Tributes flow as 3AW radio great Philip Brady loses his battle with cancer
Radio and TV great Philip Brady, who worked with the likes of Graham Kennedy, Bert Newton and Don Lane in an entertainment career that stretched more than 60 years, has lost his brave battle with cancer.
Fiona Byrne
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Beloved Melbourne radio identity Philip Brady has died aged 85.
The 3AW favourite passed away peacefully in Kew in the early hours of Tuesday, February 11 after a short battle with cancer.
Brady was diagnosed with cancer on December 5 and hosted what was to be his final episode of his Remember When Sunday night show on 3AW on January 12.
He shared his terminal cancer diagnosis with his close friends, but did not want his loyal listeners and longtime fans to be aware of his rapidly declining health until he had passed.
Brady made his official retirement announcement on 3AW on February 2.
During his 67 years in entertainment Brady found enduring success in both TV and radio.
Born at The Mercy Hospital in East Melbourne on June 16, 1939, Philip Stuart Brady grew up in Kew where he and his neighbourhood friend Pete Smith — who also went on to a significant TV and radio career — created a homemade radio set and would broadcast their show called ‘Brudy’s Hideout’ via wires across neighbourhood back fences to other kid’s radio sets.
“From about five years of age I always wanted to be a radio announcer,” Brady told Gavin Wood in 2024.
“There were no DJs in those days and from about five years of age I was passionate about radio.”
In 1958, aged 18, Brady left school at Xavier College and landed a job as a booth announcer at Channel 9.
“I went to Lee Murray (elocution teacher) to learn how to read commercials and project my voice,” Brady told the Brian Mannix podcast in 2022,” he said last year.
“Within two weeks of going to his voice school in Exhibition Street in the city, the producer of In Melbourne Tonight rang and said ‘We need a temporary booth announcer, only for two weeks, who do you have in mind?’.”
Brady got the two week placement and ended up staying at Nine for the following 13 years.
Not long after joining Nine he was asked to appear on-air reading a commercial and then close the station.
In the early days of TV the stations would close for the evening around 11pm each night.
“Graham Kennedy happened to be watching that night, took a shine to me and thought ‘I can have a bit of fun with Phil’, and that was the start of my TV career,” Brady said.
“Graham was very demanding. He did not mind me getting the laughs, but he just wanted everything to be spot on. He was 100 per cent professional and he expected you to give of your very best too.”
It was Kennedy who gave Brady the nickname ‘Dimples,’ which he said he “
Brady was Kennedy’s on-air partner at Nine for five or six years in the 1960s and continued making guest appearances on other shows that Kennedy hosted during his career.
Over his long career in show business he worked with the likes of Kennedy, Bert Newton, Paul Hogan, Don Lane and Steve Vizard and appeared on every network. He simply loved entertainment and entertaining.
In 1971 he left Nine and briefly worked for a travel agent in Beaumaris. While travel remained a passion, entertainment was always his greatest love.
Brady joined 3AW in 1971 when he started hosting the weekend music shift when footy was on a break. He stayed with the station until 1979.
During the 1970s, he became a quiz and panel show host and helmed seven shows for Reg Grundy including Junior Moneymakers, Casino Ten, Password, Get the Message, Concentration and Everybody’s Talking.
From 1981 to 1983 he produced Bert Newton’s top rating morning show at 3UZ and was also the audience warm up guy for The Don Lane Show.
In 1986, he moved to the Gold Coast and worked for the radio station Easy Listening 97 at Tweed Heads.
He returned to Melbourne in 1990 and teamed up with the legendary Bruce Mansfield, who he had been friends with since meeting in 1961, to create a great radio partnership at 3AW.
The pair enjoyed huge success hosting Remember When and Nightline. They worked together until 2016 when Mansfield passed away after a long battle with cancer.
Simon Owens, who produced Mansfield and Brady’s 3AW shows, joined Brady on-air after Mansfield’s death and they hosted Nightline for three years.
They continued to host Remember When on 3AW on Sunday nights.
“I worked with Philip for 29 of his 66 years in show business,” Owens said.
“The most important thing he taught me about entertaining was that it didn’t matter if you were orchestrating the joke, or being the butt of it, it was rewarding to just be a part of it.
“My biggest sadness is that Philip never wrote his autobiography. A large part of our radio show, Remember When, was Philip regaling us with stories like the time he turned down a request from Elvis Presley who wanted to meet him, or the time he was allowed in the private grounds of the house to watch Winston Churchill painting in his retirement.
“He lived an extraordinary life.
“These last few weeks have been tough. Philip loved his audience so much, he didn’t want to share how sick he was.
“He said, ‘I’m not there to make people cry, and I don’t want their pity. It’s their laughter I’m here for. They can cry when I’m gone.
“If you’re reading this now Flipper, now you have, now we are. Just as you would have liked.”
In 2018 Brady was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for services to the broadcasting industry.
Brady said he had enjoyed a “lucky” career.
“I have been very lucky, I have been very, very blessed, because I am not an entertainer, I don’t sing, I don’t dance, I don’t tell jokes,” he told the Pilots of the Airwaves podcast.
“I don’t know how I have got away with it for so long.”
Brady said he believed his motto had helped him through life.
“My motto is ‘Life is fragile, handle with prayer’.”
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