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The Afternoon Show hosts: Where are the presenters we rushed home from school to watch now?
As kids in the 80s and 90s we were obsessed with this show.
If you were a child in the late 80s to early 90s no doubt you tuned into ABC's The Afternoon Show. The magazine-style programme featured colourful sets and vibrant hosts who introduced the best cartoons and kid's shows on at that time.
Featuring classics of the time such as Danger Mouse, Metal Mickey, Inspector Gadget, The Goodies and Doctor Who.
Musical host
It launched with James Valentine as the host in 1987. James, a musician who played saxophone for the band Models, was known for wearing a variety of colourful outfits and his trademark horn-rimmed glasses.
"It’s a common expression in jazz to say, ‘Jazz is not so much a sound as a look’; I’d always have the hat and the suit, trying to make it look like it was 1947," he explained to SMH about his outfits at the time.
"I wasn’t ever working with kids, just to kids, so I never saw the audience until, like, 10 years later when I’m doing groceries and some random person at the checkout goes, ‘Oh my god, you’re the guy from Roger Ramjet!’" he says about still being recognised for his time on the show.
"Then there’s another cohort who I’m vaguely familiar to from being on crappy TV shows, although they never know where. They’ll say, ‘I know you’, and I go, ‘Oh, Showtime Movie News?’ and they go, ‘Never heard of it’."
For the past 27 years, James has been hosting the afternoon slot on ABC Radio Sydney, originally called 2BL. He is married to wife Joanne and they have two children Ruby, 25 and Roy, 22.
Appealing to the youth
After James left the show, it was briefly hosted by TV presenters Basia Bonkowski and Stephanie Osfield before Michael Tunn took over as the new presenter.
Michael was just 17 when he landed the gig introducing the cartoons to school kids. He was also hired as a DJ on ABC's youth radio station Triple J at the same time.
Michael presented The Afternoon Show until it finished in December 1993.
Following that, he continued as a popular DJ with Triple J but quit in 1999. From there he spent time at BigFatRadio and Austereo at Triple M.
He briefly returned to the ABC as Music Director of 105.7 ABC Darwin in 2006 but the job was not to last. Michael disappeared from the public eye, returning to his hometown of Adelaide.
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