‘Am I a feminist?’ Question that left Kyle Sandilands speechless as Jackie O reveals why radio duo are taking a huge risk

Ahead of their biggest move in radio to date, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O reveal why failure isn’t an option – and the reason Kyle thinks he’s a feminist, as the pair pose in a high-fashion shoot.

For 23 years, Kyle Sandilands and Jackie “O” Henderson have dominated radio airwaves in Sydney – and become one of Australia’s most well-known double acts.

But they rarely sit down together on the other side of the microphone. Now, on the eve of their show’s expansion into Melbourne, they do, joining Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About for a wide-ranging chat about what makes their relationship tick both on and off air, how they really feel about the controversies they’ve weathered, the different seasons of their lives – and whether Sandilands considers himself a feminist.

Stellar: Tomorrow, you’re expanding your top-rating breakfast show The Kyle & Jackie O Show into Melbourne. The stakes are high – it’s been a long time since either of you were in a position where you have something to prove. Why do this to yourselves? Are you feeling the pressureof trying to win over Melbourne?

Jackie O: I don’t think we tend to place pressure on ourselves. We’re just going to continue doing what we do and what we feel works. We know we have good content, and I feel that is what will win over that audience.

Kyle Sandilands: Good is good. The world is so much smaller than it used to be. We’re listening to podcasts from all over the world. This whole fakeness of “the show’s not made in Melbourne” … Well, guess what? Neither is the Today show or Sunrise. But people still watch because people aren’t f*cking stupid. No-one thinks like that.

Listen to the full interview with Kyle & Jackie O on Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About:

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Stellar: You say it doesn’t matter where a show is broadcast from … So will you ever broadcast out of Melbourne?

Kyle: Oh yeah. Jackie is in Melbourne nearly every week.

Jackie O: And we’re not even on air yet.

Kyle: She’s at the tennis, the Grand Prix, the football … She’s at the casino rolling dice.

Jackie O: I do love Melbourne. It feels like this great excuse to keep going back there now, because it’s been years since I’ve been hanging out there. I used to live there.

Kyle [to Jackie O]: Did you ring up any old lovers?

Jackie O: No, I didn’t have any because [when I lived there] I was married to “Ugly” Phil [O’Neil, her then radio show co-host to whom she was married from 1995 until 1999].

Kyle: She’s been married multiple times, so it’s hard for me to keep up.

Stellar: If the Melbourne expansion doesn’t work, what will you do? You’ve had a dream run in Sydney (The Kyle & Jackie O Show has remained the number-one FM breakfast show for 39 consecutive surveys). Will that feel tarnished if you don’t conquer Melbourne?

Jackie O: Absolutely not. We’re going to vary differently on this, I’d say, because I think: why would you let one failure be the mark of your legacy, or even tarnish it in some way? A lot of times when you do fail, that’s OK. It’s fine.

Kyle: It’s unforgivable. No, no.

Jackie O: But if it didn’t work …

Kyle: I wouldn’t care. It’s not even possible in my mind that it doesn’t work.

Jackie O: See, he’s got this absolute belief. I reckon that’s why Kyle is so successful – his pure and utter belief.

Kyle: I only do things I totally believe in. Otherwise, why bother?

Stellar: Let’s talk about your partnership on air and off air. You’ve worked together for 23 years and been through a lot, both together and individually. Do you ever think about what you would be doing today if you hadn’t met?

Kyle: I’d be in prison.

Jackie O: I reckon I’d be a mum of eight.

Kyle: Oh God, living on the Gold Coast with eight different husbands, every kid from a different father, milking them [all] for maintenance. Living in a high-rise.

Jackie O: I think he’s not far off, you know.

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Stellar: Do you still have the capacity to surprise one another?

Kyle: Oh, yeah. Last year, she left to go on holidays looking like Roseanne Barr and came back looking like Elle Macpherson. That was the biggest surprise of my life.

Even seeing my child being pulled out of my wife’s stomach was not as surprising as Jackie walking back through in a size-six dress. I nearly died.

Jackie O: We do love that there are all these chapters of my life, and they’re all so different from each other.

Kyle: I used to be the one rooting the models, and she had a baby, remember? And somehow I’ve got the baby and she’s out rooting the male models.

Jackie O: How good is life?

Stellar: You’re very much in different chapters of your life. (Sandilands, 52, married Tegan Kynaston last year and their son Otto was born in August 2022; Henderson, 49, split from her second husband Lee Henderson, who isthe father of her 13-year-old daughter Kitty, in 2018.)

Kyle: I feel that Jackie missed out on a lot of sex by being married so young – and dedicated, you were a dedicated wife. You weren’t some ho that was getting their groove on.

Jackie O: No. No.

Kyle: You did everything right. I even knew your dream was to marry a guy like Hugh Grant and have a home, like a house in some movie that you saw once?

Jackie O: Yes. Father Of The Bride.

Kyle: And you did all of that. You made that house.

Jackie O: I did it all. Yeah.

Kyle: You married the English guy that was like Hugh Grant. Like, “Oh yeah, like, funny bloke, like, hello guv’nor.” Got the house, got the baby and then realised, Oh, this is a sh*t life.

Jackie O: No, life is just not like a movie. You know?

Kyle: Right, right. But I admired her because a lot of people stay in an unhappy relationship. I sometimes stayed for years in relationships that I should have gotten out of earlier. I think I’ve done this my whole life.

Jackie O: I think we do that a lot. Everyone does that a lot.

Kyle: Giving it a go. Giving it a try. You don’t run away.

Jackie O: Yeah, and I think sometimes you just go “Oh, is it just too hard? You know, is it too hard?” Especially when you’ve got a family.

Kyle & Jackie O are on the cover of Stellar, out on Sunday. Picture: Stellar

Stellar: You’ve also navigated plenty of controversy together on the show over the years. Kyle, you’ve been at the centre of a lot of those media storms. Is there anything you look back on now and regret?

Kyle: There’s nothing I really regret. I learnt a few lessons along the way. Any of the things that were said – or any of the perceived scandals – a lot of them, like, 4 per cent wrong, 90-odd per cent invented or spun or twisted. It’s very hard to defend or argue if someone’s telling everyone a demonised story of something that was true. But some things have been bad. There have been my personal mistakes. Offended certain groups over the years. Or the lie detector situation. [In July 2009, when a mother had her 14-year-old daughter participate in an on-air lie detector test to talk about her experiences with sex and drugs, the girl revealed she had been raped at age 12. Sandilands responded by asking, “Right, is that the only experience you’ve had?”] I was copping the sh*t for all of that, which was fine by me. I was making sure the mum and daughter were protected. I may have said something that might have offended or sounded inappropriate, but that wasn’t the intention. Then it took on a story of its own … so you just weather the storm.

Jackie O: And I think there’s a misconception that we like to invite that sort of media attention.

Kyle: Or we plan it. We don’t. Ever.

Jackie O: I think some people genuinely believe we love that, that we’re looking for that. It honestly couldn’t be further from the truth. We actually hate it when stuff like that happens. You know, it’s really hard to do a three, four, five-hour show every morning for 23 years and not put a foot wrong. You say things in life that you go, “Oh, I shouldn’t have said that.” We’re all guilty of it.

Kyle: We just say it in front of millions of people.

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Stellar: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was at your wedding last year, Kyle, and prompted outrage because people such as (Kings Cross nightclub identity) John Ibrahim – who is a good friend of yours – were also on the guest list.

Kyle: I really respected the Prime Minister when he was asked on live TV, why would you go there with those people? And I liked his answer: “Well, I wasn’t in charge of the guest list.” They didn’t ask: give us a list and then we’ll decide whether we’re coming or not. I really respected him for that. I never go anywhere and think, oh I want to know if there’s anyone there I don’t like. I get on well with Albo. I’m not politically aligned to the Labor Party. With my income, I should be a Liberal all the way. But I like the guy. I think it’s a lot about liking the human being, and I don’t really care, and I think he’s the same way. That’s why he came. I think he knew there was going to be a couple of rough types there.

Jackie O: He would have been warned that it was most likely going to happen.

Kyle: Yeah, and then when the bomb-sniffing dogs came through half an hour before the wedding, that really threw a lot of my mates into … They were scraping.

Jackie O: Did that happen?

Kyle: Yeah, yeah.

Jackie O: Oh, of course. It’s the Prime Minister.

Kyle: They were like, ‘Oh, sh*t, the drug dogs.” I was like, “No, they’re bomb-sniffing dogs. You’re all good, fellas.”

Jackie O: I wonder if they pick up everything.

Kyle: No, no, they’re trained for the bombs.

Jackie O: Oh, only one thing?

Kyle: I checked.

Jackie O: Why not kill two birds with one stone and make that dog do double the work?

Kyle: Because the other dogs needed a living as well.

Stellar: The two of you famously have pay parity. Kyle, you took a stand in helping negotiate that?

Kyle: It wasn’t because I’m a nice person, it was because I was in shock. She was an icon when I was young; I never even thought I’d be good enough to work in Sydney or Melbourne … anywhere. [To Jackie] Do you remember I came to you [in 2000] and said, “Oh, they’re giving me $250,000. You and Phil must have earnt so much together.” You were like, “Nah, Phil earnt that. I’m only on whatever.” I was in shock because I’d never thought about a man [earning] more than a woman. I couldn’t think that I was going to get so much more than her but she was the one I’d been listening to for years and wanted to emulate. So I went to the [network’s] general manager without even discussing it with Jackie, and said, “I don’t feel right with this, you’re going to have to fix it up so it’s the same. I’ll take less.” The general manager was a female, and I think she was so shocked, she asked me to come back in half an hour, and then said, “Yeah, I’m not going to take it from you, but you are 100 per cent right. It needs to be equal pay.” So I never lost anything. Thank God, ’cause that’s nothing I’d do today.

Jackie O: You would have taken a pay cut? As if!

Kyle: Jackie didn’t know that I was having that conversation, and it wasn’t even a big deal to her. She’s like, “Oh no, that’s what the male host gets.”

Jackie O: I think we accepted a lot of that sh*t back then. It wasn’t talked about at all.

Kyle: Thank God I did that one right thing 23 years ago. Never done anything nice since.

Jackie O: It still happens, though. There are still boys’ clubs that exist.

Kyle: Do they? Where?

Jackie O: Everywhere. A lot of men treat women like “Yeah no, you’re not important, let me talk to the guy.” It happens and you wouldn’t notice it because you’re a guy and you’re just on the receiving end of their attention. You’re not looking at how they treat women.

Stellar: Kyle, you called it out earlier this year on air, the gender pay gap that still exists in the radio industry. It can be up to 12 per cent. You were really vocal about it. Would you consider yourself a feminist?

Kyle: I dunno. [Pauses] I’ve never thought of it. I really respect women. I think maybe it’s because my mum and I … When [my younger brother Chris and I] were younger, she left my dad and we were a bit on the run. I’d move from school to school to school. I’d seen Mum chain-smoking at night, looking out the window terrified. So I’ve always had a really soft side and I put it down to that. I don’t like seeing women suffer in any way, and that’s more likely from some sort of childhood trauma than me being a really nice guy. Because I can be an arsehole as well.

Jackie O: I think the essence of you is feminist. You say things sometimes that are anti-feminist, but then you also say things that are really pro.

Kyle: I love women. I respect women. If someone is working in a factory putting baked beans in a box, why would the man get more? That’s just ridiculous to me.

It’s stupid. I was surprised that it’s still a thing. It should be just fixed a million times over.

Stellar: You’ve caused outrage and offence over the years in some of your interviews, and had the occasional person storm out of the studio. Is there anything I could have asked you today that would have offended you?

Kyle: Nothing. I don’t get offended.

Jackie O: I don’t think so. I feel everything that could possibly have been asked of me has been. By him. He’s desensitised me to anything … I have total immunity.

Kyle: My brother has got a similar sense of humour, but if he says what I say, people are outraged. Because I don’t come from a nasty place. I come from a playful place.

Or mischievous, rather than gronky. No-one likes a gronk.

Jackie O: It is true, isn’t it? Because absolutely, I would be offended at certain things that were asked of me if I didn’t know the person. That’s totally different … There’s a line, that’s for sure.

Kyle: Here we are, back to the lines again. Back to that bathroom down in Melbourne at the nightclub.

The Kyle & Jackie O Show airs from 6am weekdays on KIIS 1065 Sydney and KIIS 101.1 Melbourne. You can also listen via the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hear the full interview with Kyle & Jackie O on Stellar’s podcast, Something To Talk About:

Originally published as ‘Am I a feminist?’ Question that left Kyle Sandilands speechless as Jackie O reveals why radio duo are taking a huge risk