Richard Wilkins has clocked 38 successful years working in television, but there is one thing the entertainment editor regrets never doing in his decades-long career.

The Nine star, 70, who began working for the network in 1987, revealed on Sunday he wishes he tried harder to become a pop star.

While he holds much pride in the TV work he has done over the years, the Weekend Today co-host told The Sunday Telegraph he regrets he stopped writing songs. 

‘I don’t think I’d do too much differently, I was playing in bands and wanted to be an actor there for a while,’ he said, when asked what he would change about his career.

‘I wish I’d kept writing songs because I thought some of them were starting to get quite good and the comeback to that is, “Well it is never too late to stop.”‘

‘But I had an opportunity that came along when television was in a great growth spurt and music television, MTV, came along and it was just a perfect combination of everything that I had done.’

Richard went on to say his first gig on MTV when it launched on Nine in the late ’80s came at the ‘right time, right place’, and he would never take it back.

He said he ‘worked really hard’ and has ‘enjoyed the majority’ of his stint in television, even if it didn’t shoot him to rock star status as he hoped it would.  

Despite being just a few years off his 40th anniversary with Nine, Richard doesn’t appear to be slowing down any time soon.

The TV presenter said he doesn’t know what he would do with himself if he wasn’t working, even though he just celebrated his 70th birthday back in June. 

Richard has worked in breakfast television for many years and also hosts weekend radio on Smooth FM.

On the side, the media personality is producing a movie and has plans to write a second book following his 2011 memoir Black Ties, Red Carpets, Green Rooms. 

He was an aspiring pop singer when he first started working in the entertainment industry while still living in New Zealand where he was born. 

But Richard said working for MTV was ‘a perfect combination of everything I have done’ previously in showbusiness. 

It seems the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree as Richard’s son Christian Wilkins landed the role of red carpet host for the prestigious ARIA Awards last November. 

It comes after Richard became the butt of a brutal joke when comedian Akmal Saleh shared an anecdote about a meeting with the showbiz veteran.

The 60-year-old appeared on The Project earlier this month when he explained how Richard mixed him up with Anh Do, who hosts ABC’s Anh’s Brush with Fame.

‘Recently I was on one of those morning shows, the Today show maybe,’ he began his story.

‘I think it was the Today shown with one of the regular guests, it could have been Richard Wilkins, the entertainment reporter,’ he added to laughter.

‘He comes up to me, “Mate, I am a huge fan of yours. I love that show you do on TV.” I said what show?

‘Where you paint a celebrity,’ added Akmal, before sharing his shock at being compared to the Vietnamese-born comedian-turned-acclaimed artist.

‘We’re not the same race,’ he said to uproarious laughter.

‘He might as well come up to me and said, “Are you Kitty Flanagan?” Yes, I’ve let myself go.’

Akmal went on to mercilessly mock the television host.

‘I think plastic surgery is hurting his head! I didn’t want to disappoint him and said, “No, it is good! I’ll have you on the show next.”‘