As news of Alan Jones’ arrest on Monday shocked Australia, former 2GB employees revealed how they “held him like a god” and considered him “untouchable”.
Trevor* worked at the prominent Sydney radio station as creative director, leading a team of writers who were responsible for writing the live and recorded commercials read by on-air personalities, including Jones.
Jones hosted the breakfast between 2002 and 2020 and Trevor told Daily Mail Australia there was a “culture of fear” where staff were constantly “walking on eggshells”.
“They considered him a god, we were just the hired help, the lowest of the low. He was untouchable,” he said.
“If there were quivering prime ministers, the average person who worked with him could easily have been shown the door, on the basis of Alan Jones saying: ‘Well, you can’t work here anymore.’
Trevor revealed that he was receiving vicious memos and rants from Jones.
He said he was hired as creative director because the person in the role at the time “didn’t have the grammatical experience to deal with the pedant that is Alan Jones.”
Jones was a schoolteacher in several Brisbane schools and at The King’s School in Parramatta, western Sydney.
As news of Alan Jones’ arrest on Monday shocked Australia, former 2GB employees revealed how he was “regarded as a god” and considered “untouchable”.
Alan Jones is pictured leaving the Day Street police station in Sydney on Monday.
Trevor said he had a strange experience when he started.
“I introduced myself to Alan via memo, because I know he’s a fan of the memo format, so I emailed him and said, ‘Hi. My name is Trevor and I’m your new creative director. If I can help you, you in no way with anything… etc, etc.”
“And he said, ‘Could you write 10 points that describe what I do as a creative director?'”
Trevor said Jones had already worked in radio for years and knew exactly what the role entailed.
“So I wrote down my 10 points and sent them to him,” he said.
‘Then I get a note thanking me for my 10 points. “So I had to send him a memo thanking him for thanking me for writing my 10 points.”
Trevor said that every morning he would receive “stream of consciousness” memos about everything Jones believed was wrong “and how useless and desperate the creative department is because they can’t do these basic things right.”
He said that instead of trying to resolve any issues with a conversation or meeting, Jones would dictate these memos into a dictaphone and his secretary would have to type them up.
Jones hosted the breakfast between 2002 and 2020 and Trevor told Daily Mail Australia there was a “culture of fear” where staff were constantly “walking on eggshells” (pictured, Alan Jones in 2002).
Trevor revealed that he was receiving vicious memos and rants from Jones.
“The memos would shoot out of the ivory tower in the west wing,” Trevor said.
“He just went crazy and she was furiously typing whatever was going on on this dictaphone.”
He said they were always an aggressive tirade of abuse and irrational as they were mainly about issues he had no control over.
He gave an example when Jones ranted about a live commercial script for Telstra and the fact that he hated it contained the telco’s email address.
“We can control grammatical errors, sure, but we can’t control Telstra’s email address,” Trevor said.
He said Jones criticized his department for writing a commercial about a barista and ranted to his audience: “I wouldn’t know what a barista is.”
He said Jones had just hosted the Barista of the Year awards ceremony in his private capacity.
“If I was worried, I could probably explain what a barista was,” Trevor said.
Another former creative department employee was also familiar with these abusive memos.
Barry* said staff jokingly called them ‘Parrot Droppings’ in reference to Jones’ nickname of ‘The Parrot’.
“We wanted to turn them into a coffee table book,” he said.
“Even though we joked about them, the level of vitriol was off the charts.”
Trevor said Jones would try to motivate the staff, but he was an outsider.
“He was always there doing things to bring the team together at Christmas parties,” she said.
‘He would be giving the speeches, the moving speeches that bring everyone together.
“It was like I was giving a pre-rugby match speech, sort of a speech, which was great, but I don’t think I ever felt like I was really part of the team.”
Barry agreed that it was a “real us and them mentality” with 2GB.
At that time the station “was affected by a toxic atmosphere,” he said.
“You never saw Jones…he never considered you worthy enough to come down and have a conversation,” Barry said.
“He wouldn’t know my name.”
“You would occasionally see Jones in the elevator with his personal assistant and driver, always a young man wearing a suit two sizes too big for him and carrying his briefcase.”
He never seemed happy, we felt sorry for him.
Barry said staff “lived in fear of being summoned to rant in person.”
“Every afternoon we would meticulously review Jones’ live readings for the next morning, trying to guess what Jones might even remotely have a problem with,” he said.
“It was just a crazy level of paranoia…definitely not a healthy work environment.”
Daily Mail Australia has contacted Jones for comment.
*names have been changed