Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Radio personality with girl power and a loud laugh
MANY Heart FM listeners may have heard the voice of Lesley Piet in the dead of night, early in the morning or providing traffic updates during the day, but very few may know that she is a young woman with a big plan and models her life on Nelson Mandela, who she admires for “speaking his truth”.
Piet said, in her daily life she stands up against injustices, be it at work or even among her friends.
“Every day should be a Mandela day. You can help people through random acts of kindness. It costs nothing to lend a hand,” said Piet between traffic reports when Weekend Argus caught up with her earlier this week.
The diminutive 27- yearold from Malibu Village, Blue Downs, has been steadily owning the radio airwaves since her days at Stellenbosch University’s Matie FM.
These days she has her own weekday slot at Heart FM, where she entertains the earliest of birds between 4am and 6am. But, where most radio hosts go home after their slot, Piet’s day only starts when theirs ends.
That’s when she keeps listeners updated with traffic reports from 9am to 3pm.
Piet is no stranger to working odd hours and sometimes not being paid for it, but it was all part of her grand plan to make a name for herself in the radio world.
“My social life has been affected and I now spend even less time with my family, but everyone knows about my plan and they all support me,” said Piet.
She said she owes her career in broadcasting to a former teacher at Malibu High who recognised her love for speaking and encouraged her to MC school events.
“My teacher, Mrs Euria Hendricks, who now works at the provincial education department, really made my school experience great. She was the one who encouraged me and I literally owe my career to her,” said Piet.
Piet started her radio career in 2013 when she joined Matie FM, where she hosted a show from 3am to 6am free of charge.
Piet said she had always had hopes and dreams to make it in the world of commercial radio and her experience included a one-year stint in retail radio in which she entertained shoppers and staff at Pep Radio from 2.30pm to 5.30pm on weekdays.
Piet’s big break in commercial radio came in 2017 when she had the opportunity to work as a producer for Philippa Hudson and John Maytham on CapeTalk 567.
“While music radio is my first love, I have so much respect for talk radio,” she said.
Piet added, while she admired radio personalities like Phat Joe, she was all about girl power.
“There is a misconception that female hosts are just sidekicks but that is so not true. I have so many strong women that I admire, not just on radio but also in my family. My mom is a single woman and she has taken care of my sisters and I. My sisters are equally strong because of how my mom raised us,” said Piet.
Piet is the second eldest of four daughters who all live at home with their mother, Monica Piet.
“We live at home because we all want to take care of our mom,” she said.
Asked about family life and whether there were limitations to what she can and cannot say about the family, Piet related a funny story about her many aunts reprimanding her about Tupperware.
“I have a huge family. When we visit each other, there is so much food and everyone takes a bakkie home, like with most families. So my aunts somehow got it in their heads that I said the Piet family takes Tupperware bakkies from people’s homes. But we don’t.
“That was the only time that I got into trouble for my on-air utterances,” said Piet still chuckling at the thought.
Piet has a someone special in her life, but all she said was that “he is a good guy”.
“Men want to lead, but Lesley leads,” was the reply when pushed about more details about her significant other.
Piet said when people meet her the first thing they ask is for her to laugh, usually the first thing they remember from her on-air persona. “I am loud. I have a uitspattige laugh.”