In fact they’ve done more than that, they’ve completely rubbished the idea.

‘‘It’s utter crap,’’ Catterns said. ‘‘It’s not even a possibility.’’

Solly interrupted his leave to answer our queries, Canberra’s top-rating radio breakfast host confirming he wasn’t going anywhere.

‘‘The best thing in favour of me staying on breakfast is that nobody else wants the job, nobody else wants to get up at three o’clock in the morning,’’ he said, in his usual larrikin fashion.

‘‘I’m perfectly happy there, not to say if something else came up I might look at it.’’

Solly has been presenting the breakfast program on 666 for 8½ years, rising at 3.15 every weekday morning and in the process consistently winning the crucial breakfast slot, making him 666’s biggest star.

While it is his usual practice to take a long break over summer, Solly has elected to take off four weeks over winter, saying he wanted to use a little long-service leave to enjoy some of the school holidays with his children and have a break during the London Olympics. The ABC’s coverage of the Olympics will see a shortened local breakfast program in any case.

‘‘I’m quite happy doing it, it’s a good show and we have fun and if it wasn’t for the hours, it’d be the best job in the world,’’ he said.

Sydney-based Catterns has come to Canberra to fill in for the four weeks. She is much-loved by a generation of listeners for her work presenting mornings on Triple J, the national evening show on ABC Local Radio and breakfast on 702 ABC Sydney. And not to forget her early stint on the children’s television program, Simon Townsend’s Wonder World.

‘‘Listeners say they have grown up with me and I really love that. It’s such a lovely compliment,’’ she told The Canberra Times this morning.

ABC Local Radio manager Andrea Ho said she personally rang Catterns to fill in for Solly, recognising four weeks was a long time for him to be off air and she wanted someone ‘‘really good’’ to fill in for him.

‘‘We’ve got a great breakfast program and we want to look after it,’’ she said.

Catterns, meanwhile, is enjoying her stint in Canberra but has no intention of leaving Sydney. She regularly fills in for other ABC radio hosts in Sydney, Melbourne and now Canberra. She has a regular summer gig on 702 with Wendy Harmer and has also been acting content director in Melbourne.

‘‘I call myself ‘The Gap Filler’,’’ she said.

Yet she is much more than that, her crisp, distinctive voice delivering thousands of interviews over the years, from David Bowie to Paul Keating. She was also the ‘‘official voice’’ of the Sydney 2000 Olympics, responsible for all public domain announcements at Sydney Olympic Park. And she was the voice of pre-flight safety announcement procedures on all Qantas flights.

Radio remains her big love, with no desire to venture back on to television.

‘‘It’s a very intimate job. You can get very intimate with the listeners, especially in breakfast when you’re often talking to people who are still in bed. In fact, I often got emails from men saying, ‘I wake up to you every morning’,’’ she said, with a laugh.

‘‘Unlike TV, it’s just you in there alone, you and the microphone and the listener.’’

Catterns says she was ‘‘almost warned off about how cold it was going to be in Canberra’’ but was embracing the experience.

She was given a tour today of the National Arboretum Canberra by chair John Mackay and has been lapping up the afternoon sunshine.

‘‘My habit is to do the show, go back to my little pad and have a nap and in the afternoon go for a walk. The last couple of days I’ve walked around the lake,’’ she said.

‘‘I’ve been taking photos of all the beautiful birds in Canberra and putting them upon the website.’’