Neil Mitchell is signing off from *3AW for the final time on Friday morning — kicking off his ultimate present with a track he has performed as a sharp-edged mark of the departure of different public figures: One other One Bites The Dust.
“In the present day I play it for myself,” Mitchell stated, earlier than welcoming his opening visitor proper out of the fadeout from Queen.
Don’t point out the R-word: Neil Mitchell’s ultimate morning within the 3AW studio.Credit score: Wayne Taylor
“I could possibly be enjoying that for you,” he instructed his interviewee. “The polls are dangerous, you look drained … what are you doing mistaken?”
The person on the opposite finish of the telephone was Anthony Albanese, the headliner on the final present of one of the vital extraordinary runs within the historical past of Australian radio — and it was classic Mitchell, who has been locking horns with political leaders since Albanese was in major faculty.
His departure led the information on his personal station on Friday morning, a mirrored image of his stature as a serious Melbourne participant in his personal proper. Each newsroom within the metropolis has had an ear on what comes out of his studio for a number of many years, and this morning was no exception as TV cameras and photographers captured his ultimate hours on air.
However they’d all be evicted for the final half hour of his present. That, he promised, can be simply him and his listeners for one final stoush. “I ought to warn you, I haven’t had a lot sleep so I’m a bit harmful.”
This was a send-off that appeared unimaginable when Mitchell first donned the cans again in 1987 as a fill-in for the long-time king of talkback Derryn Hinch. He was extra of a traditionalist than Hinch — the self-proclaimed Human Headline, who greater than lived as much as that identify. “I didn’t assume it could final, I assumed it was going to be a 12 months of mucking round,” Mitchell stated on his thirtieth anniversary in 2017.
However like Hinch, Mitchell had print in his veins — a former Age reporter who lined Trades Corridor when Bob Hawke was a union chief, later editor of the afternoon establishment The Herald, he was pushed extra by information sense than a style for the feeling and splutter of an Alan Jones or Ray Hadley.
