Christian O’Connell on THAT Melbourne-Sydney rivalry
Two years ago, Christian O’Connell ditched a successful career in London, packed up his family and moved to Australia to try his luck in radio. Now he reveals why he’s glad he chose Melbourne over Sydney.
Stellar
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Christian O’Connell still doesn’t know why he did it. He certainly didn’t need to do it.
Why would a record-setting, top-rating London radio host throw it all in, move his family across the world and risk it all to take on a Melbourne radio show?
His friends and not-so-near peers Hamish Blake and Andy Lee had told him if he was really bored in London, Australia was an option. But they make pranks for a living.
Yet O’Connell was intrigued, so three years ago he rang Lee. “Seriously,” he asked, “do you think it would work... a guy with an English accent? Out there?”
Lee told him no-one in Australia was “doing radio the way you do” but admitted it would be challenging.
Thinking back on that conversation now, O’Connell can only laugh. “That is the biggest understatement of the word ‘challenging’ a human being has ever said in history!” he tells Stellar.
Still, he took the challenge. Two weeks after signing off from his London show in May 2018, O’Connell was hosting at Melbourne’s Gold 104.3. The first message he received on air told him to go home.
“I knew I wasn’t going to get the keys to the city as soon as I got here, because radio was doing OK [without me],” he says with a shrug. “People didn’t know who I was, didn’t know where I’d come from and – spoiler alert – I was a Pom.”
O’Connell thought he could begin on Australian radio in a late-night shift, building an audience away from the spotlight. But breakfast? Nobody’s quite at their best first thing in the morning – and without their emotional armour in place, it wasn’t clear Melburnians were ready for an unfamiliar Brit on the airwaves.
Adding to the sting, he was friendless, trying to build a loyal audience of strangers and dealing with the sudden heart attack of his mother-in-law, which took the family home for a month.
“It was, ‘Oh god, this might have been a massive mistake!’ I can laugh now but back then it really was sh*t. I’d sunk our escape boats, sold our house in England and pulled the kids away from their friends. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
He does now. O’Connell’s London show, which he hosted for a dozen years, may have been a success, but as he sees it, “If you’re doing something creative, no great work comes from your comfort zone.” He was coasting in a way that he realised no person in their 40s should be.
Ultimately, he was vindicated in his decision to change things up – as he approaches two years in the chair, The Christian O’Connell Breakfast Show is one of Melbourne’s most popular FM morning shows; during one ratings period late last year, it went to number one, topping local legends like Eddie McGuire and Chrissie, Sam & Browny (Chrissie Swan, Sam Pang and Jonathan Brown).
O’Connell’s eventual success – which in radio terms has been quick – is founded on exactly what Andy Lee told him a few years ago: no-one was doing radio quite like him in Australia. He focuses less on headlines than he does his listeners, who he mines expertly, turning everyday life into great entertainment, reminiscent of an interactive Seinfeld set.
“Real life is gold for me, talking about the everyday stuff we all do and blowing it out of all proportion.” It’s how he makes radio that is human and relatable.
“I’m obsessed with that,” he says. “It’s what I’m trying to do each day, [find] the real human moments... I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious.”
There’s not much that’s pretentious about O’Connell. He drops local references easily into conversation because he’s studied Aussie culture diligently – YouTube has helped – and laments the loss of Clive James, someone he’d read since he was a teenager. “He had such a beautiful touch talking about cultural differences and nuances.”
On that note, he is fascinated by the rivalry between Sydney and Melbourne. He’s glad he chose the latter, because “I’ve done a big, noisy city before. Sydney has this arrogance, like London – no-one in London would ever say to an Australian, ‘Why would you come here?’” In Melbourne, he says, everyone asks it. “I say it’s really nice here, and they go, ‘Really?!’ Melbourne is big and very tough to get under the skin of – I love it.”
Five months ago, O’Connell and his wife Sarah purchased their first local home to share with their teenage daughters Ruby, 15, and Lois, 13 – not in a ritzy inner suburb but in middle-class Hampton.
“It’s funny how something like that can make such a difference,” he says. “The second day living there, I could see everyone’s shoulders drop [with relief]. It was a big tipping point, knowing we would build new stories and memories in this house.”
They’ve bought a German shepherd named Nisha, or what he calls “a proper dog – not like these small cats they call dogs out here!” And thanks to a washing machine repairman who told him he wouldn’t enter the house of a Collingwood supporter, he has pledged allegiance to Melbourne Football Club.
And O’Connell is happiest not about his professional success, but what his outrageous move has given his children.
They each have a boyfriend now – “They’re young Australian boys in their thongs and shorts saying, ‘Good on ya, mate!’” – and while he is admittedly heartbroken that Lois gave up a promising soccer career for Aussie Rules, “In 10 years’ time, they’ll thank me for what it’s done for their self-reliance and resilience, which is the best things you can give kids. Because a lot of us adults don’t have it.”
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Originally published as Christian O’Connell on THAT Melbourne-Sydney rivalry