‘Time for a rest’: John Laws to retire from radio

Legendary broadcaster John Laws shocked listeners on his 2SM breakfast show when he casually announced plans to quit.

Legendary radio host John Laws has announced that he plans to retire in just a few weeks’ time.

89-year-old Laws casually broke the news on his 2SM radio show on Tuesday morning, after reading out an email from a listener who had written in to tell the host that he enjoyed listening to his program each morning.

“You’re not going to be hearing it for long, mate,” Laws said in response to the email. “I think it’s time for a rest.

“I’ve done it for a very, very, very, very long time,” Laws said about his broadcasting career. “And I think that I’ll just call it a day, and call it a day pretty soon.”

Laws his hanging up his headphones. Picture: Richard Dobson

Laws said that he will “probably” hang up his headphones at the beginning of November when he celebrates 71 years on air.

“I don’t want to be greedy,” he said. “I’ve had 71 fantastic years … and loved almost every minute of it.”

Laws made it clear that when he does give the game away, it’ll be for good.

“I’m not going to go away and then come back again and say, ‘oh, it was all a mistake,’” he said on 2SM. “It may well be a mistake, but there’ll be no return. That’s it.”

As for what he’ll do in retirement, Laws told his listeners, “I’ll travel, I’ll sit about, I’ll read more … and I’ll catch up with things that I should have caught up with a long time ago”.

John Laws (centre) with John Howard and Lachlan Murdoch in 1998.

Big surprise

Tuesday’s announcement came as a bit of a surprise, with Laws previously saying, “I can’t imagine me ever retiring”.

Just last year he told The Daily Telegraph, “I don’t think about retirement. I suppose I will have to one day but no, I don’t want to stop, I’d like to be doing it when I am 100.”

He did however acknowledge that he would find it tough if he did decide to retire.

“That will be a big moment for me because I’ve done this for so long and I like it so much that it will come as a great shock not to be able to sit behind a microphone and talk to people,” he said last November.

John Laws in the 1970s.

On 2UE in 2003.

An amazing career

Laws will go down in history as one of Australia’s most successful radio hosts, in fact former prime minister Paul Keating once labelled him “the broadcaster of the century”.

Nicknamed “the Golden Tonsils”, Laws has presented on a number of different stations over the years but is most famous for his lengthy tenure on Sydney’s 2UE.

He was first heard on the station in 1957 and did several stints before retiring from radio in 2007.

After a few years off, Laws said that he missed radio and he signed with 2SM in 2011 where he has been hosting a morning show ever since.