Joel Creasey: The phone call that changed everything

Joel Creasey looks back on a whirlwind year that started with the day that changed his life forever.

Today marks one year in my current role as co-host of Nova’s national radio show, Kate, Tim and Joel. How time flies when Miss Rona’s lurking around the corner!

It’s been a great year and I’m having an absolute blast. I haven’t stuffed up too many times, that I’m aware of. My pop culture knowledge is definitely sharper. I spent the first 6 months thinking Vin Diesel and The Rock are the same person. And I now know ‘The Kid Laroi’ is, in fact, Australian and not the French ‘Le Kid Laroi’ like I was so sure of prior to this job.

I’m still processing everything that happened in 2020, let alone 2021. I was very lucky to be offered this job during a pandemic, and truth be told it was not on my Oprah-esque vision board for the year. Anywhere. 2020 started for me with a hectic tour schedule, TV gigs and some international shows (including Eurovision). It was around March of 2020 when my day seemed to be simply sitting at home watching my work crumble before my eyes.

Joel Creasey. Picture: NOVA

I was trying to work out a contingency plan: I started humming a few tunes to see if I could be squished under a mask and literally sing for my supper. I wondered how I’d go under pepper spray and SAS interrogation (that was a quick no). I was even happy to go head to head in a boardroom with Shaynna Blaze if it meant not having to move back in with mum and dad.

It was a phone call from my manager informing me that Nova would like me to join the show that changed everything. Fabulous, I thought. I won’t have to do a Rumba in front of Todd McKenney and the nation. But the announcement of my much adored predecessor leaving and my signing on and then my actual starting all took place in the strictest of Melbourne lockdowns – curfews, the whole shebang.

It could not have been more peculiar. No celebratory dinners, no drinks with a mate to debrief on the whirlwind of a time I was going through. It’s not uncommon for radio shows to broadcast out of separate studios but not usually when they’re first finding their feet. We tried every which way to get me in to Sydney including whatever quarantine was necessary, but I had to resign myself to the fact I’d be starting the show some 800km away.

I’m still processing everything that happened in 2020, let alone 2021, let alone this gig – so I can’t really give you a definitive answer on my mindset right now. All I can say is I’m loving getting to have a laugh with two mates every afternoon. They’ve been an absolute delight but I shan’t use their names for fear of them reading this. Getting out of the house for a few hours each day has been pretty delightful too.

Originally published as Joel Creasey: The phone call that changed everything