James Valentine has announced his retirement from ABC Sydney radio station 702 following a battle with cancer. Valentine, host of the afternoons program, has confirmed he will not return to his shift in 2026 as previously hoped.

News.com.au reports that Valentine has announced: “I won’t be coming back this year to the microphone and the Afternoons program” Valentine said. “It’s time for me to retire.”

“This decision has been hard for me to make but I need to focus on getting better and being with family and friends and making sure I’m giving my health my best shot.”

In March 2024, Valentine, who is in his early sixties, announced he’d been diagnosed with oesophageal cancer.

Following the removal of a tumour he returned to air later that year but mid 2025 revealed further tumours had been discovered in his omentum.

“Yes, omentum, I’d never heard of it either,” he told his audience in June of last year before explaining it is a “fatty veil” that extends from the stomach to the intestine.

His cancer issues, he explained at the time, were also causing discomfort in the bowel region.

Valentine retreated from the airwaves and spent the second half of 2025 undergoing chemotherapy and immunotherapy.

“There may be debate as to whether the full removal (of his oesophagus) might have prevented this, but given that the initial tumour may have been there for a while, undetected and asymptomatic, there’s every chance that cancer cells have been out in my body for some time, looking for a place to call home, and the full surgery would not have prevented their spread,” he told his audience last year.

“I don’t pray, but if you do, please go hard. I can feel your good wishes, love and support and I thank you deeply for it. When I know anything about what’s happening, I’ll let you know but right now I’m off to the land of the sick.”

Valentine, a keen saxophonist and working jazz musician, began his media career in the mid‑1980s hosting cartoons on ABC TV’s The Afternoon Show.

He went on to work across several ABC television programs before moving into radio at 666 ABC Radio Canberra and later to the Mornings program in Sydney.

In 2001, James found what he would describe as his true home at the ABC when he began presenting Afternoons on 702 ABC Radio Sydney, then known as 2BL.

He held the role for more than two decades, with a brief sojourn when he was promoted to the Breakfast shift in 2022 and 2023.

He will sign off on Friday with a special two-hour retrospective from 1.30pm.

(Source: Annette Sharp – news.com.au)