Andrew Olle

John Andrew Durrant Olle (28 December 194712 December 1995) was an Australian radio and television presenter who mostly worked for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Early and personal life Olle was born in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby as the only child of Major John Durrant Olle, a radio telegraphist who had fought in World War II, and Marie Jose née Ifwersen, a New Zealand-born court reporter and stenographer with French and Danish heritage. His mother and father had married in February 1947, aged 21 and 36, respectively. His father rejoined the army in 1948

Career Olle began his career at the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in Brisbane as a cadet on 27 November 1967. He worked in Townsville from 1969 to 1970 before returning to Brisbane, where he mostly worked on the Queensland edition of the program This Day Tonight from 1971 to 1977 (with a stint in Melbourne from 1973 to 1974). He came to national attention in 1976 when he reported on a police raid of the Cedar Bay hippy commune, which won the award for "Outstanding Contribution to TV Journalism" at the Logie Awards of 1977. This report was part of a series about police corruption in the Joh Bjelke-Petersen state government.

He then moved to Sydney, where he worked on national programs for the ABC such as Four Corners (1977–78), Nationwide (1979–1980), and A Big Country (1981), before moving to the Nine Network where he worked on the newly established program Sunday from 1981 to 1985. He then returned to the ABC where he initially worked once again on Four Corners (from 1985 to 1994, winning a Penguin Award for Best Current Affairs Presenter in 1987, and anchored election coverage. At the start of 1995 he switched from Four Corners, a weekly series mostly consisting of pre-recorded content, to the New South Wales edition of The 7.30 Report, a daily program consisting of live interviews, while still working on the morning radio show, therefore exposing himself to 15-hour working days. He began experiencing on-air memory lapses and later that year he was dismissed from his position at The 7.30 Report when it became a national program.

Illness, death, and legacy On 7 December 1995, Olle collapsed in his Greenwich home due to a brain haemorrhage associated with a previously undiagnosed brain tumour (glioblastoma multiforme) and he was taken to Royal North Shore Hospital, where he underwent neurosurgery the next day. His life support was turned off on 11 December and at 5:17 pm local time (AEDT) that day, his radio station 2BL prematurely reported his death due to a pre-prepared statement about it mistakenly being faxed to the news room; the report was followed up by other broadcast media before being retracted by 6 pm. Olle died the next day on 12 December, aged 47. Olle was cremated at Northern Suburbs Crematorium where a private funeral service was held on 15 December and on 22 December, a nationally broadcast memorial service was held to a capacity crowd at Sydney Town Hall.

The Andrew Olle Memorial Trust, which was established to raise money for brain cancer and neurosurgery research, The Andrew Olle Media Lecture, an annual lecture held by the ABC since 1996, and the Andrew Olle Scholarship, established in 1996 for ABC journalists aged under 25, were created in his honour. In 2018, he was posthumously inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame.