Triple M Brisbane‘s The Big Breakfast has undergone a fair few line-up changes in recent years with the arrivals and departures of Lawrence Mooney, Robin Baily, and Nick Cody. But the program is now beginning to look settled with mainstay Greg ‘Marto’ Martin being paired with Margaux Parker who joined in 2019.
Mediaweek caught up with the pair to talk about their first year as a duo following the departure of Cody, and what the Brisbane market wants from a radio show.
Parker: “Marto and The Big Breakfast is my first dive into brekkie radio, but I’m really loving it. I feel like Marto and I have settled into a bit of a groove. For me, it’s been only one change with Nick Cody leaving but Marto has been a stalwart of the show.”
Margaux Parker
Martin is a mainstay of Brisbane radio and said that there is one key ingredient to making a good program in the market.
Martin: “You need to actually be from Brisbane to be on Brisbane radio. Unfortunately, they’ve used me as a training academy and just ship people through here and if they survive my vile and wicked sense of humour they then go down to Melbourne or Sydney and run radio shows down there.
“Margaux and I have been together for nearly two years and the chemistry is incredible. You can’t just go he was funny on Have You Been Paying Attention? or one of those TV shows. You can be as funny as you like on that, but until you work with another person and see how your personalities rotate around each other you have no idea. Some of the funniest people work together and then they can’t work together because the chemistry doesn’t work.
“We are authentic, we aren’t radio stars. Margaux has four kids and I’ve had 20 years as a carpenter and builder – we appreciate the real things, not like these people that go into radio when they are 15 years of age and have no idea. They are like politicians who have never had a job, check out how many radio people you know who never had a job.”
The other factor that the pair think has worked in their favour is they have been able to record the show together in the studio over the last two years with Brisbane not being as affected by the pandemic as Sydney and Melbourne.
Margaux: “The thing is that we’re in the studio here together, you find a lot of the time people are in different states or cities or towns. But the banter and the momentum of the conversation is really important, especially in radio.”
Marto: “People will pretend that zoom works, it doesn’t work, I call pooey poo on that. Person to person, eye details and facial expressions are so important and you can bullshit all you like on zoom, but it doesn’t work. This works face to face. You can’t be zooming people in from Melbourne and Sydney.”
Greg ‘Marto’ Martin
A driving force of the show has been its local focus which the pair agrees is a vital part of Brisbane radio.
Margaux: “People like local, they like that it is live, and they like that they’re getting traffic news on hand as it’s happening. We’ll stop our show to address anything that is local that people are experiencing then and now. That’s what radio is about, accessing information as soon as they can get their hands on it because there’s this constant need for wanting info and we’re able to deliver that to them. They just want to hear about other Brisbane people and what Brisbane people are doing.”
Martin: “We are at the tipping point right now size wise. Sydney people and Melbourne people are parochial but no one could possibly mention their suburb enough times. We’re just at the size now, where you can still say local and if you mentioned one suburb, if they’re the next suburb they will feel a part of it. Brisbane is at the right size before it moves on and becomes too bloody big.”
Examples of the local engagement that the show has had with the region range from small weekly events like shouting beers to larger community projects.
Martin: “Wednesday we do a smoko shout, Thursday we do a shout at a different pub every week. If you buy 50 people a beer on a Thursday it’s the rule of 10, those people will tell 10 people and they won’t say you are a dickhead, they will say that you were there. That is not possible in Sydney or Melbourne they couldn’t give a stuff.”
Max Schmidt, Margaux Parker (behind), Austin Schmidt, Olive and mum Mandy and dad Corey and Marto
One of the large projects was Ollie’s place which was done for the young Ollie (Olive) Schmidt, where after months of planning and four weeks of building, Ollie’s place was revealed with a new padded deck and safe area.
Margaux: “We got a family involved, who had a daughter with a severe disability. With Ollie’s place, we built a space for her and we engaged our incredible database of tradies and skilled people who listen to our show and are so very generous with their time, efforts, services and their labour that they came on board and we were able to build this incredible space for this young girl who was in need.”
Martin: “Our people are useful people they don’t go here is $20. They want to do something that feels better than a tax deduction. They got the greatest feeling and went home to their partners and saw it on the tele and said that’s what we did.”