Trevor Chappell remembers his first night on air as terrifying. It was 2000, he had notes and tightly written scripts piled around him, and the nerves only went away when his first talkback caller rang in. Her name was Pamela, she was calling from Queensland, and “she was so kind and welcoming that it made it so easy,” he says.
Twenty-six years later, the 65-year-old is leaving. ABC announced that Chappell will present his last Overnights program on Thursday, July 30.
He has spent those years talking to shift workers, insomniacs and other night owls on ABC radio. Pamela became more than a voice on the line. Chappell visited her on a trip to Queensland, though she later moved into a nursing home and could no longer call.
From mines to the microphone
Chappell grew up in Western Australia and tried a lot of work after high school: mines and wheat bins in the far north-west, building sites, a pub in Broome. He also trained as a teacher and had a go at acting school, which he quit when he realised he could never remember the lines.
A pamphlet on the coffee table of his Melbourne share house pointed him to broadcasting studies at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. One lecturer there gave him a line he has kept: “Never underestimate the relationship you have with your listeners because they know you far better than you know them.”
He started as a producer at Perth’s 6PR, came back to Melbourne in 1995 as a casual producer with the ABC, and spent four years as a producer and roving reporter for 774 ABC Melbourne and Victorian Regional Radio. Then came Overnights.
The callers
“I got to know people over a period of time,” Chappell says. “It’s not friendship, it’s companionship.” He knows their histories and what makes them laugh, and that, he says, encourages more people to call.
There is Simon, who always says “box of birds.” There is Don, who rang every year to request the same song for his wedding anniversary. One regular keeps notes on everything Chappell got wrong since they last spoke. Truck drivers have been with him from the start, and some listeners have told him they only called after three or four years of listening.
Some calls have stayed with him. He has cried on air, and once had to play a song to pull himself together after a widow told him she was awake because she felt so lonely, having nursed her husband through his final days with Alzheimer’s.
Other moments were funny. He once asked listeners what colour the werewolf’s hair was in Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London,” and insisted the answer was purple. “I went to a song and looked it up. I had to come back and apologise.” Another time he asked gardening expert Sabrina Hahn for advice on using “kar-le.” One listener texted in to say he sounded like “a eunuch in a wind tunnel.”
Chappell says he never wanted the show to be distressing, knowing that many listeners live with anxiety. He calls it “the best job.” Daytime radio, he says, does not give you the time to talk to a listener for three or four minutes.
Colleagues weigh in
Red Symons, who presented 774 ABC Melbourne Breakfast, and Chappell crossed paths at the ABC’s Southbank studios for years. “Trevor and I were two lonely, old guys who bumped into each other in the night,” Symons says. “He was always pleased to see me because it meant that he was nearly finished. I was pleased to see him because I was about to start.”
Michael Pavlich, who worked with Chappell as a producer at 774 in the 1990s and later as his studio producer, recalls one of Chappell’s favourite shows: live crosses from the side of the road in the Pilliga Forest in northern New South Wales, a place Overnights listeners had nominated as one of the scariest in Australia. Pavlich says Chappell “has never thrown an underarm in his life.” (He is no relation to the cricketer of the same name, who bowled the underarm delivery in Melbourne in 1981.)
John Standish, the day producer, says he is not sure how Chappell kept his good humour “after decades on the graveyard shift.”
ABC Director Audio Ben Latimer thanked Chappell for “extraordinary service.” The ABC will name the new presenter in the coming weeks.
The send-off
On Tuesday, July 28, Chappell will broadcast Overnights live from Melbourne Museum, from late night into early morning, with listeners who apply able to attend.
His wife Cathy and his producers, he says, are the reason he lasted so long. As for the decision to go: “If I was making the decision purely by heart, I wouldn’t leave. I love doing the job and talking to the people, but the head says it’s enough.”
He is not sure how he will say goodbye. “I’m going to have to try really hard to hold back the tears.”
Sources
- Trevor Chappell to farewell Overnights after 26 years – About the ABC
- ABC presenter Trevor Chappell to hang up mic after 26 years
Sources
- Trevor Chappell to farewell Overnights after 26 years
- ABC presenter Trevor Chappell to hang up mic after 26 years
