John Laws, 89, to retire from radio in November

Broadcaster John Laws, 89, has announced that he will pull the plug on his extraordinary 71-year media career next month.

John Laws will retire from radio after a 71-year career in November. Picture: Richard Dobson

Broadcaster John Laws has announced that he will pull the plug on his extraordinary media career next month.

It’s not the first time that the man known as ‘Golden Tonsils’ has stepped away from the microphone, but this time around, he says it’s for keeps.

At 89 years of age, another comeback is a long shot.

On his morning show on Sydney’s 2SM on Tuesday, Laws responded to a listener’s praise of his program, saying: “You’re not going to be hearing it for long.”

“It’s time for a rest, is what I think,” Laws continued.

“I’ve done it for a very, very, very, very long time, and 70 years – is that long enough? That’s long enough, and I think that I’ll just call it a day and call it a day pretty soon, probably beginning of November.

“First week of November, it’ll be 71 years since I started on radio. So I think, you know, I don’t want to be greedy. I’ve had 71 fantastic years, fantastic years. I had a really, really good time and loved, you know, most of it.”

Laws has helmed the morning show on 2SM since 2011, and for most of his 13-year stint at the station has attracted little attention – aside from a brief furore over his on-air questioning of a sexual abuse victim – and drawn a modest audience.

It’s a far cry from his celebrated tenure at 2UE, when he and fellow radio host Alan Jones transformed the station into Australia’s powerhouse talkback stable.

Laws’ last broadcast on 2UE was on November 30, 2007 – one week after Kevin Rudd defeated John Howard in that year’s federal election – with the radio host departing the station in his Rolls-Royce Phantom amid a blaze of camera flashes.

Four years later, Laws was back on air at 2SM, having declared that he missed radio.

But on Tuesday, Laws was clear: he’s done.

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

As for retirement? “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.”