Heartbreaking reason Kyle Sandilands pulled 60 Minutes ‘health’ stunt

Kyle Sandilands broke down in tears live on air this morning as he addressed last night’s controversial 60 Minutes hoax.

Kyle Sandilands broke down in tears on radio this morning while revealing the sad truth behind last night’s 60 Minutes hoax.

The shock jock’s interview with longtime friend, Nine presenter Karl Stefanovic, received plenty of backlash from viewers after failing to deliver on the hype of its promo.

60 Minutes last week teased Kyle’s mysterious “health battle” in its promotional material, questioning if the “loudmouth of the airwaves is about to be silenced”.

“There’s a condition that I’ve been diagnosed with and I haven’t spoke to anyone about,” the program teased Sandilands as saying, with both Kyle and co-host Jackie ‘O’ Henderson in tears – but as it was revealed on the show last night, in the very next sentence, he announced he was joking.

The radio duo appeared on 60 Minutes last night.

Needless to say, viewers weren’t impressed by the blatantly false advertising.

But addressing the controversy on the Kyle and Jackie O show this morning, Kyle admitted he’d used the gag to cover up his real feelings.

“The honest truth of why I was about to cry with all that breakdown stuff is because inside, I’m very, very sad. But it wasn’t the right forum to bring it up,” he told Jackie O, as he broke down in tears.

“When you said, ‘I’m very worried about him’. A wave of emotion went through me, and I realised I was losing control, so I had to make something up as a joke.”

"Inside I’m very sad."

Kyle reveals the truth behind his sick days and that 60 Minutes gag.

If you or someone you know is struggling, Lifeline is available for support on 13 11 14. pic.twitter.com/HAVbn3yRgl

— Kyle and Jackie O (@kyleandjackieo) May 24, 2020

Kyle went on to reveal that he’d been struggling with his mental health for some time.

“(People) look at me and think, ‘yeah, you’re a fat bastard, you should be sad’,” he continued, as a tearful Jackie O added: “And you haven’t been having a great time lately.”

“Not for a long time,” Kyle responded.

“Me, knowing how I feel inside, watching the show last night … there were glimpses of (the sadness). Like, when Karl was like, ‘do you use humour to mask sadness?’ That is true. I use jokes and say inappropriate things.

“I just feel really let down by a lot of people, a lot of the time. Everyone has their struggles – but I often feel very alone.”

Kyle has admitted his “joke” was to mask real emotion.

With both hosts in tears, Jackie O reminded him she was always checking in.

“You’re not alone – I reach out to you all the time. I know you put your guard up, you’ve had a lot of bad eggs … You have,” she confirmed.

“You’ve had people who have used you, and that’s probably caused a lot of the loneliness and sadness in your life.”

Nine has copped a lashing from viewers over the misleading promo - and even Kyle admitted he was taken aback by the way the interview was advertised.

“They promo’d that quite heavily...” Jackie O began.

“I didn’t think they’d promo it like that, as if I was going to die,” Kyle said.

Jackie then explained that a few weeks after they’d filmed the segment, she’d asked the 60 Minutes producers whether they’d include Kyle’s joke.

“When Kyle dropped that joke in the room, you really had to be there to get an idea of how heavy it was... there was probably about 20 extra people int he room, it was before lockdown,” she said.

“The room was just silent after that. The interview ended, that was the last scene we did on that joint interview, and all 20 people didn’t know what to say - they didn’t know whether Kyle was a genius or a sociopath.”

While the big health “bombshell” turned out to be a hoax on 60 Minutes, Kyle did confess that he’s not in the best physical shape.

Kyle gave a wide-ranging interview to his longtime friend, Karl Stefanovic.

The KIIS host, who appeared on the program to celebrate 20 years on air with Jackie O, described himself as a “big beetroot” that was “ready to explode with high blood pressure any second”.

He revealed his blood pressure “was good for the first time in probably fifteen years” and that he was hopeful, “maybe I won’t just die one day without any warning”. He described it as a “silent killer”.

But a check on the blood pressure machine during the interview revealed his blood pressure was high once again, with Stefanovic calling it a “grim prognosis”.

“That means at any stage I could die. Any … at any time. Day or night,” Kyle said.

“Where’s my doctor? (laughs) He’ll, he’ll die when he sees that.”