Triple M radio legend ‘Uncle Doug’ Mulray dies aged 71 after ‘chronic illness’

Legendary radio host Doug Mulray, known to listeners as “Uncle Doug,” has died at the age of 71 after several months battling a chronic illness.

He died late Thursday evening in the intensive care unit of a Sydney hospital.

One of the seminal voices of Australian radio in the 1980s, Mulray is best known for his time at Triple M, which he helped establish and where he has spent most of his career.

He was the odds winner in the highly competitive breakfast slot, with one radio industry personality calling him “the Kyle Sandilands of his day – possibly even better”.

While his cause of death is unknown, in his later years Mulray is said to have been withdrawn and struggling with poor health. He was hospitalized in December.

Despite his success on radio, Mulray has not been able to achieve the same success on television – due in part to an infamous run-in with Channel Nine owner Kerry Packer.

He was hosting an episode of the bawdy clip show Australia’s Naughtiest Home Videos in 1992 when he featured a video of a boy pulling a kangaroo’s testicles.

A puritan packer watching from a party at his Sydney mansion was so angry and embarrassed he called the studio and yelled, “Get that shit out of thin air!”

The show was abruptly canceled and replaced by reruns of the US sitcom Cheers and never aired again. Mulray was then fired and banished by Nine.

However, he returned years later as a judge on the talent show StarStruck in 2005, the year Packer died.

He also appeared briefly on the Channel 10 talk show Beauty and the Beast in 2002 and hosted the short-lived program Mulray on Seven in the early ’90s.

Legendary radio host Doug Mulray, known to listeners as “Uncle Doug,” has died at the age of 71 after several months battling a chronic illness. (Recorded in the 1990s)