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Later, when Russell Crowe ended his eulogy with the Rudyard Kipling poem If, a single line summed up the way that the diversity of the crowd spoke to the character of the deceased: “If you can walk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings nor lose the common touch…”

Laws’s virtue was in making room for his listeners to sit at his table, Crowe said.

“John used to sign off his show by saying, ‘be kind to each other’ … His critics would point out the irony that his show was most usually invective-laden opinion, and his interviews with political figures, often stern and unyielding.

“But to express his opinion was John’s gift and his therapy, and for regular listeners, it became theirs. It was often through expressing himself that he made new discoveries, that he saw truth revealed in a differing opinion, and his audience were there to experience him expand and admire his endless ability to do so, and they expanded with him.”

Laws was among a host of famous guests at the first birthday of Charlie, Crowe’s son, where the broadcaster kept hounding the actor if the boy had yet opened his gift.

Eventually, Laws convinced the older Crowe to open it instead – inside was a bottle of Wild Turkey.

“Now that was pretty much when the afternoon tea ended and the celebration truly began,” Crowe told the service.

What eulogy could live up to the superlatives already attributed to Laws? A towering figure, the king of talkback, the conduit to middle Australia, an Australian icon, a titan of radio.

Paul Warren, who inherited his friendship with Laws from his father, put it into context: At Laws’s peak, he had 2 million listeners and won 92 radio surveys in a row. His program was carried by more than 100 radio stations. He had two Orders of Australia and a Companion to the Order of Australia. He wrote songs and sang them, he made albums, wrote poetry, appeared in films and appeared on television from Beauty and the Beast to Skippy.

“Truly, he set the benchmark for radio,” Warren said. “His trademark opening was, ‘Hello world, this is John Laws. What’s on your mind, Australia?’ And what a world he lived in for 90 years.”

What service could live up to the showmanship of Laws, a consummate entertainer who could sell anything from Valvoline to Toyotas (even if he did not always disclose that is what he was doing)?

The trumpet processional that opened the service was rousing in tune but muted in volume, as though shy of its own sentiment, and the canned applause and cheering that accompanied the track rang hollow.

Not so for John Williamson, who drew cheers from the crowd when he fulfilled his promise to Laws to play True Blue at his funeral.

“Don’t say you’re gone/Say you’ve knocked off for a smoko and you’ll be back later on.”

Just over a year ago, when Laws announced his second retirement from radio after 71 years on air, he promised it would be final.

“When I call it a day, it’ll be a day,” the Golden Tonsils declared.

“I’m not going to go away and then come back again and say, ‘Oh it was all a mistake’. It may well be a mistake but there’ll be no return. No return, that’s it.”

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