You’re Fired

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Whereas Robbie Robinson’s success was in no small part due to his meticulousness, Chris Cary’s was very much due to acting on impulse. He would have been the first to admit that this led to a lot of bad decisions but, crucially, he got things right a lot more often than he got things wrong.

Tales of his temperament are the stuff of legend, with many having been on the wrong end of his steam-erupting moments. Nobody was safe, and almost everybody had a run-in with him at some point. He once even fired a man who wasn’t employed by him!

That man was Robbie Irwin, who remembers being inside the Nova building to meet some of the jocks before heading out to the pub. The place was in a state of chaos—Nova was off the air and Cary was not in the best of form, to put it mildly. When Irwin ran into Chris on the stairs the conversation went as follows:

Another such story comes from Peter Madison, who was sacked by Cary for talking too much between records. Madison had come from Sunshine where this was encouraged! Cary’s philosophy was to speak on air only when there was something worth saying.

Another story has Jason Maine walking out mid-show when Cary questioned a record he had put out on air, believing it didn’t fit well with the station’s style. The record in question was Van Halen’s “Jump” and, on enquiring why it was a problem, Cary told Maine that when he said “jump”, he should jump.

For Gareth O'Callaghan, it was more a case of 'pump' rather than 'jump'...

I recall the day he came in and demanded that I drink vodka all afternoon on air from 2pm to 7pm. This was "an experiment" he felt would shine some light on why liquid lunches affected employees' work abilities to perform at their best. I told him I wouldn't do it. He fired me. I was told I had ten minutes to get out of the building. Now if that's what you call 'complex', then I would go one further and say 'psychotic'.

The Nova shirt

John Clarke believes this was a motivational exercise used by Cary:

“My humble take on the phrase from Chris, ‘You’re fired’, was that it was borne from frustration on his part, and that whoever was the target was simply not putting the ball in the net. You were letting the Nova shirt down. So, what Chris was actually saying was: ‘Get out there and play a better game. When the red light goes on in the studio remember YOU are the radio station.’

“If you were told ‘You’re fired’ and didn’t turn in the following day, then in Chris’s world you had left the team and you couldn’t take the heat.

“Anyone whom Chris signed up, believe me, he deemed them to be the best of the best. He invested in the best broadcast equipment and transmission systems—and he was a proud and driven person who loved, and had a huge passion for, great radio. With that driving ambition he had no time for time-wasters or anyone who was not prepared to use their talent on every shift.

“Yes, he was complex, for some difficult, but almost four decades later the amount of talent from that era who continue to have careers that have flourished to this day is the legacy Chris gave to radio. His cunning ability to identify talent, be it in its infancy—to him it was: ‘Go ahead, you have your chance, sink or swim…’”

Off The Air

Kevin Branigan recalls a time up in Nova Park when Chris told him to “fuck off”. There were mitigating circumstances although Kevin was just 12 years of age at the time. It was the summer of 1984, the pickets were outside and as Kevin arrived at the gates, they told him that the station was off the air because of a power failure. Feeling that this was a serious issue and that Cary should be told, he went to the transmitter room and when he spotted Chris arriving he asked him if he was aware that Nova was off the air.

Kevin: The only way I can describe it adequately is you know the phrase ‘steam coming out of his ears’? I know it’s not possible but it’s the closest I’ve ever seen!
“DON’T YOU THINK I FUCKING KNOW THAT???”
“Go on, fuck off! Scoot!”

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