Tracy Grimshaw to depart A Current Affair after 17 years as host

After 17 years in a prime time spot and 40 years on television, Tracy Grimshaw will step down from hosting Nine’s A Current Affair in November.

Grimshaw broke the news live on the program, telling viewers it was her decision to quit and to ignore the gossip magazines if they “start telling you rubbish”.

“I want you to know it’s been my decision alone and I’m not being shoved out the door by the boys club because I’m too old,” Grimshaw said on Monday night.

“I’m not too old. I’m just a bit tired. And for the record both the boys and the girls have asked me to stay.”

Grimshaw started in the Melbourne newsroom of Nine in 1981 and was reading the daytime news by 1985.

A Walkley-award winning interviewer she has hosted many major shows at Nine, including Midday as co-host with David Reyne and Today with Steve Liebmann for nine years.

“But I’ve basically been a shift worker for 26 years, driving to work before dawn for nine years on the Today Show, and the past 17 years driving home after dark here on A Current Affair and it’s time for less of that daily obligation,” she said.

“It’s been my privilege to host this show.”

Straight shooter: Grimshaw interviews Scott Morrison on A Current Affair. Photograph: Channel Nine

Grimshaw is a forthright personality and a good interviewer, memorably skewering Scott Morrison in 2021 in the wake of news that Brittany Higgins had allegedly been raped in Parliament House, and speaking out against bullies and sexism.

“Are you saying really that the enormity of this issue, that women deal with every single day, has only just become apparent to you in the last month?” Grimshaw said to Morrison.

“I’m wondering if instead of quotas and actively discriminating in favour of women, perhaps you’d be better off discriminating against neanderthal men like the so-called big swinging dicks club, that Julie Bishop said stood in her way.”

When an executive in the travel industry said she needed “a firm upper cut or a slap”, she took the high ground and he resigned.

“It’s not the sort of language that flies these days,” she said. “I’ve been around a long time. I was a young reporter in the 80s and 90s which was frontier-land television. I’ve probably heard worse stuff than that in my life.”

She has consistently called out the celebrity magazines, saying they make up “absolute crap” about her.

In 2009 she took on celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay after he mocked her appearance.

“Obviously Gordon thinks that any woman who doesn’t find him attractive must be gay. For the record, I don’t. And I’m not,” she said.

Grimshaw has been front and centre of major events in Australia including anchoring live coverage of the rescue at Thredbo of Stuart Diver and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.

She covered the rescue of the two miners Brant Webb and Todd Russell in Beaconsfield and later interviewed them about their ordeal.

“I was just a kid in 1971 when Mike Willesee started [ACA] and in our family it was required viewing each night as Michael either forensically dismantled some politician or maybe laughed along with [Paul Hogan] Hoges.

“Back then, I was going to be a vet or a flight attendant so if you’d told me that one day I’d sit in this chair, let alone occupy it for 17 years, I’d have thought you were mad. Well lucky me.

“You’ve let me indulge my love of interviewing here. I’ve talked to people who’ve made us all laugh and cry, who’ve shared their triumphs and their challenges and their wisdom and despair.