Tauranga radio announcer Brian Kelly has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to broadcasting in the 2025 King's Birthday Honours.
Tauranga radio announcer Brian Kelly has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to broadcasting in the 2025 King's Birthday Honours.
Brian Kelly, MNZM, was just 5 years old when he decided he wanted to be a radio announcer.
Growing up in Whanganui, the now host of Gold Sport’s The Country Sport Breakfast would play games pretending to run a radio station and broadcasting live.
As a child, he’d call intohis local station 2XA frequently for dedications – “I was probably a pain in the backside to the announcers,” he reflects – and as a teen, he would participate in quizzes run by the late radio legend Bill Leathwick and go into the station.
“I always had a hankering for it, I guess. It fascinated me, radio, and I thought ‘Maybe I’ll do that’,” he told Newstalk ZB’s Real Life with John Cowan on Sunday night.
Kelly told Real Life the King’s Birthday honour was “incredibly unexpected”, especially given as “I basically sit on my bum and talk to people”.
“It was a surprise, a total surprise … but a real honour, that’s for sure,” he said.
“I mean, I don’t go to work to get gongs. I enjoy doing what I’m doing, and I tell people I’ve never worked a day in my life. But also I’m doing something I love. When I was 5 years old, I decided I wanted to be a radio announcer – and I’ve just followed that dream.”
Tauranga radio announcer Brian Kelly was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to broadcasting in the 2025 King's Birthday Honours.
Funnily enough, radio wasn’t his only interest as a young boy. He was also involved with the Sea Cadets from the age of 12, and decided that Navy life might be an eventual career path – that was, until he went out on a frigate on the HMNZS Waikato once and got violently seasick.
“So, that was the end of my dream to become a sailor!”
Kelly told Cowan the response to his King’s Birthday honour has been phenomenal.
“I was hearing from people that I hadn’t heard of for years and years, that I’d worked with over the years in motorsport or in radio, whatever it might be, even listeners … it’s very humbling.”
Kelly got his first job in radio at 19, earning $41 a fortnight as a programme trainee for National Radio in Wellington, supplementing his income by driving back to Whanganui on the weekend to play gigs at hotels.
“[I would] programme the all-night national programme from midnight on Friday night, right through to 6am on Monday morning, just selecting all the music, which was great.
“My desk had a turntable, a pair of headphones, and the next room was the head office music library and there were 20,000 LPs in there. It was the greatest learning curve ever because I was a teenager growing up in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and there were the Beatles’, the Rolling Stones’, The Doors’ [albums].
“I just sat at my desk, put headphones on and selected tracks from these albums. I told people I’d died and gone to heaven.”
Later, having decided he wanted to be a radio announcer, he hit dead end after dead end.
Brian Kelly on Gold AM's The Country Sport Breakfast in May 2024. Photo / Alex Cairns
“After about half a dozen attempts of trying to pass the audition, I was told my voice was too light ... So I thought, ‘Well I love sports’, so I started going out covering local sport in Masterton,” Kelly told Real Life.
“And then the late Rob Crabtree came to Masterton to cover a round of the New Zealand Rally Championship, and he wanted me to come with him, and I loved it so much. He said: ‘Look, there’s a vacancy coming up in Wellington sports, how would you like it?’ And I took it.”
Kelly has made motorsport his home, having covered the World Rally Championships, Formula One, Supercars and many more events across his more than five decades in radio.
And now, as host of Gold Sport’s The Country Sport Breakfast, it’s become a family affair. His youngest son, Mark, is his producer.
“I bow to him with his sporting knowledge, I absolutely bow to him. I think I must have brought him up the right way because he’s passionate about sport … he’s the brains behind the show, you could say.”
And Kelly still loves the gig.
“My life’s not over yet, I might say – 55 years in radio, and I think I’ve still got maybe another 50 to go.”
Real Life is a weekly interview show where John Cowan speaks with prominent guests about their life, upbringing, and the way they see the world. Tune in Sundays from 7.30pm on Newstalk ZB or listen to the latest full interview here.
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