TV legend John Blackman opens up about lifesaving cancer surgery
He is renowned for his role on Hey Hey It’s Saturday and later as a beloved breakfast radio host. But in 2018, Blackman’s life took a turn – he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer and required a 12-hour operation to replace his jaw and later, brain surgery.
Fiona Byrne
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This article was first published in January, 2024.
Beloved Hey Hey It’s Saturday star John Blackman continues to find life’s silver linings. As the quick witted, golden voice of Hey Hey, Blackman, 76, he was part of Australian TV history and in the 1980s was also Melbourne’s number 1 rating breakfast radio host on 3AW. His life took an unexpected and dramatic turn in 2018 when he underwent a 12-hour operation to have his jaw replaced after he was diagnosed with an aggressive malignant cancer. His road to recovery has been long and filled with unexpected detours, but Blackman and his wife Cecile and their daughter Tiffany bravely face the challenges together and still find humour in the everyday. Here Blackman opens up on what he calls his “grand adventure” and playing “with the cards God deals you.”
Fiona Byrne: You have had quite the adventure in the entertainment industry, John. How did it all begin?
John Blackman: I grew up in Syndal in Melbourne. We used to play cricket in Blackburn Road. We had to yell out ‘car’ and get off the road when a car went past. Back then it was all orchards in that part of Melbourne. We used to sneak over the back fence and steal apples. I I went to Syndal Technical Academy where I learnt all the things you need to learn if you are looking forward to a career in radio, like fitting and turning, carpentry, woodwork, technical drawing. I left school at 16 and that is when I started out on my grand adventure.
FB: You did not start in the media immediately.
JB: Radio was the last thing on my mind, at that stage. I had a series of jobs. I was knocked back from the railways because I was colour blind, so I found a job as a customs clerk and started work there at 16. I was a sales representative for (men’s perfume company) Sir International. I sold cigarettes out of a cash van, I worked in Myer’s Bargain Basement spruiking. Then I did a radio course run by 3AW. It was a two year course, but I fast tracked it to six months. I did audition tapes and sent them off to the stations I thought would be the most desperate and they were the furthest away from Melbourne. 2GN fell for it and my first wife and I made our way to 2GN in Goulburn in 1969.
FB: Sounds like a good place to learn radio.
JB: The program manager met me off the train and said ‘look I have booked you into a hotel, I have left my wallet at home, I don’t suppose you could lend me $10 because we are going to the RSL’. I gave him the $10 and he never paid me back. That was my introduction to radio. It was a good grounding. We rented a flat in Goulburn for $15 a week and I was earning $39 a week at the radio station and $42 if I worked weekends.
FB: 2CA in Canberra beckoned in 1970.
JB: Yes and that is where Cecile came into the picture. (His first marriage ended when they moved to Canberra) I met Cecile at a party. We fell in love instantly. She had just got back from England where she had been working. We took a little break after a year. Back in those days you had to have good radio training to get on air in Melbourne and it was a rite of passage to go country radio and learn your craft. I had been wanting to get a job on Melbourne radio and in 1971 I was employed by 3AW. I moved back and sitting in my flat in Rockley Road (South Yarra) I picked up the phone and called Cecile and said ‘I miss you, do you want to move to Melbourne?’. We married in 1972.
FB: What shifts did you do?
JB: I started on Nightline with the Reverend Alex Kenworthy and worked my way up the ladder. Breakfast was my main aim. In the meantime I went down to Channel 9 looking for a part-time job and asked if they had any booth announcing jobs.
FB: Was that how you met Daryl Somers?
JB: I got a booth announcer job and to pass the time waiting until I was needed I would watch the programs and make quick quips about what was on the television. In a happy accident, I got rostered on one Saturday morning and was watching this guy in the studio. I asked who he was and they said ‘that is Daryl Somers’. He was doing Cartoon Corner back then, but they then started up a thing called Hey Hey It’s Saturday. Daryl and I became friends. He knew I could do some voices and he found me quite amusing and I found him quite amusing.
He sort of looked upon Hey Hey as radio with pictures and he started using me in his show. Daryl was aware that I was upstairs and that the on air talent never ever spoke to the booth announcer, but Daryl and I, we railed against normalcy back then, so we had lots of fun, lots of back and forth, lots of in jokes. It (Hey Hey) went for three hours every Saturday morning between 8am and 11am. I have actually done more Hey Hey It’s Saturday’s than Daryl because he used to go on holidays, and I didn’t, and they would bring in a substitute host.
FB: So you were part of the Hey Hey team from 1971 and at the same time you were moving between radio stations until 1981 when you joined Paul Barber in 3AW breakfast.
JB: Bruce Mansfield used to phone up as Norman Banks, he used to do a great impersonation. It became a regular segment. Eventually Brian White, who was managing the station, said ‘who is that bloke that you talk to in the morning? That is very funny stuff’. (Barber left AW part way through 1981) Brian, in his wisdom, thought we would make a good on-air duo. Bruce was called Uncle Roy. He was of his time. It was a perfect marriage and we started rating number 1 in breakfast almost from day one and we did that for six years.
Like most of the things that happen to me, that was a happy accident.
FB: You have described leaving AW in 1986 as “the great unpleasantness.”
JB: I was lured away by Brian White and Kerry Packer. Kerry Packer set up the CBC network (a 2UE/3AK experiment) and he lured Brian White away from 3AW. Brian asked me if I wanted to come over to the new station. I had so much faith in Brian when he was at 3AW. Against my better Judgement I said ‘yes’. Cecile could not believe what I had done. I left a post-it sticker on the back door that said ‘I have jumped’. That would be the only regret of my career. CBC didn’t last a year. I realised too late that they only wanted to get me across to break up the 3AW breakfast team. I had misplaced loyalty and was a bit naive. I have 20/20 hindsight now. You learn who your friends are at times like that.
FB: Derryn Hinch had some unflattering things to say when you left AW for CBC.
JB: Derryn and I, we are best of mates. We have buried so many hatchets our back gardens have turned rusty. Cecile and I are catching up with him in a couple of weeks.
FB: There have been many radio roles for you since 1987.
JB: I still love radio. I listen to 3AW every morning. I just love the medium. I am so disappointed, I am not part of it. Since the operation my speech patterns have changed.
FB: How did Dickie Knee end up on Hey Hey?
JB: Dickie Knee started out as an unseen, unnamed school kid character on Hey Hey. He was never seen, it was just me doing the voice. Daryl used to bend over the desk and say ‘Oh, how are you mate?’ and I’d do a quick witticism. Crystal, our floor manager and props guy, came up with the idea of putting a school cap on a stick. One day Daryl was walking behind the (Hey Hey) desk and he banged his knee and said ‘I’ve got a dickie knee’, so I stuck his (Dickie’s) head up and said ‘you rang?’ and that is how he was born. He appeared on 3AW as well. He has been with me ever since. In fact he is here now, hanging in a calico bag on one of the hooks in my office. Is that any way to treat a national mega star?
FB: Hey Hey is one of Australian TV’s great successes.
JB: The show moved to nights in 1984 and it grew even bigger. Every night was a hoot. There was no rehearsal. It was incredible to be part of. You never knew who you were going to bump into. Hey Hey finished in 1999. I got a call from Daryl asking if I could come around to his office, which was in Hawthorn at the time, and out the front was a phalanx of reporters. I was asked ‘Were you expecting it?’. I said ‘for 28 years we have been expecting this’. Everything runs its race. I thought, well, that was not a bad run. Some shows did not go for 28 minutes let alone 28 years.
FB: In September 2018 life took a very unexpected turn. You underwent marathon 12 hour surgery at The Alfred Hospital to rebuild your jaw after a highly aggressive (Squamous Cell Carcinoma) cancer was discovered.
JB: It is coming up to five and half years since that operation. I was being treated for what was thought to be skin virus on my chin and then one day I cut myself shaving and it was obvious there was dead tissue under the cut. When I went to my surgeon to get the results of the test he said ‘Look, John, your life is going to change completely from now on. Professionally, financially, emotionally, it is never going to be the same again. You will never work in front of a mic again.’
I thought, ‘oh well, that is a load of b*llsh*t, I will carry on’, but when he told me ‘we are going to remove all your jaw’ I thought ‘hang on, this is serious.’ Then he organised a meeting with four surgeons at the Alfred and they told us exactly what they were going to do and two weeks later I had the surgery. Even then I was still optimistic, but I got hit by the karma bus and we hit a metaphorical tree head on. Everything the surgeon said has come true. Even now talking to you, it is painful. I can’t do what I love. Thankfully, I still have my sense of humour, they did not remove that.
FB: How did they rebuild your jaw?
JB: They took bone from my fibula in my right leg, they gave me new lips from my cheek tissue and the skin graft came from my upper inner right thigh. It took two weeks to set up the operating theatre with all the staff for the surgery. There were a lot of people involved. Every now and again we run into someone else who was part of the operation. We were at a wedding recently and a lady came up and said ‘you won’t remember me because you were asleep, but I was one of the nurses that was part of your surgery team’.
CECILE BLACKMAN: He was in intensive care for nearly two weeks after that. He did not really start speaking until about three weeks after the surgery. He was in hospital for about six weeks and then he was in rehab for a while. The day after he came home he started six weeks of daily radiotherapy sessions.
FB: In 2022 you faced another serious cancer battle, being diagnosed with brain cancer.
CECILE: The brain cancer diagnosis was really quite shocking, in fact I don’t know who was more shocked, his surgeon or us.
JB: That was the one that could have actually killed me, because it was a very aggressive cancer (Squamous Cell Carcinoma) that was growing right on the top of my noggin. Fortunately it grew downwards. If it had grown sideways into the brain it would have been inoperable. It was only two weeks from the time of diagnosis to the surgery and it just grew so much. It was a six hour cranioplasty operation.
CECILE: It was a big operation. They removed the top of his head, got rid of the bone cancer, went down into the brain, got rid of the brain cancer, put a titanium mesh plate on top of his head and sent him home a few days later. We were very lucky to have come out of it as well as we did. People say how did you cope? Well, you just cope.
FB: Cecile, around the time of John’s brain cancer operation you also had a serious health scare.
CECILE: I was having trouble with my leg. Finally after a lot of tests they found I had a small tumour growing on my spine, blocking the blood and oxygen supply to my left leg. It was the last thing on earth that we expected a week after he came home from brain and bone surgery. After they operated on it and got rid of it, I was fine.
FB: Some extraordinary medical teams have helped you.
JB: They are all amazing, I cannot thank them enough. I thank god every day that they were there and they were the experts in their field and they helped save my life. We have never taken their treatment for granted. There are people much worse off than us.
FB: Where do you get your strength from?
JB: There was a time when you think ‘what next? What else are they going to find?’. Cecile has been an incredible support as has Tiff (their daughter) and we just bowl along and take each crisis, one at a time. Cecile has been an absolute rock and I could not have got through it without her. I owe it all to her and I will say that until the day I die.
FB: How do you look back on your career?
JB: If the 10-year-old Blackman could predict what was ahead of him he would not have predicted Australia-wide fame as Dickie Knee, he would not have predicted working with Daryl Somers and Hey Hey, he would not have predicted all of those things. Life is a lottery or a game of Blackjack, you can only play with the cards the dealer gives you and I am just doing my best. Life deals you a rough hand sometimes and you have to play with the cards God deals you. You get a pair of twos, you do your best, you get a pair of 10s, you play with them, and occasionally you get a blackjack. I have just been very fortunate to get a blackjack a few times in my life. You know what has got me through, humour, being able to laugh at life, and Cecile is very much the same.
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