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Prominent Brisbane-based radio host Robin Bailey stunned listeners with an on-air meltdown today.

The co-host of KIIS 97.3FM’s Robin, Terry & Kip breakfast show was speaking to celebrity chef Matt Preston over the phone while discussing her upcoming cooking challenge ‘Robin Can’t Cook’, an initiative from her own station in which she’s been tasked with preparing a three-course lunch at the city’s Normanby Hotel on June 8.

Bailey, who has been open about being a “bad cook” on-air previously, took fans by surprise when she suddenly became inconsolable ahead of the challenge next week.

“I can’t do it, you’ve seen me meltdown in my own kitchen, I can’t do it,” Bailey said to Preston, as her co-hosts Kip Wightman and Terry Hansen listened.

Preston assured Bailey she had support around her, to which she responded, “No, I don’t. Everyone wants me to fail, mate.”

Bailey, 54, reached for a tissue as Preston attempted to console her.

“Robin, you need to believe that you can do it. And really, you have got support. That isn’t true at all. But honestly, Robin, genuinely believe you can do it. You just got to have some faith in yourself,” Preston said.

Bailey then left the studio to compose herself, before returning 20 minutes later to a somewhat awkward reception from her co-hosts. Wightman took her to task, saying he’d been “triggered” by one thing she said during her emotional outburst.

“The trigger was when you said to Matt that everyone wants you to fail. And that bothered me,” he told her.

“There’s two parts to our friendship, one is that I want to have fun on the radio with you, when things fail, so if we have this lunch and you burn the pizza, it’s going to be fun.

“It’s funny, but I don’t want you to fall. I actually believe in you.”

Bailey, who has suffered immense tragedy in her past with the death of both her first and second husbands, said she felt she was projecting her private trauma into the challenge.

“For God’s sake. I’ve been through two deaths and two husbands and the thing that’s bringing me to my knees is cooking,” she said.

“I think maybe I’ve just projected all of my other sh*t right into this, into just this moment of just going ‘I can’t do it’.”

Bailey’s second husband, Sean Pickwell, died in 2019 from liver cancer. Her first husband, Tony Smart, whom she was married to for 16 years until his death, tragically died by suicide in 2014.

Bailey previously opened up to Stellar about having to break the news to her three sons that their dad had taken his own life.

“The day Tony died, I rang our counsellor,” Bailey said, “And I asked, ‘How do I do it? Tell me what to say. How do I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life?’ It was so tough because it was going to change their lives, that one moment, and if I didn’t do it right …

“They were never going to be OK with it. I knew what was to come; I knew how different their lives would be.”

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In September 2019, Bailey announced Pickwell’s death on Facebook. He had been diagnosed with cancer in 2017, with the pair tying the knot in 2018.

“What can I say, my big beautiful panda has gone,” she wrote at the time of his passing. “He died as he lived, his way, at home with us holding him early this morning.

“In this moment there are no words or feelings that can truly express the love and gratitude I have for my husband Sean Pickwell. He came into our lives and healed us. He loved me so hard and taught me so much and now whatever life throws at us we will be stronger, wiser and more fierce because of him.”

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