5FM looks to replace breakfast bad boys

FOR the past 16 years, national radio station 5FM’s breakfast slot has been dominated by only two men – Mark Gillman and Gareth Cliff.

With the latter announcing his shock departure on Monday, the station has moved to call on Grant Nash to host the show as a stand-in for April. Experience tells us that Nash is less polarising than the two. But is the slot only for bad boys, which the station seems to favour?

Just some of 5FM’s breakfast shock jocks’ run-ins with the Broadcasting Complaints Commission of SA (BCCSA):

 MARK GILLMAN

•  He was met with complaints when he called then co-host Catherine Strydom a “buffalo bitch”, while he spoke to her on the line from East London.

The station explained there was nothing wrong, since Strydom was in “Buffalo City”. In its response, 5FM said “Gillie” regularly called Strydom “bitch” because it was “a common and contemporary use of a word in reference to her as his sidekick”.

It said regular listeners to his show would “recognise” the reference. Gillman was warned of his future conduct.

•  A listener complained that Gillie had used the term “bonehead schools” in reference to Afrikaans schools, thereby implying all Afrikaaners were stupid. The station called it a “throw-away” comment, and that because the school mentioned was the same one he attended, they found the comment “more self-deprecating than disparaging”. The complaint was not upheld.

 Gillman invited song group Beeskraal to his show, and called them a “far right-wing punk band”. He asked members about their khaki clothing, and wondered if they were farmers. Complainants said he insinuated the band had links with white fundamentalists who had allegedly set off bombs in Soweto. But Gillman was off the hook, with the BCCSA saying the interview was “not on a matter of public importance or controversy”.

 GARETH CLIFF

• Cliff upset many when he said that when he played dub step music at a gig, which no one could dance to, partygoers “looked like a bunch of epileptics”.

In response, 5FM stated that Cliff mentioned characteristics of white and black dancers, which “ought to illustrate that he did not intentionally single out the epileptic society”. He was warned to be more careful in future.

• He said he’d had a dream that he’d won the Lotto, saying: “I was as excited as a paedophile on a school bus”. 5FM said it was done in a metaphorical way to express his joy at his dream.

Cliff (and the station) was reprimanded for his “utterly unfair and ill-informed” comment.