Radio's sly Fox

September 20, 2007
A jock who shocks: Matt Tilley used to unstitch the Fox logos from
his clothes and listens to Jon Faine in his leisure time.

A jock who shocks: Matt Tilley used to unstitch the Fox logos from his clothes and listens to Jon Faine in his leisure time.

He's been an FM breakfast star for 10 years, but Matt Tilley is not your average jock, reports Michael Lallo.

MATT TILLEY isn't holding his breath for a Spicks and Specks invitation. "I have a certain commercial sensibility that might not make me welcome," says the co-host of Fox FM's Matt & Jo Show. "Hamish is always on there, of course, but I'm seen as part of a different realm. Being an FM brekkie guy can carry a stigma. I can see how people would put me in a box."

Not that he's complaining. He knows his image is more suburban dad than edgy stand-up. And it's this image that's seen him notch up 10 (mostly top-rating) years in the breakfast spot. He's nice. He's safe. He's an Everybody Loves Raymond kind of guy.

Except, well, he's not. Or at least there's more to him than that. He's a qualified lawyer, for one. He listens to Jon Faine. ("Would he find it abhorrent that someone who does my job loves his show?") Steve Price even tried to lure him to 3AW. Don't think that he's puffing himself up, though - facts like these have to be coaxed out.

He's also refreshingly honest about his work. The music he listens to, the shows he watches, the comedians he sees - rarely are they the same ones he plugs on air. He even unstitched the Fox logos from his shirts when he started in the early '90s, lest he cop any flak from his 3RRR-listening mates.

"I did fret about it," he admits. "But then I realised that no one was actually questioning whether I'm being true to myself when I'm mucking around in the studio. My job is to make people laugh - and I really love doing that."

He certainly does. There's a genuine sense of fun in the St Kilda Road studios, despite the ungodly hour. The team - comprising Tilley, co-host Jo Stanley, gossip guru Adam Richard and anchor Troy Ellis - do seem to enjoy each other's company.

The show has the usual FM blend of celebrity interviews, gossip, calls from listeners and personal stories. Tilley's voice impersonations and "gotcha calls" feature heavily. And it works. Fox topped the FM ratings when Tilley and former co-host Tracy Bartram started in 1997. The duo even toppled 3AW at one stage, snaring almost 19 per cent of listeners. Fox lost ground when Stanley replaced Bartram in 2003 but Tilley and his new co-host slogged away until they reached number one and now vie with Nova's Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek for top spot. (Last week's survey saw them reclaim the top over Nova.)

The first thing you notice about Tilley is that off air he's surprisingly reflective and insightful. Indeed, he's highly intelligent, says former colleague Michael Veitch, although he masks it with "a knockabout type of blokiness". He's also one of the few commercial announcers who doesn't wheel out the "I'm the same person off air as I am on" line. But he's not about to endorse any latte-sipper criticisms of FM radio. "Over a million people a week listen to Fox," Tilley says. "That's half of Melbourne. They can't all be bogans who like dick jokes."

Nor will he put up with conservatives' claims that his show "defecates over our values". "Andrew Bolt takes much joy in tearing into our show," he says. "And this is coming from a bloke who writes for the lowest common denominator of redneck, reactionary, unthinking, unsympathetic Australia."

As he sips hot water at his kitchen table, unperturbed by son Jack's lively impersonation of a pig, he talks about the nature of the game - celebrity interviews, for instance. Whether it's an A-list movie star or Z-list Big Brother housemate, Tilley peppers them with the same cheeky questions. Yet he refuses to paint himself as a fearless ego-deflator.

"You play with celebrities how they'll let you play," he admits. "Most of them want me to be (cheeky) because it's to their advantage to appear just like everyone else. But you don't dictate the terms. You dance and dance and dance and see what you can get away with."

The early hours take their toll but they do allow him lots of time with his kids.

Tilley tends to smile and stare into the distance when speaking about wife Susie and their children Gracie, 6, Jack, 3 and Oscar, 2. Clearly he's a hands-on dad. He even defies the conventional pop psychology wisdom that men can't multi-task. At one point he simultaneously wipes a runny nose, peels an orange and draws a picture of a cat. And his unpretentious, kid-friendly house belies its multimillion-dollar price tag.

Family life, of course, has proved a rich source of material for his show but there were times he threw himself into work to cope with the unexpected stresses it delivered.

When Susie fell pregnant with Jack, doctors diagnosed a condition requiring risky in-utero blood transfusions. Jack was rushed into surgery after a premature birth, enduring a 16-hour operation. Then he contracted a virus.

"He was so weak," Tilley says softly. "It was touch and go a couple of times."

The condition recurred with Oscar. Both times, Tilley rented an apartment near the hospital, rising at 2am to sit by their humidicribs before going to work. "I'd spent years watching sick-baby stories on A Current Affair and then it happened to us," he says. "But the drama of it gets lost because you're completely consumed by what's happening.

"My number one thing was for me to not let it affect my work - which was stupid, because as if that's the most important thing. But in a way, it was my release. It gave me something else to focus on so I didn't fall apart."

Susie and the boys made a full recovery and Tilley has since raised more than $400,000 for the Mercy and Royal Women's hospitals through two CD compilations. The most recent reached number four nationally - even though the show airs only in Melbourne - and knocked Madonna off the top spot in Victoria.

Despite such noteworthy achievements, Tilley says he feels like he just left uni, perhaps because he's been in radio that whole time.

And his success is even more remarkable given that he never intended to work in showbiz.

He has fond memories of growing up on the Mornington Peninsula. He admits to being an "annoying overachiever" at school, excelling on stage, in the classroom and on the oval. Yet he was the first prefect to be suspended. (He painted a sheep crossing in front of his French teacher's house, "because he sounded like a sheep.")

He also lost his job playing Santa at a local shopping centre after Saint Nick got busted sneaking a sly fag behind Coles.

He enrolled in arts-law, he says, chiefly because he didn't want to study medicine. The plan was to party his way through uni and maybe become a barrister. Then a man approached him at a urinal.

"I was at a mate's 21st birthday," Tilley says, "and he started critiquing my speech. He asked me if I wanted to do some stuff at Fox, although they couldn't pay me any money."

Having never listened to breakfast radio in his life, and wary of the early starts it required, he declined. But Austereo persisted, and he ended up writing and hosting several programs.

By 1997, Fox was desperate for a new breakfast crew. After a failed attempt to team him with Judith Lucy, he partnered Tracy Bartram.

The show was an instant hit and almost immediately the rumours began. Tilley is surprised by Bartram's refusal to talk about him in a Green Guide interview last year.

"There's a certain drama in her saying 'I won't talk about those times'," he says. "The minute you say something like that, people start speculating."

He pauses, choosing his words carefully. "Look, it wasn't a great working environment. She's an unusual person and I think it's fair to say she was difficult to work with. Whatever her issues and agendas were, they usually didn't marry with those of everyone else. She was an unhappy person and that manifested itself in the opposite of people being sympathetic because she became aggressive. No one really got along with her. I'm not saying she was always wrong and we were always right. She just marched to the beat of a different drum and everyone found that very hard."

In spite of this, Tilley says, they maintained a professional relationship. It was also a time when his life went "from zero to 100". He married, his radio career took off, and he wrote, appeared in and hosted several television shows. Some were moderately successful; others bombed. In particular, The Chat Room - an imitation-Panel comprising Austereo celebrities - drew scathing reviews and shockingly low ratings. It's no surprise that Tilley nominates radio as his true passion.

"I know they sound like the words of someone who's never made it in telly," he laughs. "But you don't have those same constraints on radio. You can just do what you want, whereas with television you have to practice and rehearse and run it by other people first."

So why is he returning to TV? "This is a little different," he says of Surprise Surprise Gotcha!, Nine's resurrected Candid Camera-style program, co-hosted by Jackie O, which started on Tuesday.

"I don't just run in at the end and say, 'Surprise' - I'm involved in the set-up (of the pranks). It just seemed like it would be fun." It's taken a little longer than planned, he admits, because "there have been a few distractions at Channel Nine".

He's not in any rush, though. He loves his job and has no intention of leaving. "But I would like to make that decision before it's made for me," he says. "It's an attrition thing. How long can I handle the early mornings? Is there something else I'd like to try? But I'm not a goal-setting, life-plan kind of person. I'm happy just to keep talking rubbish every morning for as long as they'll let me."

The Matt & Jo Show airs from 6am weekdays on 101.9 Fox FM.


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