Last year, radio host Kyle Sandilands made headlines for something even more unexpected than his usual on-air antics, revealing he had been diagnosed with a brain aneurysm at a routine check-up. He attributed the health scare to his former party boy lifestyle.
“The doctors didn’t know whether I’d had it for two months or 20 years,” Kyle, 54, tells TV WEEK.
”And, because it was grafted onto multiple veins, they couldn’t just put a little coil in it that they normally would do with keyhole surgery. They were going to have to pull half my skull off and go behind my eye. I was worried I was going to be Frankenstein. It’s bad enough with the weight.”
Despite the shock, it was business as usual for Kyle and his family, when doctors advised surgery only if the aneurysm worsened, because of the risk of surgery-induced stroke.
“It hasn’t grown, so, until it gets bigger, we are holding off,” he explains. “This is from the poor lifestyle I lived. Getting on the drugs, smoking weed and chain-smoking cigarettes. I was yahooing around for far too long. Now I’ve got a child and all that’s gone out the window. Instead, I’m on the floor playing with Matchbox cars and I know every nursery rhyme.”
Now a devoted husband to Tegan, 40, and father to three-year-old Otto, Kyle says his partying days are well behind him, describing himself as an overly cautious parent. These days, his main focus is family – and work, including the new season of Australian Idol – and viewers may well notice a gentler side to the famously blunt judge.
“I was brought to tears twice,” he recalls. “When someone tells you their story, you feel for them. Despite that, it was a joyous year actually.”
Kyle is reunited with his fellow judges, Queen of Pop Marcia Hines and Amy Shark, who won the 2023 Graham Kennedy TV WEEK Logie for Most Popular New Talent. And these are friendships that he maintains well beyond the judging desk.
“I’ll send Amy photos of my Domino’s pizza all the time,” Kyle laughs, revealing his go-to is Hawaiian with extra cheese.
“And Marcia is in contact every week, asking, ‘How’s the baby? Where are you? What are you doing? I’m here doing this with the boyfriend,’” he adds, giving away that the romance rumours about the pop icon could be true.
Another close relationship is with long-time radio co-host Jackie O, who he admits hasn’t been around much lately.
“She’s been out dating,” he reveals. “She’s got some fella, apparently. I wanted to come around and meet him, but she said no. She thinks I’ll show up in my big car like the mafia and be mean.”
Following Jackie O’s candid memoir, The Whole Truth, Kyle found himself reflecting on his own bestselling autobiography, Scandalands, which laid bare his career highs, controversies and struggles with addiction.
Now living a vastly different life, Kyle says he might be ready to tell the next chapter of his story.
“My managers have asked if I would do the second part,” he says. “There might be something on the cards there.”
Australian Idol begins on Monday 2 February at 7.30pm on Channel Seven.
