August 10, 2026 — 6:39am
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Despite a “clunky start”, Kyle Sandilands’ new digital radio show, Kyle Sandilands Live, debuted on Monday morning with guests including NSW Premier Chris Minns, celebrity psychic John Edwards and an extended, cosy chat with One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.
Two hours into the show, Sandilands called Hanson on his phone and put her on speaker, running the call through his microphone for his longest interview of the show.
“I spent a bit of time with Pauline Hanson. She reached out to me after I got fired [from ARN] … and many did,” Sandilands said. “The prime minister did, and the premier did. But Pauline, who I didn’t know well, no one really could have been more supportive from someone outside of my own family than Pauline Hanson.”
Hanson, as her voice ricocheted and echoed off Sandilands’ microphone, said: “If all your fantastic listeners out there, if you have any common sense about you, wake up to yourselves and understand what’s going on here – the division that’s happening in this country.
“I went up to Mount Isa on the streets there. I had Aboriginals coming up to me, shaking my hand, said, ‘I love you, mate. Keep going’.”
Sandilands then said Hanson was the “normal” one among “purple-haired” lefties.
The call’s technological issues typified the show’s problems from before it even started.
A few minutes after the slated start time of 6am, Sandilands was finally able to declare: “It is live. We’re all here, and it’s a digital mess behind the scenes”, after cutting in and out through his microphone.
“We’re off to a clunky start,” he then admitted.
About an hour in, longtime manager and close friend Bruno Bouchet had to reset the entire show due to compounding technological lag.
“Bruno now wants to turn the entire system off and reset,” Sandilands said just after 7am, with Bouchet adding: “Everything’s going to go black here. We’re going to lose all audio, all lights. Screens are going to shut down.”
Later in the show, Sandilands defended the technological issues, saying: “It is a brand new, never before done anywhere in the world live app radio program … we put it together in 60 days, and the team have worked tirelessly behind the scenes”.
But it wasn’t just tech causing problems. Within the first five minutes of the show, Sandilands introduced Jaimee “Mayo” Blazquez as his executive director, prompting Bouchet to refer to her using an expletive.
Sandilands replied jokingly: “Bruno, I made it quite clear to the ensemble cast. This isn’t some potty-mouth all-boys’ club filth nest”.
Celebrity psychic John Edwards joined via Zoom during the first 30 minutes of the show, though his feed was impeded by technical issues and different presenters’ microphones talking over him.
Sandilands was able to, however, squeeze in a question about whether Edwards had witnessed “anyone giving themselves a fiddle” while travelling through the spirit world.
NSW Premier Chris Minns was the show’s first live in-studio guest, with Sandilands recalling recently running into Minns in the Blue Mountains and mistaking him for a “meth head”.
“You know what I like about you?” Sandilands said, after the pair shared a laugh.
“People on all sides of politics – Labor, Liberals, One Nation types, the Nationals … you don’t seem very Labor.”
Minns replied: “Well, we try and be common sense”.
Kyle Sandilands (left) with Mary Madigan and Brooklyn Ross.
Sandilands’ only political question to the premier was whether he would get rid of e-bikes, or Lime bikes, after he revealed he had gifted one to his 11-year-old son, which had made him start “behaving” by getting him out of the house.
Six months ago, the Minns Government announced a crackdown on e-bikes, allowing police to seize and crush illegally modified e-bikes.
“When there’s a new technology, like anything, there are people that take it too far,” Minns replied, talking about how rules evolved with use of the technology.
Minns then cut a golden ribbon to commemorate the occasion before leaving.
Following the premier, the second in-studio guests were a stepmother and stepson who started dating when the latter came of age, and she had split up with his father.
Despite costing $99.99 a year – with an upfront payment being the only payment method available – Sandilands said the show is not running advertisements “because of the female militant activist group, the Mad F—— Witches”.
“They tried to threaten all the clients. Then apparently, clients pretended to be too scared to advertise to their people, so they stopped paying. They stopped putting ads in the show, and I said, ‘Oh well, screw them. We’ll work around them. We’ll go straight to the consumer’,” Sandilands said.
And the first song aired? Josh Fawaz’s controversial AI-cover of Madonna’s Like A Prayer.
The rest of the digital radio show’s crew includes Alfie Laguzza and Dean Royston, with Brooklyn Ross moving across from ARN, Sandilands’s former employer, as a newsreader alongside Mary Madigan, from News Corp’s News.com.au.
Podcaster Josh Fox is also part of the on-air team, as is Pedro Cuccovillo Vitola.
More to come.
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Kayla Olaya is a culture reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners