Steve Bedwell’s brutal axing after split with radio partner

Steve Bedwell was a radio ratings powerhouse until he was thrown into a new show with a young James Brayshaw that ran into trouble fast.

Sacked Showbiz Steve Bedwell

AFTER topping Melbourne’s FM breakfast ratings with the powerhouse Timbo and Bedders show, Steve Bedwell says he was stunned when he was axed from Triple M and not allowed to say goodbye to his listeners.

Bedwell and Tim Smith had been ratings champions for Triple M, firstly as The Squirrel Grippers in the morning shift in 1997 and then as Timbo and Bedders for Breakfast from 1998 - January 2002. He left the station at the end of 2002.

Tim Smith and Steve Bedwell had No.1 rating breakfast show for Triple M.

“That same year (2002) they (Triple M management) were worried about Nova coming into the marketplace so they decided rather than strengthen the breakfast team the best thing to do was split it up so each of the halves could grow like a triffid and become another one of itself and it couldn’t,” Bedwell said of the decision to split he and Smith.

“I was stuck with a breakfast show with James Brayshaw and Rachel Corbett called The Mad House and it was awful, it was not comfortable, it stunk.

“I did not want to put the hours in with them because I did not enjoy it and I just wanted to get out, so that ended in probably April and I just moved to mornings by myself which was a soulless mess.

Bedwell said he suspected his contract was not going to be renewed for 2003 but was not prepared for the brutal way the news was delivered.

“I get called in one Thursday night to the station manager’s office, there was her (Elysa Preece) and there was Grant Tothill. They both said ‘your contact is up tomorrow, here is the kicker, the bonus, thank you very much’,” Bedwell told the Herald Sun Sacked: Showbiz podcast.

“I said ‘great, it has been wonderful, I have had a ball, I am ready to move on, thank you. I will do my last show tomorrow and then I will be off.’

Bedwell said he was disappointed he didn’t get to say goodbye to listeners. Picture: Sarah Matray

“(They said) ‘Oh no, you get no last show.’ They denied me the opportunity to say goodbye to people who had been listening to me for seven years.

“No matter how good or bad a person I was, or whoever it was, deserved better than that, it doesn’t matter who it was, they deserved better than that, it was just not right. It was just a shocking thing, I could not believe it.

“Here I am a guy who not two years earlier had knocked back a million bucks to shaft my mate in the back and then I am not even allowed to say goodbye to people.”

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