ROVEMCMANUS ISAHAPPYGUY. His
wife, actor TasmaWalton, often tells himhe’s
“annoyingly glass-half-full”. And it’s true. Sit
down with theman, shoot the shit for an hour or
two, and you quickly realise there’s a quality of
wide-eyed wonder to him. He’s relentlessly
optimistic, always ready to be thrilled. And, no,
it’s not the fabricated positivity you often see
celebrities desperately trying to radiate. For
Rove, optimism is a natural response, worldweariness
as foreign to him as Swahili.
An example: in November last year, the
breakfast crewat 2DayFMdecided to give their
newhost a surprise. KnowingRovewas a rabid
DoctorWho fan, they secretly organised an
interview with British actor Peter Capaldi. Now,
for Rove–amanwho’s spent the past 15 years
interviewing the cream of the entertainment
industry, gleefully jousting withmegastars like
David Attenborough, RobinWilliams, David
Bowie andGordonRamsay – it would be easy
to shrug his shoulders and crackawan smile at
this little “surprise”. But when Capaldi emerged
at thewindowof the studio, kitted out in a black
suit and dark sunglasses, Rove exploded out of
his seat. “Holy . . . What!” he screamed,
clutching his hands to head. “Oh my God!”
Was it a performance?Histrionics for the
sake of good radio? Rove bridles at the
suggestion: “I was so excited I was close to
tears! In the 15 years I’ve been in this job, I’ve
nevermet anyone who’s had anything to do
with DoctorWho. So tomeet the current
DoctorWho? I lost mymind.” He glances over
his shoulder at the window where he saw
Capaldi, then says with feeling: “I’d hate to get
so jaded that I’d experience something like that
and go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s cool. Thanks.’”
Thing is, if anyone has a right to be jaded,
it’s McManus. Here’s aman who ruled
Australian television for close to a decade; a
man who’s achieved single-name stardom.
He’s conquered his home country and
expanded his frontiers in theUS. He’swon
threeGold Logies andworked The Tonight
Show. He’s suffered the death of his first wife,
Belinda Emmett, in the blinding glare of the
media and rebuilt his life withWalton with
cameras again hovering around every corner.
And he still loses his mind at meeting the
newDoctorWho.
How do you retain such unflagging
positivity? Amid the day-to-day stresses of
life – parking fines and tax returns, utility bills
and traffic jams – howdo you resist that
seemingly inevitable slide to apathy?
LET FAILURE BURNISH, NOT BREAK
Comedy has always enthralled Rove.
Growing up in Perth, he was transfixed by
Looney Tunes cartoons. In his teens he
became a self-confessed “comedy nerd”,
trawling through the shelves of his local video
shop for stand-up routines from favourites
like Ben Elton, Billy Connolly and Alexei Sayle.
After finishing school, he started a casual job
at a bottle shop. It was drowsywork and he
wiled away the afternoons scribbling down
comedy sketches with hismates.When they’d
filled their scrapbook, they began knocking on
the doors of local comedy clubs.
“Now, you need a certain level of confidence
for stand-up,” says Rove. “And if comedy’s not
to your absolute core, if you don’t have a real
belief in what you can do, then stand-up will
bash that confidence out of you very quickly.”
Exhibit A: his first gig in the upstairs bar at a
pool hall called Pockets in Perth’s inner west.
Rove tosses his head back and laughs:
“Normally, if you die on stage, it’s crickets.
Well, we had talking. Silencemeans they’re at
least paying attention – they just don’t like it.
Talkingmeans you’ve completely lost them.
That was our first gig . . . But you learn to
galvanise yourself.”
And learning to galvanise yourself, in Rove’s
estimation, means gritting your teeth and
re-entering the fray. So he went back behind
themicrophone. He tried different sketches,
newmaterial. Gradually people started to
laugh. And as the laughter rolled in, his instincts
sharpened. He learned what lines to push hard;
he developed the confidence to deliver with
gusto. The laughter grew louder. He packed a
suitcase and headed east to Australia’s
comedy capital,Melbourne. The laughs kept
coming. After two yearsworkingMelbourne’s
stand-up circuit, he was talent-spotted and
offered a slot presenting his own talk show
on the city’s community television station,
Channel 31. Doors were opening.
But for Rove, it was that first withering failure
in the upstairs bar at Pockets that underscored
those years of stand-up success. “In comedy, if
your first gig’s great, that’s a bad thing because
you think you’ve got it, you thinkmaking people
laugh’s a piece of piss. Then, when you do
badly, you crumble. But if you do badly straight
up, then you know what it’s like. And when you
do start to develop your confidence, it can be
almost impossible to shake it.”
And for Rove, with that confidence came
something even more significant . .
INTEGRITY TRUMPS SUCCESS
Rove toiled away in virtual anonymity on
Channel 31 for two years before finally being
scouted by a commercial station. He was
summoned into the station’s headquarters
where a producer called him into his office
and offered himaminor hosting role. Rove
shrugged his shoulders and told himhe
wasn’t particularly interested.
The producer raised his eyebrows: “What do
youwant to do?”
“I want to do what I’mdoing on Channel 31,”
repliedRove, “but maybe in front of an audience
that, you know, gets into triple figures.”
The producer madewhat Rove remembers
to be a “scoffing noise” and said: “Well, other
than hosting your own national talk show, what
do youwant to do?”
Withoutmissing a beat, Rove replied:
“Nothing.”
So he walked out without a job and returned
to the anonymity of Channel 31. In a realm
where breaks are as rare as diamond dust, it
was a bold, perhaps foolishmove. But
according toRove, clinging to your professional
ideals is crucial to findingmeaning in your
work. “Forme, it wasn’t about being famous;
it wasn’t I-want-to-be-seen-and-I-don’t-carewhat-
the-vehicle-is. It was about doing
something that I love doing, something that I
care about, that I was proud to do. And if that
meant doing it on Channel 31, then so be it.”
It would be another year before Channel 9
offered him his own talk show. He smiles and
shakes his head at the memory of walking into
theMelbourne studio for the first time: “I mean,
this is the home of Bert Newton, Graham
Kennedy, all the big names.We couldn’t
believewewere there. Wewere a bunch of
kidswho’d been given the keys to the studio
and told to lock up when you leave.”
Even in such storied surrounds, however,
Rove and his team set themselves a simple brief:
make a show that theywouldwant towatch. “We
didn’t put any thought into the question: is this
going to be popular? And that was a good thing.
If you worry toomuch about pleasing the
masses, you’ll never succeed. All you can do is
dowhat youwant to do, be proud of it, and that
will produce the best product possible.”
GROOVE YOUR HAPPINESS
Rove’s self-titled variety show lasted only a
single season at 9 beforemoving to what
would become home at Channel 10. There, it
struck a rich vein of gold. For a full decade it
ruled the evening ratings, pulling in five
Logies while launching the careers of Peter
Helliar, Carrie Bickmore, Hamish Blake, Andy
Lee and Corinne Grant. But at the end of the
2009 season, with the show still riding high,
Rove pulled the classic leave-’em-wantingmore
tactic and wrapped it up. It was a
decision, he insists, that was based entirely
on gut instinct. “I have this internal compass
that seems to pull me in a certain direction.
And when I feel it, I follow it, because it’s
never been wrong. Ever.” It was this same
“internal compass” that pointed him to the US
in 2010. “I wanted to see what people were
doing there,” he says. “I wanted new ideas, I
wanted to feel creatively replenished.”
He would end up spending five years in the
States – a period of time that included stunning
coups and glaring failures. Chief among the
victorieswas a regular slot on The Tonight
Show – a fact that still causes himto widen his
eyes in amazement. “I mean, The Tonight
Show has become its own genre. So the fact
that I got towalk out on that set and hear my
own name . . . yeah, that’s something that’s still
kind of hard to take in.” But his five years
stateside ended with the inglorious demise of
Riot, a game show hosted by McManus and
produced by SteveCarrell that died a quick
death after suffering anaemic ratings.
Now that he’s back inAustralia, happily
ensconced in his new role at 2DayFM, how
does he look back on those years in the US?
Success or failure? For the first time in an hour of
rambling conversation, he’smomentarily quiet.
He looks down at his hands, choosing hiswords
carefully. “Look, I probably could’vewrung a
littlemore out of the sponge if I’d stayed there
longer. But I’mvery happy being home.”
It’s pureRove: lock on to the positives, skim
over the negatives. For him, optimism is a habit
to be grooved, positivity a skill to be honed. “No
matter what you do,” he says, “you have to focus
on the positives. Sometimes I think people
worry toomuch about what they’re not doing, so
they don’t enjoy what they are doing, and they
don’t do that thing to the best of their ability.”
A simple statement. Facile, even. But theway
Rove says it, with such emphasis in his voice,
you know there’s truth to it
