LEGENDARY Perth broadcaster Dennis Cometti has been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.

The Yokine local landed the accolade for his significant service to the broadcast media and the community.

FULL LIST OF PERTH’S AUSTRALIA DAY HONOURS RECIPIENTS

Mr Cometti said he had found the announcement a little hard to believe.

“It was very surprising and very flattering,” he said.

“It’s a slap on the back for my family, my good friends who I broadcast with and the people who employ me, so all of that makes a bit of sense.”

Mr Cometti first entered the broadcast world while playing football for West Perth – he wanted to be a disc jockey and spin Top 40 tunes.

He “bounced around the dial” and worked across Perth and Melbourne for around five years playing The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.

His first call up to commentating came in 1971 for a state football game, with Mr Cometti joining the late Melbourne broadcaster Ian Major to call WA versus Victoria.

“I’d never called a game of sport in my life,” he said.

“It gave me a taste for it.”

Before long Mr Cometti made the jump to sport broadcasting, and the rest was history.

The AM appointee commentated three Olympic Games, worked as a broadcaster across the ABC, Seven and Nine, landed numerous awards and just this month had the media centre at Optus Stadium named in his honour.

“It was almost an out of body experience, you think they’re talking about somebody else,” Mr Cometti said of the centre.

2019 will see him continuing to call Perth AFL games with Triple M and working with Seven.The broadcaster was eager to thank everyone he had worked with so far throughout his career, particularly Bruce McAvaney.

“One of the things about broadcasting is that you need to trust the people you’re broadcasting with,” he said.

“At the start we were two broadcasters doing a job, but I think at the end we almost thought in a similar fashion and trusted each other completely. It made it so nice to go to work.”

Mr Cometti was also lauded on the Australia Day Honours list for his ongoing volunteering with Telethon and the Harry Perkins Medical Research Institution.