These Boots Were Made For Talking

Newcastle Herald

Saturday June 30, 2007

By NEIL JAMESON

THE drive to Yarramalong afforded time to reminisce about being off school with adolescent measles, the old upright radio in the next room filling the mid-morning space with a voice as rich as molasses.

Whether flogging insecticide or telling an unfortunate caller where to get off, the delivery was liquid gold.

His theme music was the Tijuana trumpet refrain of Herb Alpert's Lonely Bull; so what happened next shouldn't have taken us by surprise.

As we rounded the sweep of the final bend heading in to Lawsie's Cloud Valley farm, the curve in the road presented a perfect view of grazing deer and the mock colonial homestead. There, in the home paddock, one foot resting on an isolated rock, dressed from head to toe in creaseless denim, stood the great man a lonely bull ruminating on who knows what. We should have shot him there and then but the photographer's long lens was in his camera bag, in the boot.

The memories of the ensuing interview conducted in the early '80s have long faded, but not the image of the bloke with one R.M. Williams resting on the rock.

Apparently, we love him in this neck of the woods. His star may have dimmed in other parts of the 71-station empire that takes his program, but the 2HD faithful have stuck faster and much longer than the Pasha Bulker. Not even the cash-for-comment revelations could snap that rusted-on relationship.

The affair has been mutual. Lawsie retains cherished memories of his time here in the late '50s early '60s when his program went to Sydney and beyond from the 2KO studios. He had a house at Bolwarra, a regular table at the old Alcron Restaurant, and the town in the thrall of his golden tonsils. Back in those days, long before Triple J and MTV, radio was king and a deejay the closest thing to a rock star.

John Fordham was still a Newcastle schoolboy when he spotted Laws in polo-necked sweater driving down Hunter Street in a green sports car.

"I thought he was a pretty cool dude," Fordham reflected this week.

Thirty years later, in 1991, Laws invited Fordham to lunch and asked the former Newcastle journalist and celebrity manager "to look after" him. To that point the highest remunerated radio talent in the world had managed his own affairs.

"We'd often make business trips to Newcastle and Lawsie would drive around town pointing out his old haunts and reminiscing about what he used to get up to," Fordham recalled. "He came through an era of great Newcastle radio personalities and still talks about people like Pat Barton, Matt Tapp and Harry Clark."

The contact continued via 2HD and the Fordham stable. Whenever the earth moved for Andrew Johns, Laws would invariably have the footballer on his show. His Hunter following, hearing aids turned up, remained true. He may have been broadcasting from a studio in Greenwich, Sydney, but the Newcastle fans always saw him as part of the local landscape.

Fifty-five years at the microphone is quite a career a soundtrack for an entire generation. For the Hunter mob, the prospects of going cold-turkey when he signs off in November may not be such a wrench. The whisper is that another ex-Newcastle talent, Tim Webster, is a shoe-in for the job.

By then, Lawsie will be happily out to graze, in a green paddock, one boot up on a rock . . .

"He came through an era of great Newcastle radio personalities and still talks about people like Pat Barton, Matt Tapp and Harry Clark."

© 2007 Newcastle Herald

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