Dr. James Wright

Popular Australian TV personality Dr. James Wright has died, aged 94. Ben Fordham, host of Sydney’s 2GB radio, announced Wright’s death on Tuesday by paying tribute to him live on air.

He said: “He was eccentric, he was intelligent, he was a joy to be around. I used to love how he’d say to people when they’d call in on the program, ‘what’s your problem?’ so no medical mumbo jumbo.

“People would call in and tell him what was happening. They would often raise things with Dr. James Wright that they were too shy to raise with their own doctor.” Wright, whose real name was John Franklin Knight AM, died on Sunday of natural causes, just two weeks before his 95th birthday. The radio and TV star had hosted many shows on both platforms from the 1970s into the 1990s, including “The Good Health” show on 2UE, the “Merry

Medic” segment on “The Mike Walsh Show,” and “The Midday Show.”

In 1971, Wright and his wife Noreen founded the Medi-Aid foundation to provide housing for senior citizens. He also helped to destigmatize major health issues and diseases such as the HIV-AIDS epidemic in the 1980s.

Wright was known as the unclein-law of Mark “Chopper” Read, the notorious Melbourne criminal. Read was his wife’s nephew and he wrote best-selling autobiographies about his bloody lifestyle, claiming to have killed 19 people.

Born in 1927, Wright graduated from the University of Sydney in 1953 with a medical degree. His path to fame started by writing health columns in magazines, including Women’s Weekly, Dolly, Cleo, and Women’s Day, and newspapers such as The Sunday Telegraph, and The Melbourne Herald Sun. He first used the moniker Wright when he appeared on “The Mike Walsh Show” in 1972. He later became a known TV personality by hosting “The

Midday Show.”