History will remember John Laws as the most successful broadcaster in the history of Australian radio.
The King of Radio signed off for the last time in November 2007 after signaling his intentions five months earlier.
At the time of his retirement, the John Laws Morning Show was heard by more than two million people daily on 71 radio stations nationally.
When he switched off his Golden Microphone at Radio 2UE for the final time the curtain dropped on an extraordinary career which began as an 18-year-old in Bendigo in 1953.
“Your contribution to public debate and to the media has been quite extraordinary,” then Prime Minister John Howard told John Laws on the occasion of his 70th birthday in 2005.
“Nobody is more synonymous with talkback radio than you. As someone who has appeared frequently on your programs, I’ve marvelled at your breadth of knowledge, your capacity to wrinkle answers out of me and your sheer energy and constant commitment to the cause of lively communication and interesting public debate”.
“There’s probably never going to be another one like you. No one has done it like you have,” Paul Keating, Australia’s Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996, once told John Laws.
On another occasion, when referring to John Laws' enormous influence, Mr Keating noted: “Forget the Press gallery in Canberra. If you educate John Laws, you educate Australia.”
Although he has bowed out of radio, John Laws is kept busy with his continuing corporate sponsorships and his interest in writing.