Big Bob still on cops’ side

Flashback: As he appeared on the cover of the Police Journal in 1994.

Bob Francis made his strong support for police crystal clear in a 1994 Police Journal interview. Now, exactly 10 years later, Brett Williams catches up with him again, to see if anything has changed. Fired-up anti-police callers never stand a chance when talk-back radio king, Big Bob Francis, controls the airwaves. Labelled a redneck and shock jock, the openly extreme right-winger remains as pro-police as ever. So, on his top-rating night-time programme, he does not allow verbal attacks on the men and women in blue. Francis insists that callers’ claims of police incivility or harsh treatment always unravel to reveal that “nothing really went wrong”. “Nine times out of 10, I can talk to those people and get that out of them,” he says. “But negative attitudes towards the police on my programme just don’t get through.”

Although a long-time fervent supporter of cops, Francis told the Police Journal 10 years ago he “wouldn’t do their job for a million bucks”. And nothing has changed. He in no way sees the job as beneath him; he just could never muster the required level of tolerance for it.

Moreover, the challenges to today’s operational police officer infuriate him even as a civilian.

But never, as a police officer, could he – or would he want to – remain even-tempered as a child offender launched a barrage of expletives at him.

Nor could he impassively endure the taunts of a ranting, feral street protestor in an anti-war demonstration. Even the age-old issues of endless paperwork, poor equipment, and insufficient police powers would likely send him storming off the job, with rolling eyes and a side-to-side shake of his head.

But never in his journey through life, right from the time he left Prince Alfred College in the 1950s, did he need a police career, anyway. Awaiting the teenaged Francis was the decades-long radio career that has brought him fame, wealth, connections, and a generally grand life.

Today, the 65-year-old, with two years to run on his contract, delights in the fact that his radio 5AA executives see a market for his particular shock-jock style. It is one of Australia’s most confronting.

Callers, who dare suggest that marijuana is safe, or that no one should have a conscience about living on the dole, earn instant Francis onslaughts. “Piss off, wanker,” he is likely to bellow at them, just before they hear a click and a dial tone.

“With me,” he says, “they’re getting straight, blunt, in-your-face radio that says it how it is. And I love the reaction I get on the streets; I love the reaction of people who ring me up and call me a big fat pig. Who cares? It doesn’t worry me in the least.”

But as committed a conservative as he is – 64,000 miles to the right of Attila the Hun, he says – Francis has no designs on shaping public opinion. His insists his role at the console is strictly to entertain.

“If you get a laugh out of the programme,” he says, “or learn about life from the dickheads and ferals who ring me on air, that’s what it’s all about.

“I rarely speak to politicians, because they talk absolute shit. They only ring me when it suits them, to make comparisons between what the last government did and what their government did.

“The Attorney-General (Michael Atkinson) rings me on a very regular basis and, if I disagree with some of the laws he’s putting forward, I’ll bloody argue with him. I keep on saying to him: ‘If only I could change the law, I could bring in hanging’.

“The other day, he sent me an apron with Il Duce (Mussolini) on the front.”

After 47 years in radio, and television – in commercials and as a presenter – Francis continues to enjoy the highest of profiles in Adelaide. But people know and remember him for more than just his outrageous on-air style, or the pinstripe-suited gangster he played in his famous Castrol ads.

Most over-50s still remember that Francis, as a young disc jockey in 1964, managed to orchestrate a Beatles’ concert in Adelaide, a city not on the band’s original itinerary. He had encouraged his listeners to start a petition, which ended up with 80,000 signatures in three weeks.

Now, 40 years later, Francis enjoys a lifestyle of abundant leisure. His days are filled with morning coffee-drinking in the Central Market, walks along Rundle St, naps, restaurant lunches, some television, and rides around town, of course, on his shiny black Harley Davidson.

Not until he heads into the studio with a bottle of red wine each night does he have much else to do.

A few health setbacks – type 2 diabetes and blindness in his left eye from glaucoma – have never seemed to compromise him. Nor has the sad loss of his fourth wife, Pamela, last year to cancer robbed him of any of his spirit. But she was truly the love of his life.

“For 18 months, I saw that woman go through absolute bloody hell with the chemotherapy,” he remembers. “It took a good 12 months of looking after her, and seeing her go down the drain like that. It was the best thing in the world that she died – she just couldn’t have continued that way.”

So will Francis, who shows no signs of mellowing, give the shock-jock game away after his contract expires, and leaves him with 49 years in radio? Or, will he be desperate to reach his 50-year milestone?

“I don’t have to retire,” he says, “I don’t need to retire. But, sometimes, I just don’t want to go to work. I could give it away tomorrow.

“But it’s the easiest job in the world. Where else can you have a job where the customer’s always wrong?”

The Francis philosophies

Police work the community’s toughest job

“Absolutely, especially with the way not only children but also adults react to police. Fancy having to take home a child of 13 or 14 to the parents, knock on the door, and say: ‘We found him out at 3:30 in the morning’ and the parents saying: ‘Piss off! What’s it got to do with you?’ Tough job!”

Police “up against it” more now than they were 10 years ago

“Absolutely, especially the cop on the beat. He and she are learning how to go about things with political correctness, instead of yelling at somebody. I’ll yell at a teenager for doing something wrong in the street, and they’ll look at you as if they’ve never been yelled at before, and say: ‘Get f----d.’ In my day, if somebody older than me did that (raised his voice), you’d say: ‘Sorry, sir’.”

Reintroduce the Anti-larrikin Squad

“Absolutely, a group of police officers who, with a good but strong attitude, are able to handle young offenders, and become respected in the community. These days we’d need 100 in the Anti-larrikin Squad; and it would take a generation to teach kids to have more respect for authority and police. It needs to be done now.”

Police resources

“I think a police force should have every technological resource that the modern world has available. Every police officer should be given a taser gun. Maybe that would at times be a better response than a pistol.”

Public regard for police

“I think people of my age group have great respect for police. Then, I think, as the age group goes down, it depends on their education as to how well they respect the police. If they’re well educated, they understand what authority is all about, and how to respect it.”