Eddie McGuire looks forward to having free time after Triple M
After 11 years with Triple M’s longest-running breakfast show, and as he gets set to hang up his headphones, Eddie McGuire has revealed the physical toll of juggling his commitments.
Fiona Byrne
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Eddie McGuire is not a quitter, but he admits after 11 years his daily breakfast radio show combined with his other commitments has taken a physical toll.
McGuire announced on Wednesday he would end his Hot Breakfast radio show on November 27, making it Triple M’s longest-running breakfast program.
Incredibly, McGuire has spent 23 of the past 32 years involved in some capacity with Triple M breakfast and so has created an extraordinary legacy with the station.
“Always in the build-up to any announcement like this you convince yourself five times over to keep going, to not go, to keep going, to not go, because you love doing the show, but it has been hurting for a while,” McGuire said, adding he was originally going to reveal the show’s end on his October 29 birthday.
“People always ask me, ‘How are you doing this?’ and you just say ‘I am all right,’ because you don’t want to even entertain those thoughts in your head, otherwise you do fall over, so you power through.
“To be honest the constant feeling of jet lag you have when you are doing breakfast radio, it compounds the longer you do it, and you also get a bit older.
“So that is where it is at. I’m looking forward to being a bit more relaxed, to be perfectly honest.”
While McGuire has no plans to put his feet up, he is looking forward to the unusual experience of seeing blank space in his diary.
“I could tell you for the last 10, 11 years where I would be basically every hour of every day of every month of every year,” he said. “You would have radio, football season ... business commitments, school holidays, the boys would be playing cricket on this day, football on this day, debating, band practise, everything right the way through, which means there were massive slabs of your diary blocked out. And that was fine.
“But you do get tired and you do get to the stage where you go, ‘OK, what is the next thing to do?’”
McGuire dismissed suggestions he had had a falling-out with co-host Luke Darcy and that had been the catalyst for the show’s end. Rather, he said, they were planning to spend time together.
“Over summer when we usually host the first couple of weeks down at my house at the beach, Darce is there for breakfast every morning,” he said. “He has been a great mentor to my boys. One of the joys I take away from it (Hot Breakfast) is to have a great friendship with a guy of absolute quality.
“We have a robust (broadcasting) relationship as most people in football do.
McGuire recently joined the board of Visit Victoria, has his TV commitments, he remains president of his beloved Collingwood, and he has his US radio show, his TV production company and other business projects.
He said: “There is a lot to do, I just won’t be getting up at 4.30am every day. It might be 6.30am.”
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