ABC star Nate Byrne spills on ‘creepy’ fan mail

Popular weatherman Nate Byrne, who made headlines recently after revealing his anxiety battle, has spilled on an X-rated letter sent by a fan.

Popular ABC weatherman Nate Byrne has spilled on the “creepy” fan mail he’s received, including a very X-rated poem.

Byrne – who presents the weather on News Breakfast – appeared on news.com.au’s I’ve Got News For You podcast and confirmed a viewer had sent him a rather graphic letter, which a source had shared with host Andrew Bucklow.

It read:

“Nate, mate, I bet you taste real great

When I see you do the weather, I can’t help but m********e

While the winds all turn to easterlies and clouds accumulate,

I’m pleading to the heavens that you cannot be straight.

Because Nate, mate, I bet you taste real great.

Nate, mate, I bet you taste real great.

The surge and swell upon your front shifts my tectonic plate

And this threat of global warming does not make my flood abate

I’m giving you my forecast, if we met, you’d celebrate.”

“I’m so glad you don’t have access to some of the awful DMs I get,” Byrne joked to podcast host Andrew Bucklow, after the poem was read out.

“If you ever want to send letters to people, either don’t be creepy … or at least put a return address so we can say ‘thank you’. My colleagues were like, ‘are you sure there isn’t someone waiting outside for you?’”

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Byrne presents the weather on ABC’s News Breakfast. Picture: Supplied.

Byrne made headlines last week when he opened up about his private battle with anxiety, revealing that he had in the past suffered several debilitating panic attacks while live on-air.

In a candid article penned for the ABC website, Byrne also shared footage from those moments so viewers could understand the experiences that nearly “broke” him as he wondered whether he’d be able to continue in the job he loves.

Byrne revealed his first on-air panic attack occurred while reporting the weather live on-air during a 2018 episode of News Breakfast. Watching it back, the issue would have been near-imperceptible to viewers – but Byrne said the experience left him feeling “light headed and confused” and he was taken off-air for the rest of the day.

He was given medication to help control his anxiety, and was slowly weaning off them when another on-air panic attack hit in 2020 – and this time Byrne’s difficulties were much more noticeable. Repeatedly pausing to catch his breath, he stumbled his words as he struggled to make it to the end of the Weather Report.

Addressing the footage in his interview with IGNFY, Byrne admitted it was “hard to listen to”.

“My panic attacks might be a little different from other people’s … I can’t think myself into it, mine is physiological, it’s something I’ve done,” he explained.

“For me it’s running into the studio, being a little puffed, frantic. It feels like every part of your body wants you to run away, just go. I start panting, and have trouble controlling my breathing, my body tingles, my vision narrows, I sweat … it’s incredibly uncomfortable.”

Byrne added that he would “naturally try to fight it” when the attacks happened live on air.

“The first time it happened it was because I ran in, I was a little bit puffed and I was just trying to control my breathing, so that I could present in a nice presenter-ly voice,” he explained.

“And because, as it turns out, I wasn’t breathing enough so my brain was getting a little less oxygen than it wanted, so it did the normal things, trying to get me to breathe a bit more, increase my heart rate … which is what normally happens when your brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, like if you’ve gone for a run.

“But 15 minutes later when I was standing on that spot again, and I saw the same words on the autocue that are there every time, my brain went 'uh oh, hold on a second, I know what happened here last time. Let’s get out, this is no good’.”

Byrne, who saw a psychologist after his first on-air panic attack, also opened up about the tools he's developed to avoid it happening again.

“There are a few ways – I try to control the trigger, which is rushing to the spot,” he said, admitting sometimes that was a difficult task in a breaking news environment.

“But rather than getting to that ‘panting’ stage, I just make sure I’m breathing more regularly than I normally would … Maybe instead of doing two sentences before taking a breath, I just do one. So it’s telling my brain, ‘here’s a bit of oxygen, see, you’re fine’.”

Byrne also revealed that he often will press his thumbnail into the side of his finger during his presentation.

“It’s something I can do on air that you wouldn’t be able to notice unless you were really looking for it … and even then, it’d be pretty difficult to see. It just lets my brain focus on something else while the meteorologist does the autopilot talking.”