Tapping the 954 AM button on the car’s touch screen the other day brought up a conversation between 2UE morning host Angela Catterns and her guest Ian “Dano” Rogerson. Both have been around the radio block a few times – through more stations, as they say, than the Southern Aurora.

Radio, after all, is one of those callings that once you’re in, and it’s in your blood, it’s nigh impossible to get out. But Ian Rogerson has pretty much done it after discovering that there are more important things in life than radio.

Now, at 52, he has embarked on a totally new career path as a real estate auctioneer. But that’s not important here. The real story is about his son Jack and the family’s battle with autism.

In the ’80’s, Rogerson was best known as the Dano part of the long running (sometimes on again, off again) Jono and Dano show with on-air partner, Jonathan Coleman. It all started for the duo on triple j before the act moved to 2SM and then in 1984, Triple M. Soon it was television with their own late night show on the 7 Network.

At one stage, for a period of around 20 years, the two were split with Coleman going to London while Rogerson went back to Aunty. In the mid naughties, the old firm got together again to host the syndicated, My Generation, for MCM and then the national Drive show for ARN on the Hits and Memories network.

In between all that, he’s filled in on shifts here and there – a kind of freelance Samurai who serves no one master – a self-proclaimed “Radio Ronin.” It’s a term that could describe scores of announcing journey men and women across Australia and, indeed, hundreds and thousands around the world.

Yet, despite his distinguished career in radio and all the well rehearsed off-the-cuff anecdotes he can so charmingly tell, that’s not what the conversation with Catterns was about. It was a

At first, as a baby, then a toddler, Ian and his wife Nicole thought Jack was merely quiet and somewhat of a slow developer but after taking him to a speech therapist, it became apparent that there was more to it than that.

By five, Jack was taken to a psychologist who told the couple, ‘This boy, you’ve already spent this amount of time and money on him, it’s time to just move on and put him in an institution.’

That wasn’t an option. The plan was for Jack to go to a proper school with other kids. So, in 2000 when his contract was up for review at Triple M Rogerson decided not to continue. “I loved my job,” he said, “But Jack’s my priority and I want to be here for you both,’ I told Nicole. ‘I can always get back into it later.”

He told That’s Life last year, “The transition from fame to family was a lot easier than I’d imagined. I’m a full-time dad now, I thought proudly. And having us both there meant real improvements in Jack. Commands such as, ‘Look at me,’ were big tasks for him, but he began to get them. He could call us Mum and Dad and became more independent.”

Jack’s 18 now and is loving his job in the kitchen of a top restaurant.

In 2009 the Rogerson Family was the subject of an episode of the ABC’s Australian Story.

Peter Saxon