Kyle Sandilands to star in pawn TV series, Meet The Hockers for Nine’s Go! channel

RADIO shock jock Kyle Sandilands will finally get his big break as a pawn star — narrating and producing Meet The Hockers for Nine’s Go! channel.

Pawn star...Kyle Sandilands will narrate Meet The Hockers, a new Australian reality TV series for Go! channel. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

KYLE Sandilands has finally got his big break as a pawn star - narrating a new Australian reality TV series, Meet The Hockers.

The eight-part program on colourful collectors, commissioned by Nine’s Go! channel, was pitched to the network by the radio shock jock, his business manager Andy Hawkins and a former producer on The Voice, Peter Abbott.

Taking its lead from a hugely successful US format, Pawn Stars — which has made global stars of Las Vegas pawn shop owners Rick, Richard and Corey Harrison — Sandilands’ local version began filming the staff and customers at Aceben pawnbroking chain last month.

Expanding on the US program, which focuses on the valuation of items brought into the stores to be “hocked”, the local version hopes to explore what got each customer to the financial “pinch they’re in,” as well as the other quirky motives they have for cashing in their possessions.

In early filming, executive producer Peter Abbott said the production had uncovered the story of a Sydney Symphony Orchestra cellist who “hocks” his instrument as a cheap means of storing it; while an unredeemed war medal has now inspired an official search by the Australian War Memorial to reunite it with the original serviceman’s family.

“It’s an eye into a different part of the world, so everything has been a bit jaw-dropping to me,” Abbott told News Corp Australia.

Sandilands, who is friends of Aceben co-owner Ben Scott, filmed a pilot for the series last year and is still considering whether he will play an on-air role.

“[Kyle] loved the pilot, watched it with his friends and they gave him great feedback on his voiceover so we’re talking about whether he appears now in this series,” Abbott said.

Go! programmer Hamish Turner, who commissioned the series said Meet the Hockers would “lift the lid on the world of Aussie hockers and is full of big characters and even bigger deals.”

Anyone interested in appearing in the program with items to pawn can make inquiries at any of Aceben’s nine locations around Sydney, but must be prepared for producers to spend more time filming the transaction and following the story of their “hock” beyond the shopfront.

Meet The Hockers is scheduled to air later this year.

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