Radio king John Laws, the ‘Golden Tonsils’ of Australia, dies aged 90
The family of radio talkback king John Laws has accepted the offer of a state funeral from Premier Chris Minns to honour his seven-decade career.
The family of radio talkback king John Laws has accepted the offer of a state funeral to honour his seven decade career.
NSW Premier Chris Minns suggested the honour was on offer if the family were to accept following Laws’ death at age 90 early Sunday morning.
“We do everything we can to acknowledge his legacy and reputation for Australia and broadcasting, so if they would like to do it, we’d love to offer it,” the Premier said.
In a career spanning more than 70 years behind his signature golden microphone Laws was at the heart of what mattered to the people who tuned in every day to hear him begin: “Hello world, I’m John Laws.”
“Golden Tonsils” John Laws spoke for the people of Middle Australia, the battlers, and they loved him for it
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His death aged 90 brought tributes from Prime Ministers, Premiers, rivals and Hollywood stars.
But the man who interviewed 16 Prime Ministers considered himself an entertainer and a salesman rather than a journalist and downplayed his influence. His interview subjects did not.
Prime Minister Bob Hawke said John Laws listeners “are” Australia and won the 1983 election by making virtually every important announcement on his show.
And another former Prime Minister Paul Keating famously said: “Forget the Press Gallery; if you educate John Laws you educate Australia.”
It did not look that way at the beginning when Richard John Sinclair Laws, born in Papua New Guinea in August 1935, beat two bouts of polio, finished at Knox Grammar School and started out as a jackaroo in Wellington in western NSW.
He landed his first job in radio at 3BO in Bendigo in regional Victoria where his very first broadcast was reading an advertisement for local haberdashery store The Beehive. It was a great time to be in radio, he introduced his listeners in Sydney to rock n roll, Elvis Presley and the Beatles as he spun discs at first 2UE, then 2GB and 2UW.
Television also offered opportunities for a good looking host and he appeared on shows including Bandstand, Startime, New Faces and Beauty and the Beast.
A change in the broadcasting laws in 1967 that allowed telephone conversations to be put to air changed everything.
Keating said: “The most important thing to say about John Laws is he really made and created the medium of talkback radio in Australia.”
His broadcasts were often polarising and controversial. He called his female producers “handmaidens” and told them to wear skirts to work, in 2013 he asked a female caller who described her childhood sexual assault if she had been partly to blame and two years later told a male listener describing his childhood sexual abuse to “go to the pub and have a lemonade”.
Laws made a fortune from his career which he used to buy a collection of classic cars and pay for a luxury apartment next door to Hollywood star Russell Crowe at the end of the Finger Wharf at Woolloomooloo. At one time he also owned Otto restaurant on the wharf where he would dine every day.
His voice, once described as “music to a woman’s ovaries”, spruiked everything from cars, pest sprays and dental products. “Valvoline, you know what I mean,” became a catchphrase.
However in 1999 he and fellow 2UE broadcaster Alan Jones were accused of blurring the lines in the cash-for-comment scandal by making favourable editorial comments for companies in return for money. They both denied doing anything wrong.
“Remember the alleged cash for comment garbage that went on? I’m going to die with that even though all I was accused of was being excessively loyal to my sponsors, and I’m rather proud of that,” he told the ABC’s Leigh Sales over a bourbon and coke in his home.
His career survived and he went on to be inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2003 and received an Aria Lifetime Achievement award in 2008. He retired in 2007 but was lured back to 2SM in 2011 before finally hanging up the golden microphone in 2024.
Reflecting on his career he hoped he had not hurt too many people. However one of those he did hurt was his first wife and mother of his two sons, Sonia Zlotkowski who found him in bed in a motel room with Yvonne Helstrom-Roux who would go on to become his second wife.
His great love was his third wife, Caroline, known to his listeners as “The Princess”. They first met as teenagers at a dance but went their different ways, she to pursue ballet in London and have four daughters. They did not see each other again for 20 years until they were reunited, appropriately, in Luna Park’s Tunnel of Love.
Caroline was his great love and her death from ovarian cancer in 2020 after 44-years of marriage left him bereft. “I miss Caroline,” he told The Daily Telegraph’s Jonathan Moran after he retired
“We sort of shared everything together. She could be a bit of a handful but I can too … only a bit. I miss talking to her and cuddling her.”
But he did not lose his sense of humour, telling the Sydney Morning Herald that when he died people would say: “At last”.
“I’ve been a bit mad. I’ve driven too fast and ridden motorcycles where I shouldn’t have ridden them, and been a bit of a tear around. I’ve been a bit bloody stupid but I loved it, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. I loved being stupid. I loved driving too fast. I loved riding my motorbike down the main street of some little town that I didn’t know. I’ve had a terrific time,” he told The Daily Telegraph.
In the end he wrote his own epitaph, ending every show with the same line: “you … be kind to each other.”
Originally published as Radio king John Laws, the ‘Golden Tonsils’ of Australia, dies aged 90
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