“I was playing Everything is Out of Season by Johnny Farnham,” Konik recalled.

“I was calling this guy on the intercom and he couldn’t reply because the mic was on.

“I’m calling this guy called Harry, ‘are you there Harry?’, ‘where are you Harry?’ and there was no reply.

“I had my earphones on and I threw them on the ground and said ‘where the f… is everyone in this s...house joint’ and of course that went across the top of Johnny Farnham.

“So I got suspended for a couple of weeks and it made page three in the Sun, the ratings went up, that was a famous moment.

“In two weeks I came back and it was all forgotten, there is worse said now on-air.”

That drama unfolded at Melbourne’s 3KZ in the mid-1970s when AM music stations were at the heart of a radio landscape yet to feature FM.

With his deep, booming voice, Konik relished the period and indeed a love of the medium drove his five-decade career which began in Warragul and ended in Wangaratta on Friday night.

He grew up in the Melbourne suburb of Kew and as a teen set his sights on being a DJ after visiting the studios of 3UZ and 3KZ.

“I thought these guys sound like they’re having a lot of fun and they’re getting paid for it,” Konik said.

“It was probably a juvenile way of thinking of it, but I thought this sounds easy, this sounds like fun.

“I thought I’m playing music at home for nothing and these guys are getting paid for it.”

After a stint at announcers’ school getting that voice polished, Konik landed a job at 3UL in West Gippsland on the 6.30pm to 11.30pm shift in September 1962.

But three months later, at the end of his probation, Konik was fired over what he describes as a personality clash with management.

At a time when country stations had a full roster of announcers and there was little networking of shows from capital cities, Konik quickly found work at 2XL in Cooma before moving on to Deniliquin’s 2QN.

By 21, he was back in the capital city fray with a midnight to dawn gig on 3UZ.

But for North East listeners, Konik is best known for his decade-and-a-half stint as 3NE’s breakfast host.

Remarkably though it may never have happened with Konik looking at working at a Wodonga hotel after having moved to the Kiewa Valley with his then wife to run an Arabian horse stud.

“I applied for various jobs doing anything, in hospitality and wineries, manager of a drive-in at the Wodonga pub, Elgin’s,” he said.

“I had an interview with them, but didn’t get the job, so than I rang here (3NE) on the off chance and they said ‘well we haven’t got a vacancy, but if there is one we’ll call you’.

“Eleven months later they did, they said the brekky guy’s gone, you’ve got the job.”

That was in December 2001 and for the next 16 years Konik was a staple in the early morning shift.

For the first 13 of those 16 years before he broke-up with his wife and moved to Wangaratta, Konik had a 174-kilometre round commute.

“It was 87 kilometres from the front gate of the horse stud….87 k down, 87 k back, five days a week for 13 years,” he said.

The 74 year-old added that the “fuel bill was horrendous” not to mention four kangaroo blows which saw two cars written-off as he left home at 3.15am or 3.45am.

For much of that time, Matt Hobbs was hosting the breakfast show on 3NE’s sister station Edge FM in an adjoining studio to Konik.

“He’s had boundless energy for all that time,” Hobbs said.

“I’m 42 and he’s 74 and the amount of energy he brings to it and has done for a long time is amazing.

“People have been waking up with him for 16 years, there’s young adults that have done that since they were kids.”

Hobbs said he realised the stature of Konik in the media industry during an outside broadcast at Yarrawonga that his colleague co-hosted with The Sullivans actor Paul Cronin and 3AW veteran and former television personality Phil Brady.

“Phil and he went to school together and it was just beautiful radio, it was just fantastic with the yarns that they were telling,” Hobbs said.

“You talk about the biggest stars of the ‘60s and Paul knows them personally.”

Konik lists singers Col Joye and Bruce Woodley, of The Seekers, as mates and recalls interviews with entertainers Roy Orbison, Henry Mancini, The Hollies and former teen idol Bobby Rydell, an American from Philadelphia, as high points.

“Bobby Rydell...occasionally still comes out to Albury to SS&A or one of them (and) we did an interview,” Konik said.

“He kept calling me Mr Konik and I said ‘don’t call me Mr Konik, Bobby, I’ll call you Bobby you call me Phil’.

“’Yes Mr Konik’ and I said ‘no, no, no you haven’t got this right’.

“’You Bobby, me Paul’ but he was a lovely bloke.”

As for John Farnham, Konik has remained in touch and the former Little River Band frontman managed to create another on-air misadventure after the 3KZ suspension.

“I was running a snow station at Mount Buller, Falls Creek and Mount Hotham, called Snow FM, and Farnham was in town at Mount Buller,” Konik said.

“I interviewed him and then he stayed on to chat and the phone rang and I said ‘hang on a sec’, so I answer the phone and I said ‘hello’ and the guy says ‘your microphone is still on’.

“I hung up and I turned the microphone off and said ‘Farnham you’ve done it to me again’.

“He said ‘don’t bloody blame me, it’s not my fault’.”

It’s that skylarking and enjoyment which kept Konik putting the headphones on through his breakfast show years which ended in December.

However, after being shifted to afternoons he decided to retire.

“It was fun and getting paid for fun is why I got into the business,” Konik said.

“But in the last couple of years it got really hard getting up early and I’ve kept thinking about it, but I couldn’t make up my mind.

“Then I woke up one morning and thought I can’t do this anymore.

“The fire’s gone out, it’s just like (Olympic champion) Cathy Freeman saying she just doesn’t have the fire anymore.

“I just don’t want to do it anymore.”

His retirement comes as 3NE enters life under new owner ACE Radio, the same company which has owned Albury’s 2AY since 2005.

But Konik dismisses the suggestion he has been pushed out, despite having been replaced in breakfast by The Morning Rush, a program networked across Victorian ACE stations.

“The company might have thought it was a hostile act, that I didn’t like the new company, but I had just had enough,” Konik said.

“It’s a bit sad that I waited until they took over, but I thought I’d give it a crack.

“I thought it might give me some sort of refreshment, but I just sort of lost the zing.

“The management here asked me, they said ‘have we done something wrong?’ and I said ‘you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s not a hostile act, it’s just time to go’.” 

So on Saturday morning, Konik will be at Melbourne airport preparing to board a plane to visit his only child, Lauren who lives in Canada.

The trip to mark his daughter’s birthday will take him to her home in the snowfields of British Columbia.

Outside work one of Konik’s passions has been skiing, with the proximity to the snow a key reason for the move to the North East.

“I did all of them, Buller, Hotham, Falls and the NSW (resorts) Perisher and Thredbo,” he said.

“Now I do the easy runs.”

Though the golfer does not altogether dismiss a return to the airwaves.

“Some people have suggested I do community radio, I don’t know whether I’m ready for that yet,” Konik said.

“I don’t know I might do a bit more travel and I might do a bit of community work.”

Having spent so many years as a big vocal presence in people’s lives, Konik says there seemed to be a common reaction when listeners put a face to his sound.

“They say I thought you’d be taller,” he said.

“They say ‘aw you’re Paul Konik, I thought you’d be taller’.

“Some people like you, some people don’t.

“Some people hate you, some people love you and then some people will still listen but they don’t think you’re fantastic.”

Hobbs has no doubt Konik, whose longevity in breakfast is likely never to be repeated, engendered “deep love and respect”.

“I keep telling him to slow down and now he has.”