After more than three decades on air, Neil Mitchell hangs up the headphones
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Neil Mitchell is signing off from *3AW for the last time this morning — kicking off his final show with a song he has played as a sharp-edged mark of the departure of other public figures: Another One Bites The Dust.
“Today I play it for myself,” Mitchell said, before welcoming his opening guest right out of the fadeout from Queen.
Neil Mitchell is stepping down from his morning show after more than 30 years.Credit: Jason South
“I could be playing that for you,” he told his interviewee. “The polls are bad, you look tired … what are you doing wrong?”
The man on the other end of the phone was Anthony Albanese, the headliner on the last show of one of the most extraordinary runs in the history of Australian radio — and it was vintage Mitchell, who has been locking horns with political leaders since Albanese was in primary school.
His departure led the news on his own station on Friday morning, a reflection of his stature as a major Melbourne player in his own right. Every newsroom in the city has had an ear on what comes out of his studio for several decades, and this morning was no exception as TV cameras and photographers captured his final hours on air.
But they would all be evicted for the last half hour of his show. That, he promised, would be just him and his listeners for one last stoush. “I should warn you, I haven’t had much sleep so I’m a bit dangerous.”
This was a send-off that seemed unimaginable when Mitchell first donned the cans back in 1987 as a fill-in for the long-time king of talkback Derryn Hinch. He was more of a traditionalist than Hinch — the self-proclaimed Human Headline, who more than lived up to that name. “I didn’t think it would last, I thought it was going to be a year of mucking around,” Mitchell said on his 30th anniversary in 2017.
But like Hinch, Mitchell had print in his veins — a former Age reporter who covered Trades Hall when Bob Hawke was a union leader, later editor of the afternoon institution The Herald, he was driven more by news sense than a taste for the sensation and splutter of an Alan Jones or Ray Hadley.
He was 36. John Cain was premier, Bob Hawke was PM, Diana and Charles were still married, there were three TV networks plus Aunty and SBS, no internet, you could smoke pretty much where you wanted to, and more than a million Melburnians read a newspaper — a paper one — every day. Collingwood hadn’t won a flag in 29 years. Pat Cash was Wimbledon champion.
He’s now 72, with much water under the bridge.
He has been a ratings giant, and the foil of nine premiers and nine PMs. He has enraged progressives — so much so that Daniel Andrews boycotted his show — but irked conservative leaders, too: Jeff Kennett threw a glass of water over him, and Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison avoided his studio. In a polarised era critics have often been dumped in the knee-jerk conservative barrel — he’s been assumed variously to be a foe of lockdowns (not true); vaccines (he wasn’t); and same-sex marriage (nope, he supported that too.)
Albanese was kinder than some of his predecessors today: “One of the things we can all agree on is that the pace of change is a bit too fast sometimes … but you’ve been a constant in people’s lives. You are a person of great integrity and you have my respect and my best wishes.”
Mitchell is at pains to stress he is not retiring. This morning he flagged ongoing podcasting, radio and TV spots and a regular newspaper column.
What about a book?
“Nobody’s interested,” he says. “I’m an observer, not a participant.”
After 36 years as a lightning rod and agenda-setter in the city and the nation more broadly, many would argue with the modesty of that assessment.
*3AW is owned by Nine as is this masthead.
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