Sharnelle Vella has spent the past week telling people she was leaving Channel Seven News to become host of The Golden Bachelor . In truth, she is headed to ABC Radio Melbourne, where she will co-host Breakfast with Bob Murphy from January, taking over from the departing Sammy J . “It’s been a bit of lying to people,” she says.
“When you resign from a job of seven years, saying ‘I’m leaving’ but not saying where you’re going, it makes it worse. So I realised I just had to say something outrageous to stop all the questions.” Sharnelle Vella and Bob Murphy will take on the ABC Breakfast radio slot in 2025.
Credit: Chris Hopkins While she’s not really off to a matchmaking program, there are those at the ABC who have already dubbed Vella, 36, and former Western Bulldogs captain Murphy, 42, “the unlikely couple”. “I was like, ‘We are both intelligent, both hard-working and both glamorous. Why are we unlikely?’,” jokes Murphy.
The sobriquet owes as much to personal as professional differences. He’s the one-club footballer who was there when Footscray’s finest won their first flag in 62 years, but didn’t play because of injury, a fact he characterises as both heartbreak and dream fulfilled. She’s reported on crime, courts, politics and Olympics, and became an assiduous chronicler of COVID updates during the city’s greatest time of crisis.
He lives in Northcote, and says, “my interests are Melbourne, its culture and politics and sport, catc.