Even after 30 years of broadcasting, Jon Faine still has some secrets to tell

Former ABC Mornings host Jon Faine: ‘The fact that people complain means, first of all, they’re listening, and secondly, they care. How good’s that?’ Photograph: ABC Radio

Jon Faine was going to call his book Dear Cretin. It would be a collection of letters he’d been sent when presenting Mornings on ABC Radio Melbourne, annotated to explain the context: the particular topic or opinion of his that had inspired so much rage. But then ABC management “went nuts”.

“They tried to tell me it was [down to] copyright [over the letters], to which I said, ‘No – they’ve sent it to a public broadcaster’,” Faine says. It was one of regular spirited clashes with management over his 30 years at the station. “We had all sorts of arguments. In the end they just begged me not to do it. They said it’ll just inspire more.”