Chrissie's Just Kidding

The Age

Thursday May 29, 2008

Michael Lallo

CHRISSIE SWAN is neither a size-10 party girl nor a mum - a rarity in FM radio. "I don't really know where I fit," says the co-host of Vega's Dicko, Dave & Chrissie breakfast show. "Maybe I should lose 50 kilos or have a kid."

Three days later, she rings to announce her pregnancy. But fear not: cute anecdotes will be kept to a minimum.

"My sister was talking about another Melbourne station," Swan says. "She was sitting there - she had a bit of sick on her top - and she was saying, 'My god, I deal with kids 24/7. The last thing I want when I'm driving them to school is to hear about other people's children'."

Not that kid talk is banned. But with Vega trying to carve a niche as the not-too-hip, not-too-daggy adult station, it's fearful of alienating much-needed listeners. Normally, such broad ambitions are a recipe for blandness. Yet Swan and her co-hosts, Australian Idol judge Ian "Dicko" Dickson and comedian Dave O'Neil, have gelled surprisingly quickly. Their show hasn't exactly set the ratings on fire - it still languishes well behind its commercial FM competition - but Swan is optimistic.

"Last year was not very pleasant at Vega," she says, hinting at the rumoured tensions between previous breakfast hosts Shaun Micallef and Denise Scott. "There was a lot of politics going on . . . whereas we have a team who wants to be here. We still don't rate very well but we're going up. There's a feeling this bad run won't last forever."

For Swan, this is the end of the line.

"I don't have ambitions to do more TV. Radio is my love. I want to be in this job for 20 years."

Which is surprising, given critics have singled her out as the star panellist on Big Brother's Big Mouth chat show on Channel Ten. Indeed, Swan first came to attention as a Big Brother contestant in 2003. DMG, owner of Vega and Nova, was so convinced of her appeal that it signed her to the breakfast shift on its new Sunshine Coast youth station just days after her eviction.

Isn't she sick of the early starts? "Breakfast radio is obviously really hard," she says, "which is why I feel sorry for teams that aren't successful. They work just as hard as the ones who are going really well. They still get up at 4am, they still feel like corpses at the end of the day and their relationships still suffer.

"What spurs us on is that we're actually excited to be here."

? Further to last week's column, Lateline Business presenter Ali Moore has not been confirmed as the replacement for Jon Faine during his sabbatical - although she's still in the running, says a 774 ABC spokesperson. Two others are also being considered.

mlallo@theage.com.au

© 2008 The Age

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