FRIENDS LIKE THESE
WORKING DAY IN, DAY OUT WITH YOUR BESTIE – WOULD YOUR RELATIONSHIP CRUMBLE OR FLOURISH? NATIONAL RADIO SHOW THOSE TWO GIRLS PRESENTERS LISE CARLAW AND SARAH WILLS KNEW THEIR FRIENDSHIP WAS TOO GOOD TO KEEP TO THEMSELVES, SO NOW THEY SHARE IT WITH AUSTRALI
How many times have you looked at your best friend as you’re doubled over in stitches of the hilarious kind and exclaimed, “we should have our own radio show” (or in millennial speak, podcast)?
It’s a pipedream for any dynamic duo, but two Brisbane women are living that dream.
Lise Carlaw and Sarah Wills are known for their pre-dawn national radio show Those Two Girls on the Hit Network, a Southern Cross Austereo company that airs 2DAY FM in Sydney, Fox FM in Melbourne, hit105 in Brisbane and regional and metropolitan stations throughout Australia.
The pair were orbiting in neighbouring galaxies in Brisbane but never crossed paths until five years ago. And like many new-age love stories, it began on the internet.
“We love telling this story,” Lise says. “Lise and I met online,” Sarah says. “While we were on maternity leave we were writing articles and sending them to different websites and we developed a bit of a following.
“Mutual friends said I think you should
meet Lise, and Lise’s friends were saying the same thing about meeting me.
“It turns out we lived about 1km away from each other in Brisbane.
“So Lise has rocked up to my house one night with warm brie from the IGA, crackers and a bottle of cheap wine.
“We stayed up talking for hours and hours, and we liken it to falling in friendship love.”
Lise says the similarities and shared experiences between them were too striking to ignore.
“(Before we met) I deadset thought she was from Melbourne. I thought, ‘She’s got fancy hair, she just looks like she’d be from Melbourne’,” Lise says.
“The things we had in common were uncanny. We’re born in the same year, married in the same year, married to similar men.
“We had the same fertility doctor which was some random dude out in Ipswich. And the same fertility issue – progesterone just does not work in our bodies that well.
“If you believe in all that serendipitous juju stuff, there was a reason we didn’t meet when we were younger because it never would have worked.”
The twosome knew they had something special and it was Lise that decided their pizzazz was worth pursuing professionally.
“Within four months of us meeting, Lise said ‘I’ve had a daydream, and we’re both standing holding microphones’. And I said ‘all right, let’s do that’,” Sarah says.
“I had this really strong vibe that we had to do something together, because the banter and the chemistry was real,” Lise explains.
They began a business as a double act MC for corporate gigs and put on their own events in Brisbane and the Gold Coast, hosting forums interviewing women including Mia Freedman and Zoe Foster-Blake.
The audiences lapped up their self-deprecating jokes taking the mickey out of each other, their knack for finding hilarity in the mundane and their natural storytelling skills.
They learned the crowds were coming for the interview subjects but staying for the interviewers.
“I remember the first (event) – 500 tickets sold out in three and a half hours. And we were nobodies. We were hosting somebodies, but we were like, ‘What the hell’,” Lise says.
“People said ‘we could have had more of you guys on stage’. So then you feel a bit up yourself, but you’ve just got to own it.
“It’s not about us, it’s about people seeing their friendships reflected in us. They just vibe it. We rag on each other all the time and they love it. And we mean every word of it.”
And as is the way with many new-age business deals, the move towards their own national radio show began with a slide into their DMs.
Hit Network head of content Gemma Fordham had clearly been keeping an eye on
“IT’S NOT ABOUT US, IT’S ABOUT PEOPLE SEEING THEIR FRIENDSHIPS REFLECTED IN US. THEY JUST VIBE IT. WE RAG ON EACH OTHER ALL THE TIME AND THEY LOVE IT. AND WE MEAN EVERY WORD OF IT.”
their Facebook page, a library of Those Two Girls’ comical escapades, and sent them a message asking how they’d feel about having their own radio show.
“We said, ‘We’d feel pretty good’,” Sarah says.
“Then she gave us the weekend breakfast show on Hit105 in Brisbane, and then the following year we had a national early breakfast show.”
With a career sharing the embarrassing moments of your life with up to millions of people daily, the women have developed an innate sense of knowing what’s OK to blab about on air and what’s not with each other.
“We’ve never had an instance of crossing boundaries,“Lise says.
“Never,” Sarah agrees. “We’re very clear with what boundaries we do and don’t have. I don’t say my kids’ names on radio, I don’t post photos of them. Lise knows that.”
“There’s a lot of situations where I’ve said something off air to a co-host and later thought, ‘Are they going to go there?’,” Lisa continues.
“Sometimes you get carried away in a story. That makes for a really nerve-wracking environment. You just have to say to people, this is a no, it’s not for public consumption.”
They liken it to having a twin-like telepathy – although articulating that connection ended up in bursts of laughter.
“We were shopping the other day and the shop assistant asked, ‘Are you two sisters?’,” Sarah says.
“I think it’s because we just seem like one brain. Two women, one brain – bloody hell.”
“Shivers, Sarah,” Lise says, laughing. After five years of working together daily and likely many more to come, they still refer to each other as best friends.
It’s a fine line to draw, maintaining a relationship that’s affectionate, amusing and professional all in one, but they’ve never had a falling out – “touch wood,” Sarah says. Just don’t call them comedians.
“We hate that. We’re just friends who look at the light side of life,” Sarah says. “We turned our friendship into a career and we didn’t anticipate that happening.”
“I think we have had to navigate how to leverage a friendship for career purposes,” Lise says.
“We have to protect the friendship but it’s also what gets us work.”