Brendan “Jonesy” Jones has revealed he wanted Amanda Keller by his side so badly that he was willing to bet his entire career on it.
The Gold FM Sydney breakfast duo sat down with news.com.au to promote their new book called Pump Up The Jam, which celebrates their incredible 20 years on air.
And during the interview, which you can watch in the video player above, Jonesy explained that their iconic partnership only came about as a result of a high-risk offer he made to station management in the 2000s.
Bold deal to secure Amanda
In 2003, Jonesy signed a three-year deal to host the WSFM (now Gold FM) breakfast show.
The show struggled from the outset, and things went from bad to worse in 2004 when his co-host, Kayley Harris, announced she was leaving the show.
“The breakfast show wasn’t working,” Jonesy told news.com.au. “We were coming fifth in a five horse race, and I thought, ‘they’re going to get rid of me!’”
Jonesy, who had worked with Amanda briefly in the past at Triple M, pleaded with station management to hire her as his new co-host.
“I just said, ‘look, if you get Amanda Keller on board, I guarantee we’ll go number one this time next year,’” he said.
Jonesy told his bosses to offer Amanda whatever she wanted, and even went as far as to say that if they weren’t number one within 12 months they could sack him without having to pay out the remainder of his contract.
“I had a pretty solid deal with them … it was good money and I just said, ‘look, I’ll leave,’” he said. “All I wanted to do was work a breakfast show with her and I knew it would work.”
Amanda agreed to co-host the show and within 9 months it was the number one FM breakfast show in Sydney.
A truly staggering achievement.
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Bonded with blood
Jonesy and Amanda are incredibly close, so close in fact that they once drank each other’s blood for an on-air stunt.
“We do a thing called TikTok Tucker,” Amanda explained. “Stuff that’s fashionable or stupid on TikTok, food that’s being cooked, we were replicating it.”
When Megan Fox and Machine Gun Kelly made headlines for drinking each other’s blood, Jonesy and Amanda decided to give it a go as well.
“The (number of) lawyers that were involved in making this happen was outrageous,” Amanda laughed.
After all the necessary health and legal checks, the radio stars put a few drops of blood into shots of vodka and then drank it live on air.
“Everyone around us seemed to think it was the weirdest thing ever,” Amanda told news.com.au. “We know each other so well I couldn’t care less.”
Infamous Keith Urban interview
In September 2024, Jonesy and Amanda’s interview with Keith Urban went viral online.
The singer was visibly unimpressed when asked about his relationship with then-wife Nicole Kidman and refused to answer questions on the topic.
“ He was uncomfortable talking about Nicole,” Amanda recalled. “I thought, ‘oh, that’s weird,’ because normally he talks about her and he seemed to shut it down.
“I thought, ‘it’s not like Keith to be rude and say, well, let’s move on.’”
Amanda told news.com.au she was hoping Urban would give them just one small comment about Kidman so that they could move onto the next topic.
“I just thought it’s up to him to round that (topic) off,” Amanda said. “It’s not my job to finish his sentences for him, so we just kind of sat there and it all ended a bit embarrassingly.”
The awkward interview went viral for a second time when Kidman and Urban announced earlier this year that they had split up.
Other wild revelations
Jonesy and Amanda were in a sharing mood during their interview with news.com.au, which you can watch in the video player at the top of this article.
They spoke about the biggest fight they’ve ever had on air, which happened while they were broadcasting underwater.
They spoke about the stories about family members they regret telling on air.
And Jonesy made a rather outrageous confession about the day he had to ‘self pleasure’ in the Channel 9 bathroom before an appearance on Kerri-Anne Kennerley’s TV show.
Pump Up The Jam
Jonesy and Amanda’s new book is available now through Booktopia.
It’s a hilarious and eye-opening look back at their relationship, their most outrageous antics, and a love letter to the listeners who have supported them during their 20 years on air.
One of the best things about Pump Up The Jam is that it’s full of QR codes which readers can scan to hear pieces of audio referred to in the book.
Genius idea.
