Last Friday morning at 7am, I left Brisbane headed for Sydney to meet the best talkback radio host in the country – The Spoonman! He used to host a late night talkback show on FM station Triple M in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Adelaide. This was the only show of it’s kind in Australia (because it was on the FM band) and therefore it was a very special show. The show’s motto was “No Topic Taboo, Everything Is Utterly Fair Game” and that’s exactly what it was – The Spoonman would deal with just about any topic in detail, everything from politics to what’s your favourite band of all time? In 2008 Pikelet and Myself started a fan club on MySpace, Bebo and Facebook and then KG joined us a few weeks after we started and took over Pikelet’s role because of other more important things that came up in Pikelet’s life. At the end of 2008 there was a plan to consolidate the three groups on MySpace, Bebo and Facebook into one central website, but sadly due to the onset of the Global Financial Crisis, the show was axed on 27th November 2008. So the fan club turned into a tribute site and a place to download all the existing podcast material from the 3 years of the show (because they got removed from the Triple M website when the show was axed). The Spoonman returned on August 24th reading the workday news and adding editorials to the end of the news bulletins on Sydney’s Triple M only.

So after a few years of listening and setting up a fan club (www.spoonmanfanclub.co.cc) I finally got my opportunity to meet the man behind the Microphone. If you purely listened to the show, you’ll probably form one of two opinions of him. The opinion will either be “this guy knows what he’s talking about, he shuts up the idiots and comes up with sometimes radical, but logically thought through ideas” OR you’ll think “what an arrogant bastard, always hanging up on and abusing callers he doesn’t agree with him”. Well when I met him, he is the nicest guy. I met him the day after the Labor leadership spill and the week had been a big one for the Spoonman with all the coverage and analysis that was needed and therefore he was tired, but he still spent 2 and a bit hours with my family and I taking us on a tour of the station, having a drink with us and just a good conversation about everything from radio to politics to just life in general. So that was probably my highlight of the year so far .

The next day I met up with my mate KG, who I only see if I go to Sydney OR if he comes up to Brisbane. He took showed me where he worked (Nova 96.9 Sydney) and we had a good chat and some lunch too. That was also pretty awesome and it’s always good to meet up with KG when I go to Sydney! The following day my family and I then travelled up the Sydney-Newcastle Freeway to Newcastle for Lunch and then up the Pacific Highway and The Lakes Way to visit Deanna at her house about 30 minutes outside of Forster/Tuncurry. It was lovely to see Deanna again and to see that she’s quite happy and doing well in Year 11. Finally after an overnight in Tuncurry it was time to drive back down the Pacific Highway to Newcastle and then Williamstown Airport to fly home! I will probably be posting a blog soon about the state of the Pacific Highway because roads interest me like that.

So that was my awesome four day holiday and it was probably one of the best holidays I’ve ever been on