Beloved Ratdogs Matt & Alex Are Reuniting For A Daily Podcast And Yes, There’s Triple J Tea

Ya boys are back in town! Iconic radio duo Matt Okine and Alex Dyson have reunited with Australia’s first on-demand breakfast show, Matt & Alex – All Day Breakfast, available weekday mornings on Southern Cross Austereo’s PodcastOne Australia.

Their unexpected but extremely welcome return comes three years after they called it a day on triple j’s highest rating breakfast show.

I got on the horn to the boys yesterday to discuss their comeback, which Alex described as “real comfortable.”

“It’s like an old pair of pyjamas – they have a few holes in them, but they’re nice and warm, directly to my buttock, and so they fit me just right,” he said.

Matt, whose been busy on his hit Stan Original series The Other Guy, added, “I woke up today, first day back, and I felt excited. Which is weird for someone who hates working so much. I was like ‘Oh my god, I’m not despising the thought of doing something.’ I’m really looking forward to doing this day after day.”

He continued, “To be really excited about working is an indication that there’s something good to be made.”

Following their hiatus after three years on the air, the boys went their separate ways back in 2016, but being the good mates that they are, they remained in each other’s pockets the whole time.

“We’re still friends so we’ve been in touch ever since we left triple j,” Alex said. “We’ve been doing our own projects and just waiting for the right thing to come up because you don’t want to do the same thing that everyone’s doing, but this seemed really enticing.”

I then asked the lads what to expect from the new show, which will be released at 6.00am every weekday morning.

“All the craziness, outrageousness, funniness of the last show, but we’ve both gotten better,” Alex adds. “It’s been three years since we were last on the radio and we haven’t just been fiddling our junk in that time, we’ve been learning, growing up and getting better and understanding our potential of where we wanna take our show and our partnership so it’s like triple j breakfast on overdrive, basically.”

He added, “We’ve both changed as people so we wanna see how that would work on the radio.”

They insisted that their return was always a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’ and they’ve just been waiting for the right project to come ’round.

“I don’t think there was ever any doubt that we would get back together at some point, it was really just waiting for the right thing,” Matt said.

“And we did have a few things that came and went that we just didn’t jump on,” Alex added. “There were a few things that we did, like reuniting at the ARIAs for YouTube Music was really fun – we came along as Tones and I and her ‘Dance Monkey’. Those sorts of ideas that we believe in and if we have creative merit, we jump at it.”

“And All Day Breakfast has one of those as well, we’d really love for people to come along with us on an audio journey,” he continued.

“It’s a radio show everyday, it’s made to be consumed whenever you want and so you don’t just get the Teppanyaki chop up of a live radio show where all the magic’s gone out of it ‘coz it’s just a collage of a podcast – this is specific for the person listening at the time.”

Matt went on to say that the “great thing about being apart for three years is that we’ve now got three years to catch up on. We’ve maintained friendship in that time but there’s gonna be so many stories and situations to catch up on.

“We’re gonna be learning these things from each other along the way.”

Sure, it feels like only yesterday when the boys were dominating the airwaves but the landscape of radio has changed a fair bit during their hiatus and therefore their approach to the show will be somewhat different.

“When I first started in radio back in 2014, I wasn’t sure if I was gonna take the job or not, and I spoke to Wil Anderson and he said, ‘If you’re gonna do breakfast radio, you need to be out every night and going to as many gigs and events are possible, ‘coz otherwise you’ll have nothing to talk about in the morning but what was on the last episode of Selling Houses Australia‘,” Matt said.

“So we went out and did so many things and had so many things to talk about but now’s such an interesting landscape where there’s no lack of things to talk about, it’s just gonna be so different now, just for this next little while. Then when everything gets back to normal, so will the content and the landscape of radio.”

“And the raves,” Alex chimed in.

“Oh, we did five raves in five days at the end of our triple j time and I have never been so exhausted, I’ve never had so much fun,” Matt said. “When we finished the Brisbane rave – five raves, five days, five different states – I remember going home that night and just lying in bed and shivering. I was overloaded with exhaustion, but it was just the best rave.”

“It’s weird to think that that would absolutely not be allowed now. You’re on planes, you’ve got hundreds of people, we were stage diving, you can’t social distance and crowd surf, it’s a very difficult thing to do. If the crowd is 1.5 meters apart and you’re jumping out into it, there’s a low chance of success.”

I also got the boys to tease a ripper of a yarn that will be unveiled in an episode this week.

“I’ve saved a story for this week that Matt’s been itching to rip me for on microphone,” Alex teased. “We’ve decided we’ve gotta put it out at some point.”

“Oh this is red hot, Matt,” Matt added with a laugh.

“This goes a bit behind the curtain at triple j as well,” Alex said. “This is the exclus[ive], I haven’t told anyone else, so that’s coming up. I’m dreading it.”

The debut ep of  Matt & Alex – All Day Breakfast is up now! Catch it via the PodcastOne Australia app.

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