Kyle and Jackie O have hit Melbourne’s airwaves. I listened for a week … so you don’t have to

Kyle and Jackie O’s KIIS FM breakfast radio program is Sydney’s most popular, and last week it hit Melbourne audiences for the first time. It’s brazen, profane, sexual, demeaning and frequently flouts broadcasting standards.

But at times, it’s weirdly compelling. Here’s what it was like to take in a full week of their antics, but be warned: there’s graphic content ahead.

Kylie Sandilands and Jackie O Henderson have arrived in Melbourne.

MONDAY

Kylie Sandilands, 52, and Jackie O Henderson, 49, take to the airwaves as they have for 24 years, but this time they are broadcasting live at breakfast into Melbourne – Australia’s biggest radio market.

I have never listened to the dirty duo except when reporting on their broadcasting standards breaches. Oh, I did meet Kyle once at a party atop the Museum of Contemporary Art. He was a bit self-contained, shy.

But I’m looking forward to the historic media event, and since professional local curmudgeon Steve Price has already slagged them off, they can’t be all bad.

It’s the most astonishing radio program in Australia, if not the world. The next paragraph about their opening half hour is not for the faint-hearted. Still, anyone – including children – with a radio can hear it.

From 6am, the show is an arresting cavalcade of sideshow freakery, brazen, profane, sexual, demeaning: Jackie O’s history with anal sex, newsreader Brooklyn’s crabs, producer Pedro’s tiny penis, Croatian Nat, who can vape from her vagina, Bruno’s extra long foreskin, the staffer who accidentally slept with his cousin and got run out of his Victorian country town – keeping it local! – and Kyle randomly interjecting with “I don’t suck dick, nice to meet you Melbourne”.

They are all utterly shameless.

Jackie O, somehow endearingly, recalls the time she slept with a man who turned out to be a superfan of the show. Then the prime minister calls in. He’s actually enjoying this. Anthony Albanese celebrates the one-year anniversary of Kyle’s wedding, where he sat next to Kyle’s mum. Then they all had a serious discussion about domestic violence.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with Sandilands and son Otto at the radio host’s wedding last year.Credit: Twitter

I should be scandalised and reaching for the off switch, but there’s a compelling quality to this. And Kyle and Jackie O’s market share in Sydney – where they are No.1 – is an incredible 16.1 per cent.

TUESDAY

An older lady tells the team she is 69. Please don’t go there, I silently plead with my digital radio. Kyle goes there. He presses in a cheeky tone: does she do the deed often?

It’s an occasional treat, she says. Got to keep it special. She sounds like she’s enjoying herself.

Is this a tacky exploitation of an older woman for content or a spirited examination of a senior’s sexuality in the best tradition of Gloria Steinem circa 1971?

Later, in the Only Lying! segment, young Wendy rings her elder cousin, Nancy, to fool her into thinking that she spent their $4000 winter travel money on a doggy day spa for her shih tzus.

“You spent $4000 on your ugly dogs!” Nancy is keeping the bleep man busy. “You need psychiatric help! You and your dogs can go f--- yourself.” Wogs Out of Work could not have scripted a sharper exchange. When the ruse is revealed, both women are, of course, thrilled.

WEDNESDAY

Bella is a stripper, single and six months pregnant. Like many in the trade, she’s had a bit of work done. “Yes, I have the fakies.” But she’s still working so she can provide.

Kyle, in his ceaseless questing for details, wants to know more. Do you provide extra services? Bella is unflappable. “I don’t put willies in my mouth, I’m a bit of a germaphobe.”

Jackie O arrives for Sandilands and Tegan Kynaston’s wedding last year.Credit: Rhett Wyman

She insists on condoms, giving Kyle an opening, telling the listeners that Jackie O is “bareback all the way”.

“Oh, what a queen,” Bella says light-heartedly. Jackie has no comeback.

While the national debate is squarely focused on online harm to children, I wonder how many kids are tuning into this conversation about unprotected sex.

It’s all part of Right or Wrong? – a modern morality tale segment in which listeners phone in with their opinions. A 21st century FM radio equivalent of Geoffrey Chaucer’s saucy 14th century The Canterbury Tales, which were just as filthy.

Meanwhile, over on the ABC’s RN Breakfast, they interview the head of Homelessness Australia. Aunty’s listeners might be surprised to learn the ABC is a fan of Kyle and Jackie O, using your tax dollars to buy frequent ad slots on the KIIS FM show. Does Patricia Karvelas know about this?

THURSDAY

I can barely face my porridge. The KIIS doctor is on. A woman calls with a boil on her ... I hit the off button and flee to the gym.

Later, Kyle says he is going to phone Albanese to tell him that domestic violence funding programs have to actually get to the victim and not be stuck in a bank account.

He movingly recounts how he tried to protect his younger brother from harrowing domestic violence when his dad assaulted his mum. “I can still see that as if it just happened half an hour ago. These things they don’t leave little minds. They are in your head forever.”

FRIDAY

Every single caller gets $5000 today, thanks to a sponsor. Mo’Nique, an Oscar-winning African-American actor and comedian, attacks former talk show host Oprah Winfrey – her frequent use of the n-word is bleeped out in the grab.

“Who are we to edit the voice of a Black woman out because our white ears don’t want to hear it?” Kyle muses. Newsreader Brooklyn chimes in: “What if Spotify edited out all the songs with the n-word in them?”

A debate over censorship is something I really wasn’t anticipating.

It’s worth noting Kyle and Jackie have been found in breach of the commercial radio code of practice’s decency provisions by media regulator ACMA, including last year over remarks about the Tokyo Paralympics. The show now employs two censors.

For all the show’s crudity – similar to US shock jock Howard Stern – the quizzes, the talkback, the showbiz all hark back to the Bob and Dolly Dyer classic era of radio.

When I earlier said they were shameless, this was not an attack but an observation: they are utterly lacking that often corrosive emotion when talking about who they really are.

And mostly, they leave their callers and listeners feeling good about themselves. There’s a sense of community here. And more often than not, I left them and went out into my life with a smile.

In these troubled times, that’s a good thing. So yes, I shall tune in again.

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