While still at school at Melbourne’s University High, Ian ‘Nicko’ Nicholls knew he wanted to be ‘on the wireless’ and started at Vincent’s School Of Broadcasting, run by Bill Roberts. To get into the Vincent building Nicko had to wait for the door key to be lowered from the third floor window on a fishing line. That difficulty of entry was not the same for radio and at the end of 1954 Nicko left University High and started at 2LF Young as an announcer.
From there it was back to Melbourne to 3AK, then 3GL Geelong as the Breakfast announcer, before a switch in 1958 to 3UZ and the next part of Ian’s career as a news reader/reporter/journalist.
The colourful story of the next five decades I’ll leave to the late Keith McGowan to relate, in a personal story for Radioinfo from 2012, when Nicko had kind of, but not really retired:
By 2015 Nicko was back on air at KLFM in Bendigo covering the roles of News Director and anchor of the local news plus fill shifts on air. He’s been there ever since meaning a decade at KLFM and seven of them in radio altogether.
In 2017 Nicko moved to host mornings saying:
“After 60 years in the business, hosting the Weekday morning show is something I’ve always wanted to do in my long career.
It’s great to be at a station like KLFM which is like being in the old days of radio, where the announcers had personality and a direct connection with their listeners”.
He still provides the station with local news and you can also hear him Fridays from 9am – midday and for Saturday Country between 7&8am. You can listen on 96.5 or 106.3 or stream live via the KLFM website.
A warm congratulations on a remarkable milestone.