Lachlan Kitchen is living the professional dream, and it couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke. There’s a trend currently where you meet your younger self for coffee. One of the questions you are encouraged to ask yourself is about the life you’re living now.
Lachlan’s younger self would say:
Did you get into radio?
Talk radio?
Music radio?
Do you still play music?
Are you still into cricket? Is it part of your professional life?
Did you get that business degree?
Are you using it?
And Lachlan could answer yes to ALL the above, at the same time.
His younger self would be incredibly proud of him.
Before I go any further, I have an embarrassing story to get out of the way.
In January this year Radioinfo Founding Editor Steve Ahern invited me to join him for the Sydney New Years Test between Australia and India. We witnessed Australia gaining the Border-Gavaskar trophy from India and Steve Smith fall agonisingly short of his 10,000th run. Steve (Ahern, not Smith) didn’t realise before that day my utter devotion to the sport (he well and truly knows now) and we spent several happy hours sitting in the scorching heat before lunch.
Inside we both spotted Lachlan enjoying a cold drink with his father. We went over to say hello and my greeting and chatter was so exuberant that both Steve and Lachlan’s dad commented.
It was only then that I remembered that I’d never met Lachlan before, never spoken to him, never sent a message, or an email, and yet so much did I admire and follow his radio career and offshoots that I treated him like family.
He was as warm and cricket obsessed as I’d hoped. As we wrapped up, I told Lachlan that I’d be in touch for an interview. The ICC World Test Championship in England this week seemed the perfect opportunity.
Lachlan, in Australia, worked for i98 FM in Wollongong for 14 years, he studied at and worked for AFTRS and he was on the Commercial Radio and Audio (CRA) board. His love for radio runs deep, but I hadn’t realised its origins and why he is unafraid to step out of his comfort zone.
I imagine that many of you have seen the Durham University research that we make the strongest musical connection with the songs we heard when we were around 14 years old. For Lachlan, radio came to mean more than that:
“I was a rugby playing, cricket loving kind of sports guy but then I got really sick at about 13. I had chronic fatigue syndrome, and I was so ill I never went back to school and that’s where the love of radio came from.
I was musical, I’d always played guitar but for a couple of years I was too sick to get out of bed. My education and the outside world came from radio stations. I would lie in bed and listen to Alan Jones and John Laws. I’d listen to all the news bulletins, then flick to hear Stuart Cranney and whoever was on Triple M. After 2 or 3 years of doing nothing, suddenly I had a great radio knowledge base. So, when I was about 17 and social again, I was asked what do you want to do?
Well, I’ve sat here and listened to the radio for five years and I play guitar and I’m cracking jokes instead of playing rugby. I might go into radio. And that’s where I started volunteering for community radio stations and it went from there.”
Lachlan also developed the mentality, from his time only being able to listen while the world turned, to actively seeking ways keep putting himself in front of opportunities that were of interest to him. He did a Master of Business Administration and Management which took him to Hong Kong, Vietnam and Dubai and was starting to think on his radio future as he watched colleagues get retrenched without a backup plan. Literally on the day he’d made a decision to perhaps look way beyond Australian opportunities he got a call from his friend Shane Sinclair saying,
“Hey Kitch. Do you want to go to Dubai?”
Apparently Shane, then and now a program director with the Nova Network, had been contacted by Allan Cameron, also an ex-pat Aussie, who had recently moved to the Arabian Radio Network to become a content director. That network was looking for a breakfast host. Alan asked Shane and a few other radio management mates for recommendations. They all mentioned Lachlan’s name.
So Lachlan went, thinking he’d give it six months and see what happened. He said:
“I got some amazing advice from Alex Dean who was running Virgin Radio, the behemoth over here at the time. He pulled me into his office and said, it’s hot, it’s sandy. Kitch, your head is going to spin for 12 months. This is a different planet. You’re not going to understand anything. The way people talk, what they do, how things happen. But there’ll come a point in about 12 months and you’ll go, I get it. And it was the best advice because it allowed me to kind of feel uncomfortable and know that that was okay, because it’s so different to what I’m used to.
For much of the audience English might be their second or third language. Australian sarcasm doesn’t translate. You have to find simpler ways to resonate with everyone.
Every culture’s watching a different sport, TV show or movie. On an FM talk show, you might find yourself doing a talk break about what colour the salt and vinegar chip packets in your country. Should there be an international standard for the colour of chips?”
YES. And clear description of bottles of water that are sparkling, or not. But I digress.
As Lachlan found his feet, Covid hit. He was made redundant and very lucky to get back to Australia. What happened next was an extremely happy period of time in the parental home where he looked for work but didn’t put too much pressure on himself about what that role should look like. Then, as the borders opened, he decided he would head back to Dubai and if nothing presented itself, take a well-earned vacation around Europe.
“In Dubai one the main media companies had a chat with me and said, you’ve done a lot of talk radio, we’re going to be starting the UAE’s first Hindi talk channel. Do you want to come onboard? I said that sounds fun, but I don’t speak Hindi. And they said, we’ve got the rights to all the cricket and the World Cup’s going to be here in three months. We want someone to be a part of that.
I said, where do I sign?”
From there Lachlan, or Kitch as he is known there, as it’s easier to say, has presented talk shows, MCed elite functions and played guitar for special occasions (see above). He currently hosts a weekday program LUV the Drive on LUV 107.1 FM in Dubai (the same company as TALK100.3, the Hindi channel Kitch hosts cricket on, and helped start) as well a really cool also weekday program called Cafe Dharan on Energy Radio 2, 101.4FM, across Saudi Arabia. He has a business centric podcast and just happens to have sat alongside some of the biggest names in cricket, as well as his childhood heroes, running commentary for the major cricket events like the Champions Trophy. He’s a jack of all trades living out every single part of his teenage dreams. But for all the opportunities he’s acutely aware of what he misses:
“I don’t want to get too emotional about it, but when you’ve got your parents in Sydney that are in their 70s and 80s, missing Christmases with them is hard.
In some ways that drives you a bit more, because whilst I’m over here, I’ve got to really make the most of it. When you turn up to work and Curtly Ambrose (legendary and terrifying West Indian fast bowler) is sitting on the couch outside the studio and he’s waiting for me, right? And then I get to sit there and hear him talk about when Dean Jones told him to take his wristbands off. (You can read more about that very famous incident here).
You’ve got to focus on those peaks because there are times where culturally it can be incredibly tough being alienated and being away from home. But when I’m in the rocking chair, I can say I’ve called two India versus Pakistan ICC matches, in Dubai. I’ve walked down the corridor alongside Ravi Shastri and had chats with Sunny Gavaskar in the box.
I actually found a couple of those sessions quite draining because of the sense of occasion. I wasn’t meant to be on the commentary team for the 2021 World Cup because we were doing a Hindi feed locally. But we were doing the international feed that was going around the world, and I hadn’t been selected, but I decided to go up to the media rights holder and say, I wouldn’t mind having a go. And they said okay.
Australia did really well in that tournament that I got more time. I was sitting there, calling a World Cup, Clive Lloyd and I going to 11 stations around the world, watching Matthew Wade slog it over the fence.
My dad used to tell me the story about the day he was selected for country New South Wales to play against Clive Lloyd. That was his cricket claim to fame. I now get to remind him that I sat with him for four hours to call a game!”
Lachlan Kitchen with West Indies cricket legend Clive Lloyd at the T20 World Cup in 2021
A love of cricket has opened many doors, from the large Indian and Pakistani population living in the UAE to hosting business conferences for Asian investors and speaking with this obsessive Radioinfo writer who interspersed every question used in this story with another that was just because I wanted to know the answer, like who his favourite player was (Simon O’Donnell by the way, excellent choice).
But for those of you reading who don’t care for cricket, the beauty of Lachlan is his many interests. He is as able to speak about workplace culture (a recent podcast episode) as Benny Blanco and Selena Gomez’s personal and musical relationship. He’s open to your thoughts, opinions and experiences, as they add to his.
That is what I like about Lachlan the most, and in a radio industry going through significant challenges, he shows that you can be some or all your interests if you are willing to explore outside the box. He said:
“You’ve just got to believe and get yourself in the right places where things can happen.”
Kitch with Curtly Ambrose
That attitude is relevant to whoever you are and wherever you work or came from. You can find the right places where you too can go up and say, I know this, I can have a go. Because, as Lachlan has demonstrated, sometimes the answer is yes, and life changing.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor, podcaster and cricket tragic for Radioinfo.