Veteran broadcaster John Laws talks about life after losing his beloved wife Caroline

Caroline and John Laws met when she was 14 and he a year older, and their great love endured for 70 years, until her death in February. Now the veteran broadcaster talks about life without ‘The Princess’ and how his life will never be the same.

He is famous for his deeply resonant voice, his considered opinions and well-chosen words.

But when Australian radio legend John Laws lost his beloved wife Caroline to ovarian cancer in February, he had only three.

“I am lost,” he said painfully on February 24, the day Caroline Rosalie Margaret Laws died peacefully at home in the couple’s luxurious Sydney harbourside apartment, her treasured art collection, pampered cats and the man she’d fallen in love with at 14 (he was 15) all close at hand.

Radio legend John Laws at Woolloomooloo Wharf earlier this week. Picture: Richard Dobson

Six months on, Laws still struggles to find words to express his epic grief.

Speaking for the first time about Caroline’s death, the veteran broadcaster said he is doing OK, although in quiet moments, when the fog of an afternoon nap leaves him, he still thinks he sees his wife.

“I’m doing pretty well when I’m not by myself. I’m by myself quite a lot,” the 85-year-old said last week. “I go home to an empty house, which hurts, and then I doze off in my chair in the library. And then I imagine I see Caroline walk past …

“It’ll never be the same.”

Happy couple John and Caroline Laws in 1986.

The devoted pair eating lunch at Woolloomoloo in 2016. Picture: Adam Taylor

As a watchful waiter refills his bourbon glass, Laws shifts in his familiar seat on Woolloomooloo Wharf and stares out to the water where his boat, Le Carolina, is moored.

He can’t recall the last time he was on it. Caroline never much cared for it.

For almost 20 years, he and Caroline had been fixtures at this Otto Ristorante table. This had been their table, a place where they had entertained friends and family and business associates alike.

Now it is his table, his alone.

Laws referred to his wife as ‘Princess’.

As he considers his glass, a diner makes her way over to offer her condolences. Random kind platitudes from strangers are the unexpected gift he never saw coming.

Sydneysiders who have always stopped him to sing out “G’day Lawsie”, now stop him all the time to talk about the loss of his “greatest confidante”, as he once called her.

When you’re an Australian household name who spent 44 years regaling your loyal listening audience with affectionate insights about your “Princess” — initially on radio 2UW in the 1970s, and later on 2UE, 2GB, on Channel 10, Foxtel and more recently on 2SM/Super Radio Network — it seems a million people will want to reassure you life goes on.

“Everybody’s very nice. Everybody worries. But look, it’s just never going to be the same. It’s just not. I’ve attuned myself to that. It’s 70 years since I first met her — and even though we went our separate ways for a time — I loved her all that time. I still love her now. I can’t alter anything, so I must simply learn to survive.”

Back in March when he attended Caroline’s funeral at St Mark’s Church, Darling Point, some feared the frail-looking Laws might not survive.

Though admired for his love of words, the broadcaster was unable to address a congregation of high-profile mourners, including former prime minister Paul Keating and actor Russell Crowe, at the funeral.

Luckily there was one thing those closest to him hoped would restore him.

His work.

Laws with former PM Paul Keating, who attended Caroline’s funeral.

After 67 years of broadcasting, a career begun in 1953 — before Top 40 music lists and talkback radio were invented — being a radio presenter still comes as naturally to Laws
as breathing.

“People have said to me ‘how could you have gone back to work after a couple of weeks?’. But I went back to work because that’s what Caroline would have wanted me to do,” Laws explained.

“It is different now. To think that she’s not there — or not listening — not that she listened all that much. But I can’t go home and talk to her about it.

“Apart from that, if I’m working I’m not wallowing in my own self-pity which I think is an unhealthy thing to do.”

The veteran broadcaster — known as The Golden Tonsils — has thrown himself into his work. Picture: John Appleyard

Five days a week he climbs out of his bed and by 8.40am is behind the wheel of one of his prized luxury cars and headed to Pyrmont where Bill Caralis’s Super Network radio station is located. It’s a morning weekday ritual the residents of Woolloomooloo can set their watches by.

Then, with the flick of a switch, he is once again “The Golden Tonsils”, the king of radio, influential interviewer of prime ministers and premiers, performers and “Joe Averages”.

For the past month he’s been doing the drive in a new car, a Mercedes Maybach bought last month on a whim after Laws saw it in an automotive showroom.

He sat in the $500,000 vehicle, on the showroom floor, for five minutes.

Then, smitten, he promptly traded his Rolls Royce Phantom for it.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” he said, enthralled.

For Laws, life will never be the same without his love by his side.

Beautiful things, beautiful cars, and lunches with great friends like retired TV newsreaders Brian Henderson and Steve Liebmann — are all reasons to live.

As for plans for the future, the multi-millionaire just has two today: To continue working and to take a drive.

“I think I might take the Maybach out for a drive,” he said. “Over the mountains and out on the flat and down to Hay and probably down to Mildura and then hit the coast and back up. That would be enough.”