Left After Breakfast

Friday 9 - 10 am

In English.

Best of the Left talkback. Call in and have your say on the talkback phone line - 03 9419 0155.

Presented by Susanna and The Bagman.

Website www.afterbreakfast.org

CRAM Article June 2007: Left After Breakfast

For 20 years the announcers of Left After Breakfast have been talking to Melbourne - and for much of that time explaining where the show got its name.

Once part of a chain of political programmes across the week, the show is the last survivor of Left on Thursday, Left at Night and Left in the A.M. "What else could we be but Left After Breakfast?" explains co-presenter Susanna Duffy, "We give listeners more to digest than a bowl of cereal. For a start, the historical segment with Glen Davis serves up little publicised stories about working class people, the real history, herstory and ourstory of world events. The second course is the Bagman, garnished a little tartly at times, but always a juicy way to start the day."

Glen Davis, resident 3CR Historian, has been presenting an immensely popular and integral part of the morning for 14 years and says there's plenty more hidden history to bring to the light of public perusal. Listeners appreciate his tales of our working class background, from forgotten Union women, to the Peasants Revolt, from every mine and mill, from Barcaldine to Tobruk to the Easter Uprising, from the Great War Mutinies to Ned Kelly. It's not just the moving and inspiring stories of our unsung heroes and heroines that have defined this segment, but the excellent class analysis from our own Resident ‘Ourstorian’.

Glen’s long involvement with the show is just a little short of the 19 years that the elusive Bagman has put into the programme. (The identity of the Bagman is the worst kept secret in anybody's history). Those in the know have been charmed and/or appalled by some of the revelations into Union affairs that the Bagman has thrown onto the airwaves. His lifelong involvement in industrial matters and his personal history from workplace rep to Union Official have given him this unique insider status. The Bagman is not afraid to speak his mind.

Susanna Duffy, with her distinctive, well smoked voice, completes this unholy triumvirate. A psychologist, author and passionate Trade Unionist who cut her teeth on the 1969 equal pay dispute, Susanna has been a 3CR stalwart since she went to the Public Meeting that formed the Community Radio Federation (3CR’s official name) in 1973. Susanna has been broadcasting since 1982 and Left After Breakfast has been running for 20 years for almost two decades and is Left After Breakfast’s panellist and co-presenter.

To many listeners, Left After Breakfast is known best for its talkback. When the talkback lines are open, callers set the agenda. It's the element of listener participation that keeps the show on the edge, listeners who express and debate political opinions provide an immediacy and a high degree of emotionalism. It's easy to understand why there has been a few close calls.

Left After Breakfast has weathered the storms of religious fundamentalists, factional disputes in activist groups, Union elections machinations, political party pressure, mass phone-ins from Pauline Hansonites, and assorted outraged conservatives. The Bagman boasts of the number of personal insults and physical attacks he has received for his editorials. "We've copped the lot," he says "and we even survived Jeff Kennett."

Like any other well-oiled production, there's plenty of work happening in the background. Listener contributions get to air via the Talkback Producer who has to quickly assess, and monitor, the likely occurrence of defamatory (or worse) comments, provide fast information on the callers' questions to the On-Air Team, and generally keep the ball bouncing along. It's not a job for the nervous, and Bill Dellar puts in the hard yakka.

Talkback radio has historically been an important political forum in Australia. Left After Breakfast keeps it going!