Inside the end of the Hot Breakfast with Eddie McGuire and Luke Darcy
It wasn’t the exit Eddie McGuire was planning. What really went down between him and co-host Luke Darcy to end the Hot Breakfast?
Essendon
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It wasn’t the exit Eddie McGuire was planning.
Twelve months ago to celebrate the 10th anniversary of his Triple M Hot Breakfast show, McGuire was declaring he’d be in the seat for another decade.
“It’s a privilege and a pleasure to be able to get up in the morning and talk to the audience in Melbourne,” McGuire said.
“It’s a major part of my life, and continues to be. I’ve got no intentions of passing things on. I’m enjoying for all the right reasons.”
A rushed announcement on a Wednesday morning – after several Herald Sun inquiries to Triple M management the previous day – wasn’t the way he’d envisaged signing off after 11 years.
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Given he’d been involved with Triple M for over 30 years McGuire was always going to be allowed to control the narrative of the show’s decline.
But what he couldn’t control was the ratings and a cooling of his relationship with co-host Luke Darcy.
In AFL speak McGuire was like a coach announcing he was quitting just before the axe came down.
There had been murmurings in radio land for several months that the Hot Breakfast was in trouble and that the hosts’ contracts were up for renewal.
The show suffered another dip in the ratings last week – down 0.9 to 5.8 – which put it as the No. 3 breakfast show on the FM dial.
That didn’t sit comfortably with McGuire, or more importantly it didn’t sit comfortably with Triple M management who were forking out serious cash – there are some reports McGuire is pocketing close to $1 million – to have the pair on air.
What has become apparent to insiders in recent times is the noticeable temperature change in the room between the hosts.
The FM station’s dynamic duo have had a tough year and the stress has shown with their differing views about Dan Andrews’ handling of the COVID-19 crisis lingering on.
Darcy was praised for a hard-hitting interview with the Victorian Premier in September where he grilled the politician on the state’s lockdown measures.
The former Western Bulldogs ruckman focused on the mental health effects of the “barbaric” policy and revealed his father, David, had died a month earlier from “isolation and loneliness” caused by the government’s mishandling of the pandemic.
Darcy and his family also run a pub and hospitality group which has been crippled by the lockdown.
McGuire has constantly praised Andrews for how he has continually fronted up in difficult circumstances.
The Collingwood president was off-site for an extended period while in the AFL quarantine hub and did the show by remote from the Gold Coast.
While robust discussion and disagreements is McGuire’s version of a healthy workplace, insiders say there has been a clear shift.
Given their high levels of professionalism, both have soldiered on and were understandably enjoying the stroll down memory lane together on Wednesday morning when they announced the curtain was coming down.
McGuire and Darcy started the show on September 8, 2009, with comedian Tony Moclair and presenter Mieke Buchan.
And they have remained the one constant. Funnyman Mick Molloy joined the top-rating team in 2011, he was then replaced by Wil Anderson in 2017.
The show’s ethos of breaking news via serious interviews with heavy hitters, politicians, superstars and expert commentators was a formula that Melbourne embraced for a long time.
But the listeners have grown tired of it and in the end not even McGuire could spin his way out of that one.
BOMBER’S TREASURED JUMPER UP FOR GRABS
Scott Gullan
Mark ‘Bomber’ Thompson is selling the jumper he wore in Essendon’s famous comeback victory over Hawthorn in the 1984 Grand Final.
The three-time premiership hero has placed a $12,000 price tag on the signed jumper which is being sold through Authentic Autographs & Events Australia.
There is a story to how the jumper made its way back to Thompson after he initially gave it away to a dying fan.
He was reunited with it in 2017 on Fox Footy’s AFL360 program when Mark Hardy, the stepbrother of Michael Lawson who was given the jumper nearly 30 years earlier, returned it to the Bombers champion.
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Thompson had generously given it to Michael in his hours of need and had figured the jumper was buried with him.
“He brought my brother happiness at a time when there was no happiness in his life and it made him happy and smile,” Hardy said.
“It was a very nice, moving thing to do and to get nothing in return. It is difficult (to give it back) but Mark earned it, he played for it, he won it (the Grand Final).
“It was Michael’s and made him happy in a time of need, when he needed it and I just wanted to repay the favour.”
Thompson, 56, is trying to resurrect his life after hitting rock bottom, his drug use spiralling out of control and resulting in a police raid on his Melbourne home.
He was fined for drug possession last year but had a drug trafficking charge against him dismissed.
The Geelong premiership coach is a reformed figure and now spends his days making furniture at a factory in Airport West.
