Kyle Sandilands dishes on love, celeb feuds and his future coffin

KYLE Sandilands has sat down for a rare interview, and revealed he would do anything to stay on top – including ditching his famous sidekick, Jackie O.

Kyle Sandilands and Imogen Anthony. All the action from the red carpet ahead of the Aria Awards at The Star casino in Sydney tonight. Picture: Adam Taylor

KYLE Sandilands will do anything to stay on top – including ditching his famous sidekick, Jackie O.

Opening up in a rare interview on the podcast Matt and Bruno: The Probe, Sandilands admitted he had to be ruthless to survive in the radio industry.

“You’ve just got to crush, kill and destroy and just walk over everyone to get to the top … I’d walk on Jackie’s face,” he joked.

“No, no, no, that’s not true – not Jackie. Absolutely not.”

Talking about his famous on-air partnership, he said both of them could survive without each other, but they choose to stay together.

“We’re very complementary to each other. We can both do the show without each other, but it’s very substandard … the chemistry’s not there.

“We just know each other so well after 15 years of working with each other that we know when each other are going to finish a sentence, and we don’t try to compete with each other — we respect each other.

“And that’s the only way for longevity, I think. Many teams you hear hate each other, or get jealous of each other. I’ve never been jealous of her.”

And has Jackie O ever been jealous of Sandilands?

“No way! What’s there to be jealous of? Look at this! I’m a mess!”

Kyle Sandilands and girlfriend Imogen Anthony. Source: Instagram

On Imogen Anthony, his 23-year-old girlfriend

“I’m not sitting around making scones – I’m living the young life,” he said.

“She takes no sh*t.

“I’m the handbrake in this relationship … she’s the accelerator for sure.

“I see a lot of my younger self in her. She’s young, she doesn’t give a f**k about anything. That’s what I admire; I find that quite sexy.”

On marriage

“Both Jackie and I … we weren’t that good at marriages. The first one’s always a bit rocky. I see it as, you buy a car off Gumtree – you’ve just got enough money, (think) ‘f**k I’m getting this Subaru!’, only to lose your licence very quickly.”

On feuding with his competition

“One of my problems with Merrick and Rosso was always just Merrick being … he was a bit awkward. He didn’t know how to, I don’t know. It was probably very confronting that I had sort of dethroned him. I would hate me as well if I was him.

“Hughesy and Kate always had a great show. Regardless of the fact that I thought he (Hughesy) was just a … you know … I changed my opinion of him over the years. They had a pretty good show. I said (to the Australian Radio Network) Hughesy and Kate would have been good, and I even suggested Matt (Tilley) for breakfast in Melbourne (on KIIS 101.1). They ran all that stuff by me. They were like, ‘Well if we could get them, would you have an issue?’ And I was like, ’No, of course not’. I’m not a little brat. I can be – but I wouldn’t be a brat.”

Kyle mucking around in the studio.

On his recent stint in hospital

“I’ve recovered remarkably well they said.

“(My doctor) says, ‘Kyle, I’m very disappointed you’ve still not lost any weight. You could get this blood pressure under control very easily’. And then I just drift off and I don’t listen.”

On charity

“I give money to lots of people, like, just randomly … I’ll give homeless people money. And they all know me. And now sometimes if I drive down through Woolloomooloo there’ll be a parade of bloody housos chasing the car (yelling) ‘Kyle, Kyle, Kyle!’

“I’ll give them whatever I got. And on Christmas, I give them money. And people go, ‘You shouldn’t give them money, they’re probably going to be on drugs’. And I was like, ‘If they want to spend it on drinks, or food or whatever they want, I don’t care – they’ve already got a bad enough life’. Some people say, ‘You’re probably murdering them’, but you know, not my fault.”

Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O in 2001.

On making the big bucks

“The Hot30 was … that’s when I went from $40,000 a year at Triple M to $250,000 a year on the Hot30 Countdown. And I was like, ‘Wow’. I thought I’d won the lotto. I thought that was the top of the tree.

“So getting that money, that was like a dream come true. But then I started rooting pop stars and actresses, and every year you’d ask for more money and they’d just give it to you.”

On how he wants to be remembered when he dies

“I’ve told my friends I want to be like one of those bikies that get buried in the gold coffin. And they said, ‘You do realise though as soon as everyone goes home they’re digging it up?’ I was like, ‘I would expect no less’.”

For the full podcast with Matt and Bruno: The Probe, go to radioinfo.