Trevor Chappell remembers the first caller on his first night. It was 2000, he was surrounded by pages of notes and tightly written scripts, and he was terrified. Then Pamela from Queensland rang in. “She was so kind and welcoming that it made it so easy,” he says.
Twenty-six years on, Chappell, 65, is leaving ABC Overnights. His last show is Thursday, July 30.
He has been a familiar voice to shift workers and insomniacs since that first night. He got there by an odd route: mining, teacher training, a short stint at acting school that ended when he realised he could never remember the lines. A pamphlet on the coffee table of his Melbourne share house pointed him to broadcasting at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. One lecturer there told him: “Never underestimate the relationship you have with your listeners because they know you far better than you know them.”
Companions in the night
Chappell visited Pamela once, on a trip to Queensland. When she moved into a nursing home, calling in became too hard for her.
“It’s not friendship, it’s companionship,” he says of the listeners. “You get to know their history, what makes them laugh.” There is Simon, who calls in and always says “box of birds”. There is Don, who used to ring every year to request the same song for his wedding anniversary. One regular keeps a list of everything Chappell got wrong since they last spoke.
He has cried on air more than once. A listener who called to recall taking her child to their first day of school got to him. So did a widow who had just nursed her husband through his final days with Alzheimer’s and rang because she felt lonely. Chappell had to play a song to pull himself together. He also lost listeners over the years, among them June from Portland and the show’s royal correspondent, Barry.
The laughs were just as memorable. He once asked listeners what colour the werewolf’s hair was in Warren Zevon’s Werewolves of London. People kept saying “perfect”. Chappell insisted they were wrong, having misheard the lyric all his life as “his hair was purple”. He looked it up and apologised on air. Another listener texted that he sounded like “a eunuch in a wind tunnel”. And when he asked Overnights gardening expert Sabrina Hahn for advice on using “kar-le”, she laughed and then said, “I think you meant kale.” It became a running gag.
“It’s the best job,” he says. “You talk to really interesting people and you have the time to talk to people. Daytime radio does not give you the time.” Knowing many listeners live with anxiety, he kept the show’s topics from being triggering or distressing.
Colleagues weigh in
Red Symons, who presented 774 ABC Melbourne Breakfast, said the two passed each other at ABC Southbank for years. “Trevor and I were two lonely, old guys who bumped into each other in the night,” Symons said. “What we had in common was that we both had the company of the callers.”
Michael Pavlich, who has worked with Chappell since the 1990s and produced him in the studio for much of his Overnights run, recalled a favourite show. Chappell crossed live from the side of the road in the Pilliga Forest in northern New South Wales, a site listeners had nominated as one of the scariest places in Australia. “He is a gifted communicator who takes pride in his honesty,” Pavlich said. “He has never thrown an underarm in his life.”
Chappell is no relation to the cricketer of the same name who bowled the underarm delivery against New Zealand in Melbourne in 1981.
Day producer John Standish, who worked with him after Chappell returned from a stint on Afternoons, said he is “just as charming, relaxed and respectful off-air as he is behind the mic.” Chappell credits his wife Cathy and his producers for getting him this far.
“If I was making the decision purely by heart, I wouldn’t leave,” he says. “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.”
