to devoted listeners on 2SM and the “Super Network” of regional stations in New South Wales, Queensland, and the Northern Territory.
“It’s time for a rest, is what I think,” Laws said on air on 8 October.
“I’ve done it for a very, very, very, very long time, and 70 years – is that long enough? That’s long enough, and I think that I’ll just call it a day and call it a day pretty soon, probably beginning of November.
“First week of November it’ll be 71 years since I started on radio. So I think, you know, I don’t want to be greedy. I’ve had 71 fantastic years, fantastic years. I had a really, really good time and loved, you know, most of it.” Asked by media website RadioInfo why he had chosen to announce his retirement, Laws replied: “Do you ever just get that feeling that enough is enough? I’ve had a hell of a lot of fun though.”
Laws began his radio career at 3BO in Bendigo in 1953 and quickly worked his way up the ladder, playing top 40 music through the 60s until finding his niche in talk radio.
By the end of the century, his morning show on 2UE was beamed far and wide and was appointment listening for hundreds of thousands of Australians.
He quit 2UE in 2007 when his ratings began to slide – his former colleague, Ray Hadley, had moved to 2GB and began eating into Laws’s audience.
But Laws was lured back on air by 2SM owner, the late Bill Caralis, in 2011, and has been there ever since. Caralis died in July this year.
There were many career highlights, tainted by a scandal, when Laws and Jones were said to be receiving “cash for comment” by giving positive coverage to their personal sponsors without declaring the potential conflict of interest. The affair led to new rules for all broadcasters.
Laws has said his post-retirement plan is to “travel, read and catch up on things which should have been caught up on a long time ago”.
He assured his fans he was in good health but stressed he would not be back on air.
“I’m not going to go away and then come back again and say, ‘Oh, it was all a mistake’,” he said.
“It may well be a mistake, but there’ll be no return. That’s it.”
This year also saw the retirement of Phillip Adams, who hosted ABC Radio National’s Late Night Live for 33 years.
Adams, who left the show in June just before his 85th birthday, worked in advertising and on commercial radio before joining the ABC.
He also chaired the Australian Film Commission, the Australia Day Council, and the Commission of the Future, and wrote a long-running newspaper column.
Related reading: SMH, Radio Today, Sky News, RadioInfo1, RadioInfo2
