Jackie O ‘deeply ashamed’ of infamous on-air controversies

In an extraordinary chapter of her new book, Jackie O finally tells all about the infamous on-air moments that still haunt her to this day.

Radio veteran Jackie O revisits some of the most infamous on-air scandals from her career in an extraordinary chapter of her new book, The Whole Truth.

The book’s sixth chapter sees Jackie O list a series of scandals she and longtime co-host Kyle Sandilands sparked during the early years of The Kyle and Jackie O Show, among them segments that left her “deeply ashamed” and a shocking lie detector stunt that saw the show taken off the air for several weeks.

And in a shocking admission, Jackie O confesses that the show’s rising ratings success came “at the detriment of my own morals and values.”

“What the f**k are we doing?”

Kyle and Jackie O circa 2004.

Jackie O shares that in the early years of The Kyle and Jackie O Show, they had a regular “intervention” segment where listeners could appear on the show with an unsuspecting friend, colleague or loved one to confront them about an issue.

Usually the segment was played for laughs, with relatively minor issues raised. One episode, though, took a very serious turn, when a school teacher appeared to confront a colleague about her alcoholism.

Jackie O called the segment “unforgivable,” and revealed that she spoke about it again during her own visit to rehab for substance abuse issues years later, “because I’m still deeply ashamed of it.”

She writes that the unsuspecting woman was with the hosts in the studio when her colleague confronted her about her alcoholism, live on-air. “She didn’t deny it – she just sat there and accepted it and looked sad.”

Jackie O's book is out today.

In it, she details some of she and Kyle’s most notorious on-air stunts.

Jackie O said she instantly regretted the segment, thinking to herself: “This is horrible – what the f**k are we doing?” That she didn’t put a stop to it, she says, was because “something strange happens when you’re on air.” She said focusing on providing entertaining, controversial moments for the audience meant it was easy to “lose sight of reality itself.”

She said that around this time, the show started competing with itself to up the shock factor – “and I think this is where we lost our way. Big time.”

Cruel on-air stunt: “I hate that memory”

Jackie O singled out an on-air stunt with the tasteless title “Dearly Deported” as another career low-point.

Producers invited two Vietnamese sisters on to the show, one of whom lived in Sydney and the other back in Vietnam. They hadn’t seen each other in seven years, and they were separated in the studio, where they had to answer three questions correctly to be allowed to reunite with each other.

They didn’t, so one was immediately sent on a plane back to Ho Chi Minh as they both sobbed, not even having been able to physically touch one another.

“I hate that memory,” writes Jackie O (so, one would presume, do the sisters).

Kyle and Jackie O’s lowest act

Kyle and Jackie O circa 2009.

The stunt saw the pair suspended from the airwaves for three weeks. Picture: AAP

Undoubtedly Jackie O and co-host Kyle Sandilands’ most controversial on-air moment came in 2009, when they hooked a 14-year-old girl to a lie detector test and quizzed her about her sexual history, live on-air with her mother present. The girl broke down in tears as she revealed that she had been raped when she was 12.

“Right … is that the only experience you’ve had?” was Sandilands’ breathtakingly inept response.

The resulting public backlash saw police, politicians and advocates all condemn Kyle and Jackie O, with the show even taken off-air for three weeks.

While expressing regret she didn’t shut the segment down, Jackie O now says of the shocking stunt: “Mistakes such as this will happen when you’re flying down the road at speed, zigging and zagging for fun without checking your blind spots.”

She also complains about the media backlash the pair received for the stunt, writing that “when you’re public enemy number one for breaking the rules of decency, the people who want to hurt you have no qualms about breaking the rules of engagement.”

She said that after the lie detector test, she and Sandilands became targets for negative media coverage that would “misrepresent us or take us out of context. We were fair game.”

Celeb’s private warning to Jackie O

Cruel comments about Magda Szubanski sparked another public backlash. Picture: James Gourley/Getty

The pair’s next controversy came just weeks after the lie detector test scandal, when Sandilands made disparaging remarks about Australian actor and comedian Magda Szubanski, who had recently lost 25kg as a Weight Watchers spokesperson. Sandilands “joked” that Szubanski would lose more weight if she was put in a concentration camp.

The comment was all the more offensive because Szubanski is Jewish, and her father was a resistance fighter in Poland during World War II.

Jackie O reveals that she personally reached out to Szubanski to apologise, and while the Kath and Kim star accepted her apology, she also offered her some advice: “if you lie with dogs you’ll get fleas, and that’s all I want to say on the matter.” She says that Szubanski and Sandilands later patched things up, and the actress has since been a regular guest on the show.

At the end of the chapter detailing their most infamous on-air scandals, Jackie O notes that “during this period … our ratings continued to grow.”

In closing the chapter, she says that it was “odd” to experience such success “at the detriment of my own morals and values,” but the pair’s many on-air scandals had taught her to own up to, and learn from, her mistakes.

Originally published as Jackie O ‘deeply ashamed’ of infamous on-air controversies