How Kyle Sandilands slowly healed his public image with help from Imogen Anthony

From the most hated man in Australia to … something else? The radio shock jock has found redemption through his occasionally foul-mouthed young girlfriend.

Since meeting his girlfriend Imogen Anthony in 2011, FM radio king Kyle Sandilands’ public image has slowly but surely transformed.

There was a time when Sandilands was such a divisive figure that he was, to all people, untouchable. That is to say that while he was adored by his fans, he was reviled by pretty much everybody else. Sandilands was hounded by controversy, to the point where advertisers where regularly bullied away from his Austereo program, despite The Kyle and Jackie O show being number one in the ratings.

And while the pair may have lost their top spot in the battle for listeners, Sandilands and his co-host Jacqueline Henderson (Jackie O) have come to occupy a different space in the Australian consciousness than they did five to 10 years ago. As Kyle ages and his relationship with his outspoken model girlfriend matures, it seems like the shock jock has softened into something different.

Kyle and Jackie O left the Austereo network for Kiis FM after a series of massive controversies centred on the shock jock’s outbursts.

“Looking after Kyle is a full-time job,” Anthony recently told The Saturday Telegraph.

The pair met when Kyle found her smoking weed in the corner of his 40th birthday party on her own. “After the party night, we didn’t really leave each other’s side,” Kyle told Who magazine in 2013, two years into their relationship, when he also called Anthony “the love of his life”.

“If anything happened to her I could never be with anyone else,” he said.

THE MOST HATED MAN IN AUSTRALIA

Around the time Sandilands met Anthony in 2011, his public image was in a state of rapid disintegration. It might be hard to remember how loathed Sandilands was, so indulge yourself in a refresher.

One particular 2013 interview perhaps best summed up the national sentiment for Sandilands — and it didn’t paint a pretty picture. The journalist repeatedly referred to Sandilands as a bogan, in the article and seemingly to his face. “You really think so?” was the radio host’s response, as he asked if they wanted sugar in their coffee.

They went on to suggest that Sandilands’ mouth was at risk of exploding, recalling that he “has form in the business of abusing female journalists”. He was also referred to as “pale”, “pudgy”, “indolent and indulged” and a “pantomime villain” with “cadaverously cold” eyes throughout the piece. It’s a lot.

It was a hit piece, sure. And the target was large, low-hanging fruit. It’s likely Sandilands did the interview to curry favour in the public eye, but it backfired spectacularly with a journalist and public who had no interest in hearing someone say, “I’m not so bad.”

The thing is, the “most hated man in Australia” was at the tail end of a perilously bad four years.

THE LIE DETECTOR INCIDENT

So what were the incidents? There have been a few, but an incomplete history follows.

In 2009 Sandilands and Jackie O cooked up an on-air stunt that pitted a mother and daughter against one another, forcing the supposedly wayward 14-year-old to reveal the truth to her mother about her sex and partying. The girl was terrified, and strapped to some kind of lie detector, and the mum was staunch she was going to get her answer. It’s classic “mother terrifies daughter” stuff.

The lie detector incident attracted national attention and sparked an investigation. Picture: KIIS FM

But everything went awry when the teenager, cornered on live national radio by her mother and celebrity radio hosts, said she had been raped as a child. Sandilands coped badly, treating it like an awkward moment, hesitating before trying to move forward with the interrogation.

“Right … is that the only experience you’ve had?” he asked. His co-host terminated the interview. Sandilands was ultimately pulled off the air for a fortnight and a licence condition was slapped on the station by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. The conditions had to do with “anxiety” relating to “children” and “not demeaning” women and girls.

During the time, Sandilands was at the peak of his game. He was a host on Australian Idol. For the tens of millions in advertising revenue his show produced, he had been given a golden microphone, a million-dollar-a-year salary, and was allowed to jetset around Los Angeles, recording his show remotely.

ROCK BOTTOM — SANDILANDS HAS ADDICTION ISSUES

Sandilands’ split from pop star Tamara Jaber came in the wake of his firing from Australian Idol. Picture: Paul McConnell

“(The White House in) Terrey Hills was just a debauched, disgusting sex pit,” Sandilands said in a 2013 Fairfax interview of the enormous home where he indulged himself after his breakup with pop star Tamara Jaber. During this period he was also “self medicating” for migraines with “piles of cocaine”. Due to problems with his blood pressure, doctors told him his abuse of the drug meant he was at risk of dying “at any moment”. He claimed the addiction issues carried on for many years.

“I didn’t care if I lived or died.”

He also said during this period that he became a sex addict.

“I wanted to prove I was a man, and still desired.”

ACCUSATIONS OF ANTI-SEMITISM

In September 2009, Jackie O and Sandilands started chatting on air about TV star Magda Szubanski, who had lost 25kg with Jenny Craig, a deal for which the company had paid her $850,000.

“She could get another season out of them, easy,” said Sandilands, suggesting she had more weight to lose.

“You put her in a concentration camp and you watch the weight fall, like she could be skinny.”

Szubanski, who did in fact sign another contract with Jenny Craig which was reported to be worth over a million dollars, did not take kindly to Kyle’s comments. She said in a statement at the time: “I couldn’t give two hoots about what Kyle says about me, but to trivialise what happened to people in concentration camps is abhorrent.”

Sandilands has always claimed the situation was unfairly turned into an anti-Semitic situation, when he was just being loutish, off the cuff. It was, according to him, just a stupid joke that was not coloured by the fact that Szubanski is Polish, and her father and grandparents fought in the Resistance in Poland during WWII.

Austereo didn’t buy it, and took him off the air. It was a slap on the wrist for alleged anti-Semitic speech, but Sandilands insisted it was a misunderstanding, and that he and Szubanski are mates.

“I’m uneducated,” he told A Current Affair. “I didn’t even finish year 10.”

“I went off to the Jewish museum. The good thing that came out of that is that I was educated in what a lot of people went through.”

Talking on podcast The Probe in 2015, he said: “I never said it with any intention of malice … like I was never trying to attack the Jewish community.

“You people, you helped create this and then you just want to turn your back on someone,” he said, explaining his side of the situation, the promotion of an outspoken character who can speak from the hip, but who they were ultimately happy to abandon when their star player took the joke too far.

STOUSH WITH JOURNALIST

In 2011, Kyle shocked on air again when news.com.au journalist Alison Stephenson called his TV special A Night With The Stars “awkward”. Sandilands made comments about the journalist’s body and clothing, and her ability to be impartial, suggesting she be sacked.

“You haven’t got that much titty to be wearing that low-cut a blouse. Watch your mouth girl, or I will hunt you down.”

Sandilands did apologise on air and in an open letter to the media, but it was 17 days after the incident.

AN HONEST MISTAKE(S)?

“The journalist (incident), that was way overboard. I took it emotionally and personally. And I should have had myself a bit more together,” Sandilands told A Current Affair.

But people didn’t take kindly to the lie detector incident and sexist abuse of a journalist, and public pressure meant after each of these events advertisers left in droves, costing Austereo tens of millions of dollars.

But Kyle was reticent to admit that his behaviour directly affected advertiser behaviour, saying the loss of revenue was caused by “Twitter hater campaigns”.

“They want to advertise with us, because this is where all the people are,” he said. But, he said, people were sending hate campaigns directly to their websites, saying they would boycott and destroy their business if they advertised with the station.

“That’s what hate is.”

SANDILANDS HAD A HORRIFIC CHILDHOOD

A younger Sandilands during his Australian Idol days. Picture: Patrick Riviere

Journalists often ask Sandilands why he is so prone to running his mouth.

He grew up in a home where things often got heated.

“There was always yelling and screaming … lots of things breaking,” he said of his early childhood.

He was kicked out of home for throwing a house party at 15, and for most of the following year he lived in a cardboard box behind a strip of shops in suburban Brisbane.

It made the young Sandilands ambitious and eager to escape. Kyle created a fantastical escapist world of luxury items like cars, expensive jewellery and beautiful women, things he saw in magazines. He would cut things out and catalogue them.

“That’s what I dreamt of as a kid — chandeliers and Rolls Royces — so I thought, ‘F**k it, I’m going to have what I want.’”

In the Australian radio landscape, it pays to be shocking, and Sandilands was nothing if not ambitious. And when you’ve come from absolutely nothing, it’s easy to be keen to do anything. When it comes to running his mouth, it’s something that pays off and was likely encouraged by his network bosses.

Sandilands has often said it’s as simple as him having an opinion, like everybody else.

As the incidents on the Kyle and Jackie O show became more sensational, the ratings did not decline, but Sandilands’ personal brand slowly eroded. A pattern emerged where Sandilands would debase himself and be derided by the media, and his company bosses would temporarily distance themselves from him. While he was incredibly rich and famous, Sandilands often lived like an island.

IMOGEN ANTHONY: SANDILANDS’ UNLIKELY SAVIOUR?

The thing about redemption is that doing your own PR is very difficult.

While Sandilands may have been pretty good at charming people en masse, to a point, it would appear that for some journalists, the die had been cast when it came to his character, and very few had time left for the king of breakfast radio.

Before Anthony, Sandilands generally found himself in the position where he had to endure criticism and a reply made him look like a jerk. Picture: Instagram

In 2014, singer Megan Washington unleashed a pretty standard tirade against Sandilands, calling him “so old-fashioned, embarrassing and he needs to go home,” suggesting Sandilands retire. Anthony, then three years into her relationship with Sandilands, had clearly had enough of seeing her partner used as a punching bag and took to social media to respond.

“Who the hell is Megan Washington?” the social media post began, “For real? The only thing out of date here is your hairstyle.

“Good to know the only way you can get any press is by slamming my man ya tw*t. Wouldn’t even know who the f**k you were. F**k off.”

It signalled a change for Sandilands, who no longer found himself in the difficult position where he had to endure criticism without the right of reply. Anthony has remained an aggressive supporter of her partner.

Anthony is Sandilands’ most vocal supporter. Picture: Instagram

She is not afraid to directly criticise journalists for misunderstanding her partner, who talks for long hours every morning on air. She acts as a kind of female counter-mouthpiece for her partner, who before their relationship was regularly be accused of being an enemy of women, a misogynist and an adversary of journalists.

Also in 2014, Sandilands and Henderson moved their radio show to KIIS FM from Austereo, where he claimed the management was running his career into the ground.

“They really thought we were at the end of our career,” he said. “In all honesty, it’s a shell of what it used to be, that company.”

ANTHONY WILL HAPPILY TELL YOU TO F**K OFF

But only if you deserve it.

“All men, I don’t care what anyone says, they start to regress back to being like teenagers as they get older and they need to be mothered a little bit more,” Anthony told news.com.au in October this year. It’s the kind of wizened, I know what I’m talking about statement that Anthony is known for. She does not mince words and she is afraid of no sh*t-talking journalist.

She described her life with Sandilands, who is 20 years her senior, as less exciting than it may appear on social media, being mostly nights in, Netflix and early mornings.

The couple recently bought a farm in the Southern Highlands. Picture: Cameron Richardson

Seven years into their relationship, the unlikely pair has an unlikely life. They own a farm in Robertson in the Southern Highlands, NSW, which they’ve populated with rescued animals.

Recently while sparring with Instagram commenters, Anthony reminded detractors of the details of her calm life that she has built with Sandilands.

“I rescue baby goats, have four dogs currently laying on me.

“We’re good. Mind yourself.”

Sandilands was contacted via his team for this article but was not able to comment because he was on holidays.