Jono Coleman was more than just my colleague at Studio 10

Always the first to play the clown, Jonathan Coleman was one of our most successful exports.

Former Studio 10 colleagues Jonathan Coleman ,Sarah Harris, Joe Hildebrand, Ita Buttrose and Jessica Rowe pictured in 2015. Picture: Richard Dobson

Not long after Jono Coleman was diagnosed with cancer, Sarah Harris, my colleague with Jono at Studio 10, and I took him for a walk across Sydney’s Anzac Bridge.

As Sarah and I strolled along, Jono trotted beside us pouring forth one long meandering stream of consciousness anecdote peppered with names such as Richard Branson and Paul McCartney.

“See?” Harris turned to me, as though suddenly vindicated. “It’s like listening to a podcast!”

Those walks became a regular routine for the three of us after Studio 10 wrapped at midday.

For Jono it was part of a new exercise regimen that would once have been as foreign to him as a flying saucer. His previous preferred pastime involved food and wine and floating in ambient bodies of water but he gave it all up to fight for his life – all of it except the floating anyway.

You could always find Jono in a pool somewhere, and I often did.

Many was the time I would pop by with the kids and let them paddle around while Jono leaned back in time and pulled out random recollections of his encounters with figures who were like gods to me: Beatles, Stones, people called Bob.

Jonathan Coleman and Elton John with Jeanne Little

This is what is worth remembering about Jono Coleman, whether you knew him or not. He was self-effacing to a fault, always the first to play the clown or send himself up, but he was one of the most successful Australian media personalities of all time. Sometimes those around him, and often those above him, forgot that.

When Jono was doing one of his inevitable nudie runs on Studio 10, Sarah and I would delight in reminding each other that the man wearing nothing but red lipstick and a loincloth had achieved more in radio and television than everybody else on the show combined.

After dominating Australian media in the 1980s with his ubiquitous partner Ian “Dano” Rogerson, Jono went on to conquer FM radio in the UK in the 1990s.

I can’t think of another Australian who has done that and I’m sure if they had Jono would have mentioned them several hundred times. He was, in short, a pretty big deal.

When he came back to Australia, his family home was the Australian Idol mansion. Naturally it had a pool and, naturally, I came over with the kids to use it.

Indeed, the first visit was particularly memorable because my two-year-old son left a memento in it – something I was alerted to by Jono gently clearing his throat.

After some frenetic activity involving a pair of goggles and a plastic bag I thought I had managed to tidy up all the loose ends, only to realise in the car on the way home that I had left the plastic bag on the table. Not many people invite you back to their house after an incident like that but Jono did – repeatedly, open-endedly, perpet­ually.

“Just don’t tell Margot,” he said.

He was effortlessly generous. In my house right now is a ridiculously large beanbag called “the love sack”. Jono’s kids grew up on it and now mine have too, although my two-year-old daughter christened it “the love snack”.

Jonathan Coleman

Likewise, when my car blew up on the way to Studio 10 one morning Jono gave me his – or, to be more precise, one of his. Like I said, he was a pretty big deal.

And so he ended up doing community radio and infomercials on Channel 10 not because he had to but because … well, yeah. Because he had to. Being on TV and radio was like breathing to him. The airwaves were his air.

And he was brilliant at it, often without trying or even knowing what he’d done. Back in the early halcyon days of Studio 10 his live intros to the advertorials were often the highlight of the show.

His cameos and skits were eye-wateringly funny – if you search for them now you can see me literally crying with laughter. After I left Studio 10 I stayed in touch with Jono of course, but where once he would answer the phone before the first ring and one text message would instantly become a dozen he gradually became harder to reach as that godawful cancer set in. I finally managed to get him on the phone briefly one night a few weeks ago. He was clearly tired and weak and yet still somehow his ever-ebullient self, joshing with me in whispers.

I knew he needed to sleep and he was far too polite to brush me off so I let him go with a promise to speak again. We never did and so I hope these words suffice: Jono, you were a great friend and an even greater man. Goodnight, you golden thing.

Jonathan Coleman died on Friday night, aged 65, after a four year battle with prostate cancer. He is survived by his wife Margot and two children, Oscar, 27 and Emily, 24.