FAMILY MAN

In the last 12 months, Ben Fordham has scored the biggest job in radio, lost his much-loved father to cancer, and he and wife Jodie Speers have welcomed their third bundle of joy. They invite Samantha Trenoweth into their home to recap a year of heartbreak, triumph and love.

- Samantha Trenoweth

Ben Fordham is old school. At 43, he might be the young gun on the highest-rating radio show in the land, but there’s something about him that reminds you of your dad, or your neighbour’s dad, or one of those universal dad characters on sitcoms you watched as a kid.

It’s 7am on a Saturday morning, and Ben and his five-year-old son Freddy have been up for hours. They’ve just rolled back in the door after helping a mate who owns a cafe to unpack crates of milk, and they’ve been rewarded with a double espresso (for Ben) and warm-from-the-oven almond croissants.

“I like giving the kids an understanding of hard work,” says the man who this month stepped into veteran breakfast broadcaster Alan Jones’s spot on Sydney radio station 2GB. “I was explaining to Freddy, ‘Look at all these people – they’ve been here since 3am working their backsides off so that we have nice things to eat when we wake up’.”

It’s not just his own kids (Freddy, Pearl, three, and Marigold, or Goldie, just 10 months old) who are on the receiving end of Ben’s life lessons. He’s supporting what he calls “the kid economy” all along this leafy suburban street.

It started three years ago, the day Ben and his wife, Seven Network news journalist Jodie Speers, moved in.