Jay-Jay says she’s leaving The Edge

Jay-Jay Harvey has announced that she will be leaving The Edge radio station at the end of the year. In an emotional speech on her breakfast show yesterday morning, the long-serving host said she had decided it was time for her to move on after 23 years at the Mediaworks radio station.

‘‘This has been a massive, lifechanging decision,’’ she told listeners. ‘‘This is all I really know, I’ve been here more than half my life. This in my blood. But I do feel it’s time for me to end this chapter and start a new one somewhere else.’’

Harvey, who started work on the station when it first began in Hamilton in 1994, added that she felt she had ‘‘grown up with the station’’.

‘‘We’ve had great times and bad times and scandalous times – and a lot of groundbreaking radio as well.’’

When on-air partner of 16 years Dom Harvey joked that perhaps that morning’s challenge of how many coffees they could get co-host Clinton Randell to drink wasn’t up to the usual standards, she mused that perhaps ‘‘we might be running out ideas’’.

Stressing that her decision had nothing to do with her and husband Dom’s ‘‘break-up’’ earlier this year, Harvey said moving on was something she had been thinking about for a while.

‘‘I know some of our incredible listeners will be sad but I’m really, really happy.’’

Admitting that she did have something lined up in the new year ‘‘somewhere else in the Mediaworks family’’, Harvey said she would be taking a short break once she finished up on The Edge on December 22.

Mediaworks Radio group content director of music Leon Wratt said he believed a major part of Harvey’s success and her appeal as a broadcaster was that she was ‘‘hugely relatable, always professional and she doesn’t have an ego’’.

‘‘The same Jay-Jay you hear on air is the one you meet in person. Her longevity with The Edge breakfast is testament to that and she’s leaving the station at the very top of her game.’’

Mediaworks also confirmed that Megan Annear will be joining The Edge Breakfast team from November 27., allowing Harvey time to hand over the reins.