Remembering John Vincent, the Adelaide radio legend
He was at one time arguably the most popular Adelaide radio announcer. John Vincent wasn’t controversial. An iconic part of the city’s fabric, he just loved making people laugh – and his influence grew extraordinarily wide.
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I was flicking through TV channels a few nights ago and the ABC Comedy channel was replaying (yet again) Spicks and Specks with Adam Hills, Alan Brough and Myf Warhurst.
Adam Hills has, of course, gone on to much bigger and better things, even hosting his own one-hour comedy show on British television.
Not bad for a young man who started his career on Adelaide radio as a sidekick to one of this city’s most loved and respected media personalities, John Vincent.
Indeed, Hills has often mentioned the influence that “Vinnie” had on him in those early years as part of the Radio SAFM breakfast team in the 1990s.
“John Vincent was, in every sense, a legend of Adelaide radio,” Hills wrote on his website. “Over the six years I worked with him, I learnt that radio is about connecting with people, establishing a relationship with the listener – and Vinnie was very much responsible for that.
“Those of you that have seen my shows, whether on Spicks and Specks or live on stage will know that I have carried this philosophy with me to this day. And it’s all because of John Vincent.”
High praise indeed from Hills, one of the world’s most popular comedians, and he
is not alone in heaping praise on “one of life’s true communicators. A gentle, genuine man, who, quite simply, loved making people laugh.”
At the time of Vincent’s death in 2009, ABC presenter, former colleague and also a member of that breakfast team, Grant Cameron, remarked in a radio interview: “He was an iconic character.
“He was always thinking about things, he was always looking for an angle, he was always thinking outside of the box and I think that was the thing I loved about him the most. You never knew what was going to come out of his mouth next.
“It was always entertaining sitting across the panel from him in a radio studio.
“The alarm would go off in the morning and you’d think, ‘I wonder what’s going to happen today?’.
“And every day was a bit of an adventure working with Vinnie. It was always fun, it was always good.”
Mind you, Vincent’s career had been well and truly established and very successful even before the SAFM breakfast show. Having originally started in interstate radio, he moved to Adelaide and 5AD (now Mix 102.3) in 1967. He was already well established as a firm favourite there when I joined that station in 1970.
By then he had covered several air shifts and had settled down into an afternoon time slot. I recall how he always opened the program with “Hello listener” because, as he once explained to me, he did his program for each and every person listening.
In the early ‘70s a new program manager, Paul Thompson, took over at rival station 5KA (now 104.7 Triple M), heard John on the air and immediately poached him for his new line-up. Thompson told The Advertiser how he fell in love with Vinnie’s voice and decided to lure him to the new breakfast shift.
“I thought, ‘Gee, there’s a remarkable voice with great warmth and great communicative skills’,” he recalled. “I recognised the uniqueness of his personality. He always had a lighthearted take on life. He never took himself seriously.
“In radio there are people who are widely liked, but he was widely loved. His humour was never savage or cruel.”
Thompson was a programming genius who established Earth Station 5KA and took it to the top of the ratings before assuming the role of manager of the newly opened FM station SSAFM. There he created the Morning Zoo breakfast program, which was anchored by Vinnie and eventually became the number one breakfast show on Adelaide’s airwaves.
Vincent conceived a plethora of characters for his program including Paul Bearer (Paul Keating), whose morning greetings included “Morning scumbags, now get out of bed and earn some tax”.
There was Percy the Pensioner and Ken Oath, who went on to make a string of hit records with songs like Owyagoin, Take me back to Innamincka, Backyard barby and the garbo’s song Monday’s Collection Day.
Frank Sebastyan, who was lead singer with the Adelaide group The In-Sect, recalls first meeting Vincent when he turned up at their regular gig at the Arkaba Top Room asking if he could sing with the band. “It was about 1966 and I eventually allowed him to come on stage and sing a song he’d written called Owyagoin,” Sebastyan said.
“We already had a contract with the W & G Record Label and I approached them on his behalf because I was convinced the song would be a hit. It was hugely successful and made the top 10.
“John and I became good friends after that and we retained our friendship right through the rest of his life. He was also the main compere for Fiesta Villa at the Findon Hotel and we backed him there on occasion as well.”
Vincent was born with a serious heart condition, which required major surgery in his late teens.
Although he suffered serious health problems through much of his life, he continued to work in radio until just prior to his death at the age of 67 in 2009.
As a mark of Vincent’s immense popularity, a Facebook page created by his many friends and family members reads: “This is a tribute page for the amazing, loving, legendary, John Graham Vincent (Vinnie). A Radio Icon.”
Bob Byrne is the author of Adelaide Remember When and posts memories of Adelaide every day on facebook.com/adelaiderememberwhen/
