Molly Meldrum has been keeping a low profile for the last year but a close source has shared that the veteran musician is “struggling” with his health.
He’s largely withdrawn from public life and he failed to show at a September event to celebrate the success of the show that shot him to stardom.
He was due to attend the launch of a commemorative coin, marking 50 years since ABC music show Countdown first hit our screens. Molly was its charismatic host and his success on the show launched his career.
But instead of joining the party, Molly released a statement: “I am left with such fond memories of those days and a show that will never be forgotten,” he said.
“We made a difference to the music industry in Australia and so I am thrilled to see commemorative coin being made.”
Former Countdown announcer Gavin Wood revealed Molly has struggled with his health ever since his well-publicised fall off a ladder in December 2011 which almost killed him.
“The fall, it is all down to the fall, was a horrible thing to have happened,” Gavin told the Herald Sun.
“He is 82 in January. He has been a public figure all his life and I think he is just enjoying a quieter life. He is still Molly, still interested in music and still has it turned up to 11. He is still naughty, he has still got that spark that we love, but I think he is enjoying life being a normal person.”
It’s been 18 months since the veteran musician’s disastrous appearance at a Rod Stewart concert in Melbourne where he exposed himself and appeared to urinate on the floor.
Describing what happened as a “train wreck”, Aussie musician Russell Morris, who used to be managed by Molly, tried to explain what was going on with his old mate.
“He’s doing OK. He’s not young anymore, he’s 80 years old,” he told 2GB listeners.
“He wants to live his life, that’s the problem, he doesn’t want someone to put him in a home or something, so he just decides to go out…He just does what he wants to do. And consequently, it’s a train wreck sometimes.”
The alarming episode was the latest in a string of increasingly bizarre antics by Molly, who was a mainstay on Australian TV for decades and friends to some of the biggest names in music.
In January 2023, he hit the headlines after mooning the crowd on stage at his old friend Sir Elton John’s Farewell Yellow Brick Road tour.
He apologised two days later, claiming the incident was a wardrobe malfunction but then footage resurfaced showing doing the same at the 2022 ChillOut Festival in Daylesford, Victoria.
“I’m sick of him doing this, I’m sick of it,” actor Samuel Johnson, who has had run ins with Molly in the past, told 4BC’s Afternoons with Sofie Formica.. “He needs to hang up his hat. Now.”
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