The FM'rs are ganging up on 2GB

The FM'rs are ganging up on 2GB with the News-Talk giant still trailing Easy Listening's Smooth FM overall as well as in the critical morning spot in the Sydney radio market. Mark Levy had lost a little further ground and finds himself fractionally behind in 9-12. Added to that, Kyle and Jackie O have launched a frontal assault on Ben Fordham to sneak breakfast by around a point. Actually, it's all very marginal really with GB only 0.4 adrift in the overalls. These guys are going to be fighting it out right to the end of '25 with the big advertising dollars up for grabs.

Such bad news to hear of the passing of another iconic figure, not in radio but someone who had a massive impact on the industry for over fifty years. Col Joye has left us at the age of 89, one of the pillars of Aussie rock-n-roll, dating back to the 50s. When you think back to those exciting days you recall Col and the Joy Boys on JOK's 6 O'Çlock Rock and Hendo's beloved Bandstand. And how about those terrific tracks which still stand up so well today... Bye Bye Baby and Oh Yeah Uh Huh, both in 1959. Uh Huh was the first local product to go number one on our Top 40. And there's nothing wrong with that other Col Joye classic, Heaven is a Woman's Love, either. You truly were a mover and shaker man... We'll all miss you.



This month marks nearly fifty years since one of the most notorious incidents of the Cold War, the Markov assassination in London. Georgi Markov was a Bulgarian dissident who escaped to the UK and became a thorn in the side of the Communist regimes of the era, with his caustic comments on BBC and Radio Free Europe. The KGB got together with the Bulgarian Secret Police and came up with one of the most nefarious plots you've ever heard of. This plan was straight out of Sherlock Holmes or 007. On the 7th of September, 1978 Markov was walking across Waterloo Bridge in London when he felt a sharp stab in the thigh. He looked around to see a man picking up an umbrella and walking off in the opposite direction. The umbrella point was laced with the deadly poison, Ricin. The victim died in hospital a few days later starting a long KGB tradition of chasing their opponents wherever they were in the world. No place is safe to hide from the KGB, not even today. There is a string of appalling examples, which started with the poison-tipped umbrella and includes the poisoned teacup, the poisoned door knob and even – the most grotesque variation you can imagine – the poisoned underpants. I was a bit worried about Donald Trump when he hosted Vladimir the Great in Alaska recently. I wouldn't even trust the Ruskies at a US Airbase... Seriously. Nothing is sacred with that lot.

I've had to go back into intense therapy this month after confirmation that one of those weird governments in Scandinavia had just introduced a "flatulence tax" on farmers because their cattle were apparently responsible for producing too much wind, thus worsening climate change. (For God's sake, don't let the Australian Greens find out about this... They'll go completely off the reservation.) But I'm screaming out to these boofheads to leave the poor cows along. They've been farting for thousands of years and have never done an ounce of harm to anybody. If you really want to effect a major environmental change, send a team of scientists over here and do something about me. I'm your problem... You control my flatulence and you'll solve climate change virtually overnight.

It's funny isn't it that it's not necessarily the big, monumental events that trigger our memories: It's often the little things that turn out to be the echoes of your history... The smell of wheat... You're driving past a park in late Autumn and you hear the sound of the ball on a cricket bat... You're having coffee down at the local cafe and you hear Col Joye singing Bye Bye Baby in the background and all those moments of 40-50 years ago come flooding back. You're into classical nostalgia. I was sitting in the lounge room recently, on a cold winter Friday night and my mind drifted back to Melbourne in the 60s and 70s where I suffered through a few cold, wintry nights. Anyway, what bobbed up? Well... The over-riding memory of that era in Melbourne? Channel 7's Kevin Dennis Footy Show... Yep, everybody was thinking about the weekend coming up and tuned into the Footy Show on Fridays to get the inside goss. Let me first of all lay the groundwork here for non-believers. In Victoria, Tassie, South Australia and WA, footy is everything! Everything! And so my main memory, the thing that symbolises the era, is putting the TV on 7 on Friday night and settling down to the beloved Footy Show. I've been trying desperately to remember the lyrics of the show's theme... The music is easy to recall... But I need a little help with the words.

The best I can do at the moment is:
"Kevin Dennis, Kevin Dennis, how we love your Footy Show.
Kevin Dennis, Kevin Dennis, tell us how our team will go."
Am I close? Help please...

One bit of history I'm a lot more certain about is that on September 5, 1908 the Spectator newspaper in London published one of the most iconic pieces of Australiana, something that came to define our country. Dorothy Mackellar was a 19 year-old Aussie country girl, touring Britain, when she succumbed to overwhelming homesickness and wrote the classic My Country (Core of My Heart) to try to explain to the Brits her yearning to return to the "sunburnt country", to her beloved bushland, downunder.

"An opal-hearted country, a willful, lavish land,
All you who have not loved her,you will not understand-
Though Earth holds many splendours, wherever I may die.
I know to what brown country my homing thoughts will fly."

– My Country by Dorothy Mackellar. Written in 1905, first published 1908.