Amanda and Jonesy: Radio hosts release Pump Up the Jam book as they move from Breakfast to Drive
For 20 years, radio hosts Amanda Keller and Brendan “Jonesy” Jones have shared laughter, family anecdotes and life challenges with each other and their audiences. So what’s their secret?
There are some days Amanda Keller is a two out of 10.
It’s been a bad night. A hard time with husband Harley’s devastating Parkinson’s battle.
A 3:23am alarm clock blares and time to start the day running on empty.
At work, a haven she lives for, her 20-year on air partner and friends for far longer, Brendan ‘Jonesy’ Jones, has her cup of tea ready.
The newspapers laid out like at a hotel.
There to hold her hand, listen if she needs him to and talk if she needs distraction, her mood lifts.
It’s the daily constant in a world of upheaval.
Her rock. His purpose.
It’s a partnership that has seen them through a lot. Contracts and babies and raising kids and motorbike accidents (Jonesy’s), menopause (Amanda’s) and every life moment in between. Now it’s sick husbands and ageing parents and children’s engagements, weddings, grandchildren’s christenings.
And as they take a two-decacde long morning breakfast shift on Gold 101.7, formally known as WSFM, and switch gears to drive us home, they’re ready for an energy shift.
“We’re really proud that after 20 years together, we had our best ratings year last year, we’ve won the last two radio awards as the best national show, we are still at the top of our game, which really makes this sideways move really rewarding actually,” Amanda says.
“We’re not being punted.
“We’re not being shafted – which can happen at the drop of a hat in your career, it absolutely can, so we are really pleased that it’s a move into something different – a different energy shift.”
It took a lot to lure Amanda to breakfast in the beginning.
It was 2004 and Jonesy had joined WSFM from Triple M a year earlier, and he knew they should be a team – he just had to convince her.
So he went to Harley.
“In the end you took my husband aside and said ‘come on mate’ – because I had a had a toddler and a newborn baby pretty much and I knew it’s the every day-ness of radio that can be tricky,” Amanda recalls.
“I’m so used to it now.
“I really am, but for people who don’t do radio, that bit is always surprising as there’s no filming for a couple of days and then having a few days off – it’s just full on.
“And I thought – I don’t know if I can do it.
“And Joesy said ‘give me two years, I wanna pay off my daughter’s braces’.”
“She looked like a jack-o-lantern,” Jonesy interjects with a laugh.
They do that a lot – finish each other’s sentences.
It comes with the territory. Just like the jokes.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the pumpkin,” Amanda fires back.
No it doesn’t. Over the past two decades, Jonesy and Amanda have not only entertained Sydney audiences, but have claimed the number one breakfast crown multiple times and taken home five Australian Commercial Radio Awards for Best On-Air Team.
So is their chemistry the key to longevity?
“I think so, and I think that kind of chemistry is undervalued in a way when people try and put shows together – but neither of us want to be fake and I want to own every word that comes out of my mouth,” Amanda explains.
“So if Joesy annoys me I’ll say so.
“It’s very hard in that small room to fake it.
“I think radio is the great unmasker, and it’s much easier to be real.
“I think our audience knows when we’ve got the shits with each other, but also what we found is that we have learnt to resolve our arguments, because with your partner at home, those things can go on for weeks and days, but in that small space where we are, they can’t.
“You have to get over yourself before the half-hour is out, or it’s terrible radio.”
“And nothing is left unsaid,” adds Jonesy.
“I find familiarity breeds contempt, and I think Amanda you’re less …
“Tolerant,” she offers.
“Yes, tolerant – than you used to be.”
“That’s because you’re doing the same jokes you did 20 years ago,” she scoffs.
Despite the digs, the solid partnership is clear with every interaction, with the same authenticity they gift readers with each shift.
“I think we have a solid friendship off air too; so we rely on each other,” Amanda says.
“I might be able to come in the morning maybe and say ‘I’m a two out of 10 today’ and then by the time we start, I’m great.
“That’s the thing about starting the day running – is that you rev yourself up to put your force field on, because they are hard hours sometimes.
“I’ve never fought the alarm, but … you don’t have your armour at that hour, but I find in 15 minutes, you’re laughing and you think it’s good to be alive.”
Radio is more than a job for both of them.
More than a passion. Jonesy calls it his hobby – something he’d do no matter what.
“It’s like a hobby for me as much as my career – I just love it,” he says of the craft.
“I’ve always loved it and I’ve often wondered what my life would be without it – I’ve been in radio since I was 21.
“I’m 57 now – and I’ve been gainfully employed that whole time and I’ve never grown tired of it.
“And I don’t do it for the money.
“I just do it because I love it. It’s like my musical instrument really.
“It never bores me,” he adds.
“People say I’ve got ADHD, I don’t think I do …
“No they say ‘simpleton’,” Amanda corrects, jokingly.
“You do have ADHD,” she continues.
“I don’t,” he insists.
“But it satisfies me in a way that no day is ever the same and it could be the best day or the worst day and a lot of people probably have that – but I knew that we were gonna keep doing this until they told us to stop.
“And our lives have really been in two and three year contract negotiations – and I was thinking – well, you know when will we finish?
“And I didn’t want to find out it was over and all of a sudden we’re not doing it any more because I really like the show – the show’s great.
“I’m glad we’re managing to take it to a new fruited plane, a promised land.”
Amanda agrees, even though the change in their stable breakfast slot was a shock at first – heightened by the fact the news was broken by rival radio king Kyle Sandilands on his KIIS FM Kyle and Jackie O show.
“I think Drive will be very good for us because it’s a different energy and I think it’s time for us to have a different energy,” she continues.
“I think there’s a frenetic nature to the early mornings and as I said I’ve never fought the hours; but filling three hours of a breakfast show was different to working on a drive show where people might be driving home from work, or they’ve had a tough day somewhere maybe heading home to kids and things that are hard too – I think our job is to be the fun company along the way, and that’s a different energy to a morning energy.
“So I’m looking forward to leaning into that for myself as much as anything else.”
“At the beginning, because we’re competitive animals, we weren’t sure where to put ourselves,” she says of the 2026 change.
“But we took a breath and went actually – this is the universe providing something – Joesy is so herbal – the universe is providing us something that will be much better for us and I’m looking forward to the lifestyle change, which will be so weird.
“My kids don’t live at home any more but they’ve only ever known me to do breakfast radio, and my friends don’t know who I’ll be – for years I’d feel naughty if I go and have dinner with someone during the week – I never go out during the week.
“So there’s a thousand things to unpack and I’m really looking forward to that and professionally I think it’s a great chance for us to be national and to be in a timeslot that re-energises us, because as Joesy said, we couldn’t have chosen when to stop – so a chance to move sideways is a gift.
Jonesy said the national audience will be the biggest challenge, as Kyle and Jackie O have learned in their controversial move to Melbourne this year.
“Years ago it was mooted that we could’ve done a national show, Sydney to Melbourne – this was before Christian O’Connell started – and that is a real challenge,” Jonesy explains.
“Going into Melbourne is a tough gig, especially in breakfast.
“But what’s happened now is the technology has changed so much, and also where people get their information from now – they get it from everything – so that pie has got smaller, as it were.
“So really for us to be a national show, I’m quite excited about it – and that in itself is something I’ve always wanted to do.
“So I’m really looking forward to it.”
Radio has changed a lot over the decades, they muse – and their ability to connect, to converse, to grow with their listeners has set them apart and set them up for the long game.
“It’s changed so much,” Jonesy says.
“The amount of personal stuff that you talk about, the manner of what you give your life out to be – like when I first started, I remember there was a guy that said ‘don’t even say your own name on the radio’ then people will think you’re up yourself.
“So that was when I started.
“We used to play records and tapes and all that sort of stuff and really, being a radio disc jockey back then was just having all your stuff together so you had to put your record on, and your ads, so it was a very manual, labour intensive job – now they’ve got a computer system and the new system that we have now, can pretty much do itself.
“It doesn’t really need anyone to put it together – so it’s the bits you put in between the breaks (that matter) – and I find with the rise of podcasts, people are now in those silos where they get their information, so all those become like an echo chamber as well.
“So we’re radio, you have to broadcast to the masses – but at the same time, you have to have enough appeal for everyone so they don’t tune out.”
To do that, the secret sauce is to be something that matters among the ads, news and the music.
“And in us sharing our own lives and our vulnerabilities – the biggest compliment you can get is that you’re someone’s friend, and if something happens in the world they’ll think ‘I wonder what Joesy and Amanda are gonna say about this tomorrow’,” Amanda says with a nostalgic smile.
“And that at worst – no, at best – best, we’re good company – but funny, must listen to and all that stuff is separate to being a big part of somebody’s day.
“And we’ve heard so many stories over the years – and all people on radio would say the same thing – that the impact you have on peoples lives you don’t even know it.
“But I think a lot of that comes from sharing our own lives in our own vulnerability with each other, but with our audience.
“I heard this great term from my friend’s son, a Year 12 student who did a photography assignment on it – it’s the word sonder – which means the gradual realisation that everybody is going through something – is living a complex life.
“That everyone’s life is complex.
“So when we are asking our audience to share their lives – I had to think long and hard and with Harley’s permission about talking about what was going on with me – and I didn’t for a while, until I was ready to talk about it.
“But also part of it is – you get up, and it’s one foot in front of the other.
“People ask me how do I to cope and it’s one foot in front of the other and taking your joy where you can – coming to work and having a laugh.
“When Harley was first diagnosed we said – do we want to live differently? and we said no, we do exactly what we’re doing now, which is what gives us both pleasure and joy and our kids and all of that – so it’s business as usual, despite what you go through.
“And anyone who’s going through something will tell you that.
“No one says it’s easy.”
“But that’s the beauty of radio, I find – it’s such a great distraction for anything that you have in your life,” Jonesy finishes.
“I’ve got friends on the cusp of thinking about retirement and this is so much pleasure –
I don’t have a job that I can’t wait to get rid of – I love it,” says Amanda.
“We often talk about how lucky we are to have jobs that we’ve loved for this long and we look forward to going to and that we don’t choose to leave – win lotto and you’d still keep working.”
For Jonesy, the question is … how much?
“Well obviously it depends how much,” she laughs.
The live, fast paced immediacy of their every day may feel overwhelming to those of us who are terrified by the thought of putting a step wrong and being cancelled in the process.
But you can’t bite your tongue, they warn – that’s when things can go array.
“And that’s what’s changed in the world too – which is why I don’t read a lot of stuff written about us for that very reason,” Amanda explains.
“You would not be able to go to work and open your gob and talk for three hours if you had to second-guess every word that comes out of your mouth.
“Because unlike breakfast television, we pretty much are giving out information and opinions – we are the information givers.
“We don’t interview people for their stories – we tell the stories.
“So a lot is asked of us in terms of our opinions in our thoughts – and you can so easily stuff it up.
“So you can’t afford to look back and see what people think or you couldn’t do it the next day.”
So have they ever said something, taken a big gulp and wondered – is this it?
“Probably,” she laughs.
“I’ve got in trouble with my family, with friends, with Amanda, my whole career – and the worst thing is when they don’t hear it directly,” adds Jonesy.
“When you hear it third hand and I’ve paid the price of that where my family have pulled me up on it and I’ve gone ‘I’m sorry’.
“It’s not a normal job. What I say is ingest and I often say to people, just take it with a grain of salt’.
“And the hard thing is that I often think when the sign up says ‘you’re making those decisions door A or door B – I’d rather regret not saying something then regret saying it,” Amanda explains.
“Things I’ve said about the kids or whatever I’ve gone home and I thought they have every right to live in a house with full privacy, and when they were little it didn’t matter, but as they got older and understood what you were saying, you had to be more thoughtful about what you talk about, and I still am.
“And when I go with my friends and things, I say ‘this is in the cone of silence’, don’t worry.
“Or that’s a funny story – can I tell it? I ask permission.”
So is anything off limits?
“Absolutely,” she says firmly.
“And I have to be judicious about what I tell Jonesy when I get to work in the morning or he’ll say ‘say it say it’ and he’ll construe a conversation where he’ll force me to say it. You do, you know very well you do,” she says accusingly.
“So I withhold information from him so I’m not coerced into sharing more than I want to.”
“I lead Amanda to the crime scene … give her the lead pipe and I go ‘oh my god, what have you done’,” he laughs.
The pair have marked their 20 year milestone with the release of a special hardcover book, Pump Up the Jam, now available exclusively through Booktopia.
A love letter to radio, the book celebrates the duo’s unique bond and the friendship that has kept listeners coming back year after year.
“It’s 20 years of us,” she explains.
“I wanted to do a pop-up book but the cardboard head for Joesy, all the trees in the world would have had to die,” she jokes.
“But there is an interactive part to it. Lots of photos, behind the scenes, we just sat down and spoke about some of our favourite bits and the anecdotes and the stories behind the scenes of our favourite interviews – and then we can’t collated that into a book.
“And some of our spoken bits and pieces as well as actual audio from the show, you can access in the book by going to a QR code you can listen to.”
“So you can hear our underwater fight,” offers Joesy.
“We can find anywhere,” agrees Amanda.
“We were preparing to break a world record in the shark Tank at the Sydney aquarium to do to do the longest underwater broadcast, and where we were working in North Ryde at the time, weirdly they had a pool on the roof, so we practised working underwater with the technology.
“And my mask was a full face mask, like that thing from Alien –
“It’s all right for you,” she sprays to Joesy when he mocks her.
“I have a bad hip, it took me an hour and a half to get in and out of the wetsuit – I cried on the way home.
“And she rang everyone in her world ‘oh he’s mean to me’,” he mimics.
“The water was cold, I was getting ear infections, it was going in to my eyes,” she protests.
“Well that was happening to me too,” he says straight back.
What they didn’t know was that their fight was being recorded.
They actually played that fight to Titanic writer and director James Cameron when they interviewed him once.
“It’s not all jest … there are times when – not that I don’t think I can do it, but when I go home furious and come to work furious and get through the day, FURIOUS … but as Joesy said, we do resolve, we do talk it out because we feel we have to,” says Amanda.
“It’s too hard to do this job without us being mates.”
They were mates first, before they were Jonesy and Amanda. Jonesy was actually the first person Amanda told when she was pregnant with first son Liam after years of IVF.
“And it so wasn’t looking like you would have a baby,” he says.
“And we weren’t even doing a show together – we were just friends at Triple M – and this is just classic Joesy – I told Joesy and then I had to have some test that afternoon and he said ‘where’d you go yesterday, you got problems with your guts’ … he’d forgotten,” she laughs, accusingly.
“I finally got to share the news after years of trying and he’d … forgotten.”
“See? I’m a good vault.”
Being mates means they socialised a lot together.
Their kids grew up together. Not so much anymore, life happens after all – but when they do it’s gold.
“We do love catching up,” she says.
“It doesn’t happen as often – but you know what’s changed now is I see Joesy’s family at engagements and weddings and christenings – that’s how long we’ve known each other – we are in that phase now.”
“And that’s the thing now,” chimes in Jonesy.
“When I got Amanda to come and work for me, for the braces money – now it’s paying for my daughter’s wedding, and she’s having that at the zoo and that’s not cheap …”
“Now I’m paying for the animals’ braces,” she laughs.
“But we have (lived a life together),” she continues.
“Through Joesy’s bike accidents, through my various hip operations – Joesy used to joke about menopause and say that I’d come to work in a brunch coat with an egg stain down the front – well I had some eggs stains on some very expensive jackets thank you very much, so we’ve worked with each other through a lot of life changes.
“Very much, absolutely,” she says when asked if he was a support through Harley’s diagnosis and subsequent health battle.
“As I said there are some mornings where I come in and hold his hand – because as I say, you’re very vulnerable at 5 o’clock in the morning, you’re still processing life – I think Drive will be easier because your head’s in the right place – and I say ‘look I’m 2 out of 10 give me give me 20 minutes’.
“And then I make her a little cup of tea, I lay the newspapers out like we’re in a hotel …”
“But you don’t make me talk about it all the time, every night every day saying so what’s happened? which is no way to process my life either,” she says of their inner workings.
“Because it’s hard for me because Harley was a big part of my life as well,” he says.
“So as I tell you, I talk to you if I need to, other than that, we get on with it,” she finishes.
And they’ve both raised some pretty good men and a woman.
Amanda and Harley with Liam and Jack, and Jonesy and wife Helen with kids Morgan, Romany and Dominic.
“I feel like crying,” says an emotional Amanda.
“They’re so gracious through all this stuff in their life, but Jack wants to get into radio and so Jonesy is a great mentor for him.
“So our families are very much interwoven in that – all our children, because of the nature of their sense of humour are relatively cynical about what we do and they’re not privileged or up themselves in anyway none of us could’ve tolerated that.
“This is the stuff that makes me cry.
“I could not be more proud of the boys and how they are handling their lives.
“How in tune they are to my life and to Harley’s and the efforts they make there – they’re off on their own doing their own thing, but but hugely connected to us, we are a very tight unit.”
Of best interviews – and there have been a lot – Barbra Streisand comes to mind for Amanda, Jerry Springer for Jonesy. And Robbie Williams for both. Always Robbie.
“We interviewed Robbie Williams earlier this year and I’d be on holidays with my sons,” Amanda explains.
“We went to Tokyo for a week in January – and one I’m going to cry again – but one of the big moments we had was we were doing karaoke and we saying Angels and all three of us hugged and Liam – who’s not a giant gush fest – leaned over and said ‘I love you mum’ – and I told Robbie that, and once again, sometimes you disarm someone by giving them a human experience.
“And I said ‘you must hear that a lot’.
“And he said ‘I don’t hear it enough’ – and you know when you say your song meant something to me, I was just touched that it meant something to him.”
And the worst interviews?
“Harrison Ford turned up with a book in case we were boring,” she scoffs.
“Oh he came around,” Jonesy continues.
“I always try to be better with Russell Crowe, I always feel that whenever we talk to Russell, he loves Amanda but I feel that every time I try and do something with Russell, it just never works.
“Russell and I are just on two different levels and not that I fan girl him, but I feel that we could be mates, and then it never works.
“Because we’ve got a lot in common, we like stuff …"
“You’re both multi multi multi millionaires and look great in a gladiator tunic,” interjects Amanda.
“But I’d just like to be better with him,” Jonesy continues.
“It’s never a bad interview but and every time we chat I just think ‘dammit’.”
Breakfast hours – waking when the world sleeps – is tough.
They never fought it, but family life was made possible because of their spouses.
“Kudos to Harley – he’s a freelancer filmmaker, producer and when kids were little he we made the decision that I’d be the one that will go to work early in the mornings and he’d be there – and the kids still laugh about that there would be mould on the bread but he’d call them flavour patches,” Amanda laughs.
“And as a kiwi he looked after the dairy industry and smothered their sandwiches in butter and they’d say ‘dad, don’t’ and he’s say ‘get used to get’.”
“Yeah, used to the cholesterol,” mutters Jonesy.
“But he was the guy at home during those years,” continues Amanda.
“And then he went back to his art roots and had a gallery and a studio, but the kids have always respected him professionally as well.
“We’ve trod that line between us both, so that I wasn’t just the person working and dad was at home, we’ve shared that story.
“And people remember where they were when my kids were born, and Brendan, and they know the history of our story and our families and your bike accidents Joesy and they know the stuff that you say that winds me up – they’re part of the thread of us.
“And what I’ve liked about recent weeks is that we’ve been saying ‘come with us to the fruited plains of the drive show’ and what we want this show to be … and they’re like ‘I’m coming’.”
Their fans are coming along for the drive.
Jonesy was at Westfield recently when a woman followed him to the carpark.
“This lady followed me all the way to my motorbike and I thought she’d lost it, and I said ‘are you all right’ – and she said I just need to talk to you – I thought she was going to stab me,” he jokes.
“And then she got really emotional and she said ‘I’ve listened to your show for so long and all my kids they’ve left home …; and she said ‘I’m so sorry for bothering you’ … and I gave her a hug and I said ’what are you sorry for? you’re not bothering me at all, this is a lovely thing’.
“And we get that a lot.
“No one ever calls us an asshole or anything like that.”
“I call you an asshole,” says Amanda, as only she can.
“But part of our story is we represent a passing of time for people as well. I’m getting emotional again – but also for their lives, we are the touch points for where they were when.
“They shared their lives too, through the time we’ve all been together – which is – what a gift.”
The last alarm for the ‘robust discipline that is breakfast radio will be strange.
“It will be weird because usually we have that holiday, and then we have to gear up for the early starts again – I’m looking forward to thinking ‘that’s that last alarm’ and it’s an energy shift – that’s the last alarm,” Amanda says.
“This will be different.”
Jonesy still has his old school alarm clock. The bedside white electric alarm ‘clock radio thing’ he bought back in 2003 when he first started doing breakfast – the very same one.
“God that’s like groundhog Day,” jokes Amanda.
“And someone said I should smash it up – but I feel sorry for the alarm clock because I set it for 325 each morning but I always wake up at 3:23am so it never gets to sound.
“There’s a real discipline about breakfast radio – a lot of people have tried and failed because they thought it would be easy – there’s nothing easy about it.”
And the future? Beyond Drive, what does it hold?
“For me there’s so much that’s unknowable,” admits Amanda.
“I’m filming another series of The Piano as we speak, so that is a wonderful thing to be part of and I think radio and that, and that kind of does me.
“I’m happy to get the pleasure that I get from the job.
“We’ve got a place on the south coast that I can go away to on weekends if I need to, I see my sons, I hang out with Harley – and that’s a rich life for me.
“And I don’t mean rich as in rich.
“When Harley was sick, we re-evaluated what it is we want – and this is it.
“That’s the thing – you hope you have a rock.
“Not everyone does have a rock.
“But we’re all going to face stuff – as I said with the sonder thing – scratch the surface and everyone has a story.
“Like The Piano – I hold people’s hands through their best days and worst days, and we do that on the radio too.
“Everyone has a story.”
And as Joesy quips, as long as that rock’s got a bit of Nickelback in it, life is good. Gold even.
More Coverage
Originally published as Amanda and Jonesy: Radio hosts release Pump Up the Jam book as they move from Breakfast to Drive
Join the conversation
Dear Santa, All I want for Christmas is a new song
Read more
How a freak fall forced Aussie NBA star to find himself
Read more