Doug Mulray: Radio legend dies after battle with chronic illness aged 71

Legendary radio presenter Doug Mulray, known to listeners as “Uncle Doug”, has died at the age of 71 after struggling with a chronic illness for several months.

He died in intensive care in a Sydney hospital on Thursday night, Triple M confirmed.

One of the pioneering voices of Australian radio in the 1980s and ‘90s, Mulray was best known for his time at Triple M, which he helped launch and where he spent the majority of his career.

He was a ratings winner in the highly competitive breakfast slot, with one radio industry figure calling him ‘the Kyle Sandilands of his day — possibly even better’.

While his cause of death is unknown, Mulray was said to be reclusive and battling poor health in his later years. He was admitted to hospital in December.

His last public appearance was at a Triple M staff reunion held at a Sydney hotel seven weeks before he was hospitalised in 2022.

Known for his outrageous humour and memorable on-air characters, Mulray made a touching speech at the gathering of radio veterans.

“We were the right thing, at the right time, in the right place, with the right attitude,” he said, recalling the days Triple M dominated music radio.

Mulray, who grew up in Dee Why in Sydney’s Northern Beaches, started his career at 2AD in Armidale then moved to 2GO Gosford on the Central Coast.

He rose to notoriety on Mulray and The Man in the mid-1970s on 3AW Melbourne before joining the ABC station 2JJ before it was rebranded as Triple J.

He then left to join the new commercial station Triple M in 1982, beginning the most successful and high-profile chapter of his working life.

His post-Triple M career saw him co-host the 2SM drive slot with Peter FitzSimons. He was also employed by the Sydney station 2WS (now WSFM) until he left in 1999.

Mulray was inducted into the Commercial Radio Hall of Fame in 2019.

“It was just an astounding thing to be part of,” he once said of his days at Triple M.

“We were blessed to have that thing … It was a joy to be there.

“When I left radio, I was over it. I wanted the privacy and I kind of distanced myself … It was kind of like a fantasy.”

Speaking to the Suddenly Senior podcast in September 2022, Mulray explained his decision to step away from the microphone two decades ago.

“I was pretty keen to get out. I’m pretty much living what I said I would do,” he said.

“I never did it for the money. I always did it because it was a joy to do.”

During his career on the airwaves, Mulray worked with the likes of Peter FitzSimons and Andrew Denton, and also recorded a series of well-received comedy albums.

He was often compared to Kyle Sandilands — the undisputed king of contemporary commercial radio — although their styles were completely different.

Despite his popularity on radio, Mulray was unable to reach the same success on television — in part due to a notorious run-in with Channel Nine owner Kerry Packer.

He was hosting an episode of the bawdy clip show Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos in 1992 when he introduced a video of a boy pulling a kangaroo’s testicles.

A puritanical Packer, watching from a party at his Sydney mansion, was so furious and embarrassed he phoned the studio and yelled: “Get that s... off the air!”

The show was abruptly pulled, replaced with a re-run of U.S. sitcom Cheers and was never screened again. Mulray was fired and banned from the network as a result.

However, he did return to Nine years later as a judge on the talent show StarStruck in 2005, the year of Packer’s death.

He also briefly appeared on Channel 10 talk show Beauty and the Beast in 2002 and fronted the short-lived program Mulray on Seven in the early ‘90s.

2GB breakfast host Ben Fordham remembered Mulray on Friday as one of the greats of the industry, saying he was known for his ‘adrenaline’-fuelled broadcasts.

“If there’s a radio station in heaven, they better get the dump button ready, because Doug Mulray is coming,” Fordham said.

KIIS FM host Jackie ‘O’ Henderson said she was ‘very sad’ to learn of his death, as her co-host Kyle Sandilands added: “I knew he wasn’t well.”

Brad March, a former SCA executive who runs the Marchmedia talent agency, called Mulray “arguably the greatest FM breakfast host ever on Australian radio”.

Mulray’s friend and former colleague Dave Carlson said: “I saw Doug only three weeks ago and while he wasn’t well, he was still his kind, witty self.

“An absolute legend who was very supportive of me when we worked together at Triple M.”