Rove McManus has risen to the top of the dog-eat-dog worlds of television and radio with a smile on his face

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