Radio legend Neil Mitchell reflects on 34 years behind the morning mic at 3AW

Melbourne has woken up to Neil Mitchell for more than three decades. In an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun, the radio king reflects on why it is now time to hang up the microphone.

Neil Mitchell announced his departure from the 3AW morning slot on Friday in a speech he wrestled with in those pre-dawn hours when he doesn’t sleep.

He apologised for the self-indulgence of talking about himself. He called himself an idiot.

Mitchell was leaving the perch he has commanded since 1990, when John Cain was premier, one in 100 Australians owned a mobile phone, and Amazon was just a place in South America.

He will be on air until the end of the year (or three more ratings surveys).

Yet there will be no celebratory tour to bathe in the biggest moments, or the biggest interviews, or the stories he remembers best (it’s the kids, by the way).

Well, according to Mitchell, there won’t be.

He has riled Eddie and pissed off Dan. Prime Ministers have threatened him. Former premier Jeff Kennett once threw a glass of water over him.

But in truth, Mitchell doesn’t like a fuss. The microphone is his voice, but also his mask.

Despite some unkind rumours from within, Mitchell could have done another year, and was indeed offered an extension. Part of Mitchell – the journalist who has “peddled madly” for almost 55 years – wants to do another 10 years.

But he’s tired, and has been for 34 years.

Neil Mitchell told listeners he would step away from his role in early December. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Until now, a few weeks’ off would relieve the chronic exhaustion. The itch – to do more, to do it better – wouldn’t dim, and it’s unlikely it ever will. But he doesn’t bounce back as he used to.

Age has wearied Neil Mitchell, as it does us all.

“I’m not frightened,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun. “It’s a hard thing to do because it’s such a satisfying job. But I’ve been thinking about it for some time. I know it’s the right thing to do. The world is changing in some ways I don’t like.”

Stepping down has been an almost annual preoccupation for Mitchell. Whenever his contract was to be renewed, he would submit to a tortured tango with himself.

He would ponder his fatigue, the early morning starts, the lack of fulfilling pursuits, bar his very loving wife and two kids. But he never came that close, he says.

He says his decision was made only in recent weeks. A few confidantes heard him waver this way and that, a kind of weather vane in a storm.

He was said to sound twitchy when he told them – whether with excitement, trepidation, or both, remains unclear. He admits that he has had a few “I did what?” moments since the decision, but also claims that they have passed.

Neil Mitchell is stepping away from the mic after 34 years hosting 3AW Mornings.

Mitchell was in his 30s when he started, his shirt hanging out. Nelson Mandela (Mitchell’s favourite ever interview) was yet to be released from prison. Now, at 71, with Mandela in the grave for almost a decade, Mitchell’s shirt is still hanging out.

He’s still winning ratings surveys, and sounds positively giddy about this week’s results.

He’s still changing things, such as the tale of Geoff Nyssen, for whom Mitchell campaigned for three months so that Nyssen might get lifesaving myeloma drugs in the US.

But it’s different now. The media has fragmented. Political power seems gratuitously unaccountable, he says, rounding on Premier Daniel Andrews, who black-banned Mitchell a few elections ago, and whom Mitchell privately hopes to outlast in public life.

There is plenty to rail against, such as the city of Melbourne, a “heart in need of a defibrillator”. Plenty to worry about, too, such as this year’s unusually high bushfire threat.

Mitchell has firm views on how the world is, and how it might be better. He is mindful of lapsing into “silly old bugger territory”. Happily, he is willing to risk it.

The media has become lazy and superficial, he says, nodding to Andrews’ clandestine approach to public office. The “self-protection” model of “intimidation and seduction” has worked, if that’s the term, and is spreading.

“If you were running a government in Australia, why wouldn’t you look at Dan and say ‘how has he got away with all that’?” Mitchell says.

“And then embrace the template … It’s pretty disturbing if it does survive.”

The Voice has been handled badly, he says. It will not get up. He told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this in a podcast the other week. Mitchell fears we will “look like racist twits” afterwards.

The pandemic was the biggest issue.

“News is what touches people and this touched everybody,” he says. “It will attach to everybody for years. I found that it was one of the most demanding things I’ve ever done, but it was also rewarding in many ways.”

Mitchell changed the landscape by bringing leaders directly to the people. And the landscape has since shifted again, so that leaders (and institutions) often bypass the talkback hothouse for the self-serving safety of social media piffle.

He has set agendas. Call it journalistic instinct, or stubbornness or an intolerance for poppycock.

He has set the tone, which is more subtle, and probably goes to his endurance. He can flick the switch and swing the mood – resilience in the face of terrorism, or grief for a child’s fate, or outrage at dumb laws.

Mitchell will not miss ratings releases, even though he has topped his timeslot 220 times, almost six times more often than he has not.

He will not miss his preoccupation with the phone switchboard – if it’s not flashing red, he has missed the mark for interest.

And he will not miss the recurring dreams: in one, he’s due on-air in five minutes and stuck in traffic on the other side of town; in another, he’s in the studio, on time, but cannot think of anything to say.

Mitchell changed the landscape by bringing leaders directly to the people. Picture: Nicole Cleary

Mitchell topped his timeslot 220 times. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

He laughs at the gotcha moments with politicians, especially the lame refrain of a federal government minister in the 1990s – “Just because”.

There was the regular theatre of a Kennett, the on-air class clown who treated Mitchell like the class nerd. When Mitchell briefly wore a blood pressure monitor, Kennett delighted in making it beep.

Mitchell is proud of the campaigns, such as changing HIV laws, or exposing a dodgy speed camera regime so that $26m in fines were repaid.

He will miss the privilege of being allowed into lives.

He will miss “real people” the most.

He is still haunted by the Kinglake callers to his show on the afternoon of Black Saturday in 2009. He could offer them no comfort from his “padded cell” in Melbourne.

Tyler Fishlock, the brave kid with cancer, lives in Mitchell, as does Mikayla Francis, six, who got an early Christmas in 2010 because she would not live until December 25.

On-air, Mitchell inflates. He’s more expressive. More likely to cry. Remove the microphone, and Mitchell shrinks. He tends to grouch and fret, a bloke who finds the corner of the room.

There will be a regular 3AW podcast after he’s left mornings. Regular radio spots, perhaps TV, perhaps a newspaper column, all outlets for the expression of the biggest version of the man.

“If I walked away from everything I’d be forgotten in a few months,” he says.

“That wouldn’t worry me at all.”

Once, Mitchell asked Derryn Hinch on-air if he ever suffered self-doubt.

“No, why?” Hinch replied, thrown by the question.

Ego drives Mitchell, certainly, but vanity is for others. Deeper currents explain him. Self-doubt fuels his engine. He still fears failing. He still wonders if he is an impostor.

And Mitchell will keep on worrying, as if almost in tribute to the perfectionist mentors who first moulded him when Gough Whitlam ran the country. On Friday, you suspect, they’d have bowed to their protégé.

He has no hobbies, if his regular mowing of five acres for pleasure does not count. Home life on the Mornington Peninsula has always been his private sanctuary, although wife Selina has asked: “You’re not going to be home every day, are you?”

No, he will not be. But Mitchell will sleep in, maybe as late as dawn. He plans to be waiting outside the nearby coffee shop each morning when it opens at 6am.

“I’m not frightened,” he repeats. “If I was going off to grow veggies, I would be.”