Triple M Breakfast’s Laura ‘Loz’ O’Callaghan on what makes her tick, radio career and breakthrough year
Breakfast radio star Loz O’Callaghan has opened up on her incredible breakthrough year, what makes her tick and why she won’t drink coffee despite the ridiculously early starts.
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For someone who describes herself as “ferociously average”, Laura “Loz” O’Callaghan has had an extraordinary year.
She’s one-third of Adelaide’s top-rating Triple M breakfast radio team, after the surprise announcement this time last year that the perceived rather blokey FM station had poached her from Fresh 92.7 to join veterans Mark “Roo” Ricciuto and Chris “Ditts” Dittmar.
The trio has become the shock success of this fierce ratings battle, kicking it out of the park and claiming the mantle of Adelaide’s No. 1 brekkie show in the penultimate survey of the year, beating previous kings FIVEaa’s David Penberthy and Will Goodings by six points in the all-important timeslot.
The cherry on top was being named Best New On Air Talent at last month’s Australian Commercial Radio Awards in Sydney.
The 32-year-old is typically self-deprecating when asked if she can still legitimately claim her “average” mantle.
“You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter,” she says, with her infectious laugh. “It’s kind of like all of that stuff is very nice. But I think the reason why it works, me being in the show, is that I just am who I am.
“And who I am is just a normal person. So you don’t want to let any of lovely accolades (go to your head). You’re in trouble if you start thinking like that.”
Her brand “ferociously average” started as a fun expression for her Instagram bio, but O’Callaghan is keenly aware with her switch from community radio to the cutthroat and high-profile position in commercial radio, people want to place her in a different realm to the one in which she actually exists.
“Because media is a strange industry and people project on you and make you fancier than you are. And I really don’t like that idea,” she explains. “Average is a very nice place to be. I’m very happy with average.”
It’s been a long and meandering road to radio stardom. She could have become an ABC journalist – but more on that later.
It’s certainly not something she dreamt of as a student at Paracombe Primary School in the Hills.
She was sports captain, but kinda downplays that achievement, attributing it to a lack of competition with only about 50 students from Reception to Year 7.
She followed in the footsteps of her three older siblings (“You see O’Callaghan, after O’Callaghan after O’Callaghan on the honour board and none of us were particularly athletic,” O’Callaghan laughs).
She still had no idea what she wanted to do after high school at Torrens Valley Christian School, where she had a great time socially and still counts people she met there among her closest friends.
But O’Callaghan struggled a little academically with some undiagnosed learning issues.
“For most of my 20s, I was pretty lost. I was flaky and all over the place,” she shares.
“I guess I was just doing whatever felt right at the time and I spent a lot of time overseas.
“I’d come home and moved back in with Mum and Dad and was feeling particularly crap about myself. I was like, ‘I don’t like this. I need to figure out a career. Maybe I should go back to uni’.”
It was actually a matter of wrong place, right time as O’Callaghan stumbled across a radio subject as part of the media degree she’d half-heartedly chosen to do at Adelaide Uni.
Radio was only for third-year students, but somehow she managed to enrol.
Part of the course requirement was producing a show at Radio Adelaide – Media Rights. Every week was a different role from producer, to panel operator to a journalist or host.
It was an absolute epiphany for O’Callaghan. She could parlay her self-confessed “manic energy” and comic timing, honed from years around the rambunctious family dinner table, into an actual paid job.
“It was like we were in my own radio show most of my childhood,” O’Callaghan says.
“Mum and Dad are so funny. My siblings are so funny. I’m not even the funniest person in my family.”
And while they’re often fodder for her hilarious stories – especially her mum who’s dubbed Canadian Cath on air – they’re all so proud of her.
“I think everyone was a bit shocked that it worked out,” O’Callaghan says.
“They’re so chuffed. I mean, when I won the ACRA I was obviously very grateful. But when I called my parents, it was like I’d won the Nobel Peace prize.
“Which I think speaks to how relieved they are that I found something.”
What’s been more of a shock for them is that she’s made her mark in the mornings.
First at Fresh where she started volunteering in 2016, initially making coffees and helping the receptionist. She continued volunteering at the station even while getting paid work at the ABC.
“I had these two things going where I was volunteering all my free time at Fresh,” she says.
“I was working at the ABC – and I knew that would be safe, but I just didn’t have quite the thing about journalism. I think it’s so admirable and wonderful, but you have to leave yourself out of it.
“And I thought I’m not a particularly good journalist or writer – the only thing I can really bring to the table is my sort of special flakiness.
“That might be the only thing that separates me from the pack. I can do that on radio so I might as well pursue that.”
She ended up joining the early-morning breakfast slot on the popular community channel with Mark Thomas, winning a host of fans over her four years.
Yet, O’Callaghan is anything but a morning person. She still struggles to wake up. She pulls out her iPhone to show the list of alarms that ensure she gets to the Franklin St studio on time. First is 3.45am, then 4.15am, and then 4.27am.
“If I’m not up by the first snooze after that, then I’m in trouble – I get one snooze after three alarms,” she says.
“You’d think after five years I’d be used to it. But every single time the alarm goes off. I go, ‘What – it’s dark outside, why?’ And then I remember I have a career in radio.”
It’s become even tougher since quitting coffee last year.
It had to go because O’Callaghan would get too “jacked up” with caffeine in the morning to combat her exhaustion, leading to what she called the “dark place” mid-afternoon, coming down from the coffee high, shaky and needing a nap “in a way that was quite profound”.
“Over the Christmas holidays last year, I weaned off and when I came back, it was no coffee at all,” she says.
“It wasn’t as tough (to do) because I was sort of able to sleep in and distract myself and I got myself these little decaf sachets so I could still have the ritual of a coffee, which I do still do if I need one.
“Although now my tolerance for caffeine has gone back to zero. I had one accidentally recently and I was like (comedian) Robin Williams in the ’70s – bouncing off the walls, like it was bad.”
She’s sitting next to some sporting giants – Brownlow medallist and former Crows captain Ricciuto and former World No. 1 ranked men’s squash player Dittmar – and O’Callaghan jokes the last time she played social sport John Howard was PM (it was netball and she was an aggressive goal shooter-type character).
But she’s slotted seamlessly alongside Roo and Ditts. On paper it seemed like an odd combination, but has proved a runaway success.
She brushes aside suggestions the ratings triumph is all down to her.
“I honestly don’t think it’s about me as an individual, I think we just work really well as a trio,” she says. “We all bring out the best in each other.”
And she says the boys have been so generous to her.
“It’s a testament to them because they are both obviously iconic people in the industry, but they are – all jokes aside – the most down-to-earth, the most knockabout people ever.
“They don’t take themselves seriously at all and they absolutely welcomed me.”
O’Callaghan jokes she’s blacked out that first day on air.
She was terrified to accept the offer, knowing there’d be massive differences between the familiar Fresh and the massive beast that is Triple M.
“I knew it was a good opportunity, but every fibre of my body was saying, ‘Scary, alert, alert, danger, danger’ you know,” she says.
“I knew that the only way to do a good radio show is to be vulnerable. So I knew I was going to have to be vulnerable in this terrifying environment. I just panicked, absolutely panicked.”
While normally an on-air screw-up would be devastating, it was the best thing for O’Callaghan on that first morning. Fortunately, it wasn’t hers.
“Sophie Monk was on the line and a thing popped up in the chat box on our screen that said, ‘Do not ask Sophie about her ex-boyfriend, Jason Statham’. But Roo had his head turned and didn’t see it,” she explains.
“So he just asked her immediately about Jason Statham because he’s a huge fan.
“I saw this moment unfolding in front of me. And – as awful as it sounds – watching someone else screw up made me feel so much better and more comfortable.
“I was like, ‘Oh you’re allowed to make mistakes in here’. It ended up being one of the most awkward pieces of on-air live radio that’s ever existed. We replay it constantly.”
While she’s a little lacking in sporting ability, she’s a one-eyed Crows supporter but a woeful spectator.
“I’m unbearable to watch with – just so unfairly critical of these elite athletes who I have no business criticising whatsoever,” O’Callaghan says.
“And when the Crows don’t do well, I don’t do well.”
O’Callaghan also doesn’t do well setting boundaries with consuming media.
“I watch an unhealthy amount of TV and spend hours a day on my phone, scrolling Instagram,” she says.
“Time will disappear and it’s terrifying.”
Although she argues it is also needed to balance out the demands of the job.
“It’s the easiest physical job in the world, but mentally exhausting,” she says.
“So, sometimes sitting down and watching just utter garbage TV is what you need to do, just really disassociate and just zone out.”
The balance is hanging out with her family and friends.
She’s happily single and she loves sitting in a pub having a beer and a chat. Or playing the piano. Her family is also musical and everyone plays an instrument. She’s currently trying to master Clair de Lune by Debussy.
“That is breaking my balls – it’s a really complicated song,” O’Callaghan says.
The beach is O’Callaghan’s favourite place in the world.
Narrowing her top local spot down to just one is hard, but currently it’s probably down south at Maslins, with her clothes on, she adds.
Much like a kid in the last days of term 4, O’Callaghan very much is counting down the days to her extended break over summer. Her last alarm is next Friday.
“It’s that feeling of – as much as I love my job – by this time of the year you kind of don’t know whether it’s Tuesday or August because you’re so exhausted,” she says.
“I will be doing things like I’m going to try and go shark diving. I’m going to spend a lot of time on various beaches. I’m going to eat an obscene amount of seafood and, you know, maybe have just a couple of shandies or something like that.”
And what about a little bit of revelling in her last 12 months?
“I think you have to be careful with it because you don’t want to acclimatise to that feeling where you’re only happy if you’re No. 1,” she says.
“You want to enjoy it no matter what because (radio) is so fickle and unpredictable and out of your control.
“You know it can shift really quickly and you don’t want to come into work that day and go, ‘Oh, I think I might only enjoy it if we’re on paper a success’. You don’t want to get into that space.”
And anyway every day is a pinch-herself moment, because – as she says – “I literally talk about farts for a living – it’s insane.”
So, yeah, there’s no chance O’Callaghan’s letting success change her. Even with her way-above average year.
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