Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligall people of
Speaker 1: the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 2: Just a warning that Osher's story contains discussions of mental
Speaker 2: ill health and addiction. If this episode raises any issues
Speaker 2: for you, support is available through the links and phone
Speaker 2: numbers in our show notes.
Speaker 3: It's November two thousand and six and we're in the
Speaker 3: wings of the Sydney Opera House. Andrew ge is about
Speaker 3: to take the stage to host Australian Idols Ground Finadi.
Speaker 3: The lights are bright, the stakes are high, the pressure
Speaker 3: is on. One in four Australian households will tune in
Speaker 3: to watch him do his thing. This is his happy place,
Speaker 3: the place where he feels most in control. But when
Speaker 3: the lights go down and he gets off stage, he
Speaker 3: won't feel so in control. In fact, he's fighting for
Speaker 3: his life. His career has become his coping mechanism for
Speaker 3: his battle with OCD.
Speaker 4: Drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 3: Now as Osher Ginsburg, he sits in front of me
Speaker 3: a completely different person, a new name, a new approach
Speaker 3: to life.
Speaker 4: I'm Att Middleton.
Speaker 3: And this is head Game Today beloved TV host, podcaster,
Speaker 3: and mental health advocate Osher Ginsburg on making a life
Speaker 3: worth living. Asher Ginsburg, It's an absolute pleasure to have
Speaker 3: you on my podcast, head Game.
Speaker 5: I'm glad I can be here, mate.
Speaker 4: So just take me back to.
Speaker 3: Your childhood and who you were, who you thought you were.
Speaker 3: Did you have a good upbringing, what your parents were like,
Speaker 3: because it's podcast is about you and we want to
Speaker 3: get to know the nitty.
Speaker 5: I can answer that question in forty nine minutes and
Speaker 5: then you'll be done. But I'll tell you this short
Speaker 5: versions you're, you know, military man with a military background,
Speaker 5: so you know what I'm talking about when I tell
Speaker 5: you that I'm one of four boys. I'm number two
Speaker 5: of four boys, and I was raised by two people
Speaker 5: who know what it is to have authoritarian regimes kick
Speaker 5: your doorin and people with machine guns say this is
Speaker 5: ours now. And that happened to my mum when she
Speaker 5: was just a bit younger than my son. To be honest,
Speaker 5: it was about three they fled Lithuania with the retreating
Speaker 5: German army. Because we all know how terrible that was
Speaker 5: in parts of the Holocaust. The real groom kind of
Speaker 5: hand to hand brutal massacres happened before they mechanized it.
Speaker 5: That happened there, and they knew how bad those guys were.
Speaker 5: But when they found out the Russians were coming over,
Speaker 5: they're like, fuck, let's get out of here. It was like,
Speaker 5: that's bad. Some twenty four years later, the same Russians
Speaker 5: stormed tanks through my dad's city of Prague, and he'd
Speaker 5: the one to look at that and when well, I
Speaker 5: better go, and so he was twenty it was twenty
Speaker 5: four when that happened, and so both my parents had that.
Speaker 5: They're both doctors, but they both had this idea of,
Speaker 5: you know, it can all get taken away, and you
Speaker 5: know a different relationship to authority than some people probably
Speaker 5: would have had, and most definitely an awareness of it's
Speaker 5: lovely here in Australia. Yeah, and there's parts of the
Speaker 5: world like in our lifetimes it's kind of not been
Speaker 5: that way now. So these people, that's that's what they
Speaker 5: you know, that's what they grew up with and that's
Speaker 5: you know, who they were, and they hoped he could.
Speaker 3: You sense that as a child growing up or did
Speaker 3: you learn that later or could you sense.
Speaker 5: That in the definitely knew that about my dad. Dad
Speaker 5: talked about it a lot. He lost family in the Holocaust,
Speaker 5: and you know, he was alrightly, you know, quite really
Speaker 5: making sure that us kids knew what it was about.
Speaker 5: Mum didn't talk about it so much until they'd split up,
Speaker 5: And it was once Dad had left that Mum started
Speaker 5: opening up about the things that happened to her and
Speaker 5: her journey, Like they walked from Colnus down to northern
Speaker 5: Germany in the middle of winter, they walked and wildly
Speaker 5: and well, I like to talk about this when when
Speaker 5: her and her family got to Australia. On the top
Speaker 5: of the form and I've seen the former says d
Speaker 5: P displaced persons. There were persons displaced by war. They
Speaker 5: weren't refugees, they weren't Q jumpers, they weren't asylum seekers.
Speaker 5: There were people. There were persons who had been displaced
Speaker 5: through no fault of their own. But look as far
Speaker 5: as how I was a jumpy kid. I was five,
Speaker 5: I think when my parents set me off to psychiatrist,
Speaker 5: and I think it was one in Brisbane at the time,
Speaker 5: in the late seventies, and I just remember like anxiety
Speaker 5: being this all encompassing thing that would just overtake me
Speaker 5: and I was unable to escape it and.
Speaker 4: Was quickly asked, you, so you were you were? You
Speaker 4: had a psychiatrist at the age.
Speaker 5: Of five, Like, what's going on with a kid that
Speaker 5: they gets into a psychiatrist at five?
Speaker 3: So I don't know, because nowadays that's sort of like,
Speaker 3: you know, we hear about it a lot more nowadays
Speaker 3: and it's more highly accepted now. How how was that
Speaker 3: perceived back into back back when you were five to
Speaker 3: how it's perceived now.
Speaker 5: I grew up in I don't know how much you
Speaker 5: know about Australian local politics. I grew up in Joe
Speaker 5: Bioki's Queensland. So the fact that my last name was
Speaker 5: Ginsburg was enough. It didn't need to didn't too much more.
Speaker 5: Topping on top of that cake. It was a pretty
Speaker 5: weird place, pretty pretty strange place. But yeah, you know,
Speaker 5: I remember it was it was. It was really weird,
Speaker 5: and I was always kind of afraid of people and
Speaker 5: afraid of strangers and two kind of I found it
Speaker 5: a bit of a salve for that a in you know,
Speaker 5: because what's anxiety for me at the time. Anxiety was
Speaker 5: a sense of lack of control and when am I
Speaker 5: more in control than and I'm on stage? I was eight.
Speaker 5: I think we were doing a sketch at school. We
Speaker 5: went to the kind of school where every Friday there'd
Speaker 5: be an assembly and you had to do a skit
Speaker 5: on like, I don't know, picking up rubbish or you know,
Speaker 5: whatever you're doing, don't masturbateer. Jesus is always watching you.
Speaker 5: It was that kind of school. And we did the
Speaker 5: sketch and I had to walk out there and do
Speaker 5: the line don't worry it was about picking up rubbish,
Speaker 5: and I think I said. I walked out and everyone
Speaker 5: was quiet, and they're all staring at me. It's like
Speaker 5: three hundred kids or looking at me with faces like
Speaker 5: cooy carp right, And I think the line was something
Speaker 5: along the lines of don't committe us in, put it
Speaker 5: in the bin. Indocrination was deep, but it was like that,
Speaker 5: and I got a laugh and the choy carp just
Speaker 5: started and they all just and that was really totally
Speaker 5: kind of the first high that I ever got, because
Speaker 5: here I am stay oh yeah, because like I'm now
Speaker 5: bear in mind. I was eight. I was also in
Speaker 5: weight watches at eight because my tummy felt it was
Speaker 5: the anxiety to make my feeling go away. This awful
Speaker 5: feeling is my body. I would put things in my
Speaker 5: tummy and I was just quite, what's going on with
Speaker 5: a kid? They get taken awight watches when they're eight,
Speaker 5: which later on I found out it's very much like
Speaker 5: a twelve step for fatty. I went through various stages
Speaker 5: of you know, not great, you know, mental health and
Speaker 5: you know, various that kind of coupled with not a
Speaker 5: lot of great fitness and stuff like that. But I
Speaker 5: always found a great amount of respite and relief in performing,
Speaker 5: and because there was this beautiful sense of I don't
Speaker 5: think I was necessarily I was just able to kind
Speaker 5: of communicate, I think in a different way, express yourself, right, yeah,
Speaker 5: And there was yeah, I'm not gonna lie. There was
Speaker 5: a sense of control. My coping mechanism eventually became my career,
Speaker 5: but I did come to a point where I had
Speaker 5: to reassess that and it's very different now. But like
Speaker 5: if I think back to some of the biggest things
Speaker 5: I've ever done, millions of people down the camera lens,
Speaker 5: literally coast to coast, live across America, just absolute ceremenity,
Speaker 5: complete calm when I think about those moments. You know,
Speaker 5: if I said to someone, I picked yourself speaking in
Speaker 5: front of hundred people, Now I speak yourself speaking eight
Speaker 5: hundred people. Now those eight hundred people are in a
Speaker 5: TV studio and there's twelve cameras in there, and at
Speaker 5: the end of every one of those cameras is a
Speaker 5: person except this ten million of them. How do you
Speaker 5: feel they probably shit themselves for me, It's like, I'm ready,
Speaker 5: let's go.
Speaker 3: Would you say from that moment onwards, from the age
Speaker 3: of eight, it did not to have knowing what you
Speaker 3: wanted to do, but you say you felt was hugely
Speaker 3: in control.
Speaker 5: It was I knew what I wanted to do. I
Speaker 5: knew that it was always going to be something to
Speaker 5: do with performing. I think my mum came in at
Speaker 5: the age of five. I grew up in Brisbane, which
Speaker 5: again it was a big cow town run by a
Speaker 5: premier who was essentially it was like a five tom
Speaker 5: and I'm standing on the coffee table and we only
Speaker 5: had three TV channels and most of them the whole
Speaker 5: day long was the test pattern, which is a great show,
Speaker 5: went all day, never canceled it, and they classical music
Speaker 5: underneath it, and Mum came in one day and she
Speaker 5: found me standing on the coffee table conducting the classical
Speaker 5: music on the table. There was just something about connecting
Speaker 5: with other people who are performing and you know, without words,
Speaker 5: doing this thing together to get an emotional response. I
Speaker 5: know that now as an adult, but there was just
Speaker 5: something about it that I just loved. Couple that with
Speaker 5: a sense of I know what's going to happen if
Speaker 5: I'm up here for at least for the next twelve minutes,
Speaker 5: I know what's going to happen, so I'm just calm.
Speaker 5: That's the sort of thing that kind of pushed me
Speaker 5: to want to get better at singing and playing guitar
Speaker 5: and playing piano and acting and whatever else I was
Speaker 5: doing to buy me that stage time, to get me
Speaker 5: that feeling, and.
Speaker 3: That feeling was pure I am in control Or was
Speaker 3: it just like this has giving me a buzz, this
Speaker 3: is making me feel alive?
Speaker 4: What was that feeling?
Speaker 5: And I still this part I still relate to, like
Speaker 5: I don't I don't do my job for this anymore,
Speaker 5: but it's nice when it happens when you you know.
Speaker 5: I don't know which high school musical is you were in.
Speaker 5: But when you're standing on stage and you're trying to
Speaker 5: remember your lines and you're trying to remember the song
Speaker 5: and the harmony, which isn't the melodies and fuck it up,
Speaker 5: and you're trying to remember where you have to stand
Speaker 5: and who have you've got to go, and there's a
Speaker 5: person there and you're trying to remember make sure you
Speaker 5: stand in the light and not in the shadow. There
Speaker 5: really isn't any room left in your brain for which
Speaker 5: is the barrage of noise that goes on in my
Speaker 5: head most of the time. So when I'm that focused,
Speaker 5: all that stuff goes away and it's just really lovely.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, can, I can.
Speaker 3: I can relate to that because it's those focused on
Speaker 3: what you need to do that all the noise distractions.
Speaker 3: But ultimately that's that's quite rare because normally it's the
Speaker 3: flip side, Right, Normally people get up and it's the noise.
Speaker 3: It's the distractions that really, you know, that really break
Speaker 3: them down and stop them from performing. But you you
Speaker 3: were just so hyper focused and what you need to was, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it silenced all the exterior.
Speaker 5: Was very lucky. I was very lucky to have that.
Speaker 5: But there's the same thing goes. You know, if I'm
Speaker 5: doing a show like I mean, it's not on air
Speaker 5: at the moment, probably won't ever be again. But a
Speaker 5: show called the Masts thing. It's very silly show. But
Speaker 5: I walk out and there's twenty dances. I'm wearing this
Speaker 5: helmet that looks like I'm in daft punk. It's all LEDs.
Speaker 5: I can't actually see out of it, so I just
Speaker 5: have to count my steps and remember I'm walking in
Speaker 5: a straight line. Walk six steps forward, don't walk seven
Speaker 5: because right there on that beat there's going to be
Speaker 5: propane cannons going across in front of me, So don't
Speaker 5: stand there. But then when the music continues, take four
Speaker 5: steps forward because now you need to be that point.
Speaker 5: You can still smell the fumes in the air. Flip
Speaker 5: the mic without looking, take the helmet off. Remember all
Speaker 5: the dance moves. There's fourteen cameras in the room. Da
Speaker 5: da da da Da da da. Now I've got a
Speaker 5: brain that goes no problem. I'm fine, And it's just
Speaker 5: it's just like the ding of a bell at the
Speaker 5: end of sevasna and the yoga class. That's what it
Speaker 5: feels like. But when I don't have that amount going on.
Speaker 5: It can be challenge still, but so I actually work
Speaker 5: these days. I work quite hard to make sure those
Speaker 5: noisy bits have something to do. Which is that when
Speaker 5: is that when the self doubt kicks in? Is that
Speaker 5: when the habits, that the temptation kicks in, is when
Speaker 5: you're not in those moments, Because it sounds like pretty
Speaker 5: much like me, when I'm sat twiddling my thumbs, that's when.
Speaker 4: I get myself in a bit of idle hands.
Speaker 5: No self doubt. Self doubt's a bit more. I don't
Speaker 5: know about that. I think no, it was never really that.
Speaker 5: I think there's an element. I don't know if it's humorous.
Speaker 5: I just I just believed, and I think there's got
Speaker 5: to be an element of it. To anybody that says
Speaker 5: I am a songwriter or I am an author, or
Speaker 5: I am the one soldier who's going to go and
Speaker 5: make a massive TV show about soldiering and overgive a
Speaker 5: fuck what any of those hard heads are going to
Speaker 5: say to me yours or grunts, Here I am winning
Speaker 5: the leggy fuck yah, Like there's something about you that goes, yes,
Speaker 5: I am going to do this, And here I go
Speaker 5: and that's you. I don't think you can achieve those
Speaker 5: things in life. If you allow that self doubt to
Speaker 5: make your decisions, you know, you kind of make those
Speaker 5: bold moves because you are willing to be with the
Speaker 5: criticism and will with the critique because otherwise you'd never
Speaker 5: leave the house. You wouldn't go No, no, no desk
Speaker 5: job for me, thank you? No, Like that's never been
Speaker 5: I don't work with anybody like that. Camera guys, sound guys, anybody.
Speaker 5: Everyone's like, yep, I'm going to not pursue a career
Speaker 5: that's solid and you know, has a regular income to
Speaker 5: support my family. I'm going to swing a boom. You know,
Speaker 5: these guys work. You know, there's got to be something
Speaker 5: about you know, certainly in a seasonal industry like mine,
Speaker 5: you've got to have some amount of confidence or belief.
Speaker 6: In when was your big break?
Speaker 3: Because you go through you know, you realize that you
Speaker 3: want to be on stage. This is where you come alive,
Speaker 3: This is where you're incomplete control. Where did it all
Speaker 3: start and how did you get your big break?
Speaker 5: I always knew I was going to do it. I
Speaker 5: always had this idea that this is where I was
Speaker 5: going to go. I played in a lot of bands.
Speaker 5: I always played music. I still do, and I just
Speaker 5: knew that there was something. I had something more to
Speaker 5: give than what was there. And I was a roadie
Speaker 5: for a long time and I was lugging road cases
Speaker 5: up and down flights of stairs at three in the morning,
Speaker 5: and the blistering.
Speaker 4: It was awful.
Speaker 5: I did that for like it was fun, you know,
Speaker 5: but I learned a lot. I learned a lot doing that.
Speaker 5: I think it's really important to do a hard physical
Speaker 5: job when you're like seventeen eighteen nineteen, so you spend
Speaker 5: the rest of your life going I'm going to do everything.
Speaker 5: I can never do that again because it's I've got
Speaker 5: two hernias and hearing damage out of it. We're hearing
Speaker 5: age now because my ears are fucked. But when I
Speaker 5: was doing that, and I started playing in bands quite regularly,
Speaker 5: and then I was like, there's gotta be something, there's more.
Speaker 5: I've got more to give than what's here. And so
Speaker 5: I just literally I just sat down. I wrote handwritten
Speaker 5: letters to all the radio stations in Brisbone and said,
Speaker 5: I don't care what it is, I just want to
Speaker 5: be around it. I just I'll come do anything. I'll
Speaker 5: turn a light bulb and I don't give a shit.
Speaker 5: And one of the people that worked at the radio
Speaker 5: station B one O five, he used to be the
Speaker 5: bar manager at one of the places that I would
Speaker 5: lug in and lug out of on a Tuesday, and
Speaker 5: I used to go get the keys off of him
Speaker 5: to open the loading dock and he's like, I know
Speaker 5: that guy, get him in here, and and that was it.
Speaker 5: I got my first overnight shift like six weeks eight
Speaker 5: weeks later, so I was just giving out the ICICL
Speaker 5: cans for a while, and pretty soon I was doing
Speaker 5: the overnights. And so these jobs don't exist anymore, which
Speaker 5: is a real drag because I think the great fallacy
Speaker 5: that people think is that you can go from I'm
Speaker 5: interested in doing this to a million downloads, Like, no,
Speaker 5: you're gonna have to be prepared to be shit for
Speaker 5: quite a while and understand that you're not going to
Speaker 5: get it straight away. And flight miles really truly is
Speaker 5: the only way that you can get something into until
Speaker 5: it's automatic. Absolutely, Like I don't know how many times
Speaker 5: you've disassembled and reassembled a rifle, mate, but if you
Speaker 5: have to think about it, you're gonna have to do
Speaker 5: it again. You have to be able to do it
Speaker 5: while counting a deck of cards right, and then do
Speaker 5: it perfectly because your hands just have to know what
Speaker 5: to do instinctively. And then there's a skill to broadcasting.
Speaker 5: There's a way to you know, truncate the things you
Speaker 5: want to say, cadence of your voice, operating all the buttons,
Speaker 5: all that kind of shit. And so I did five
Speaker 5: years of like between midnight and six Amazon Air playing
Speaker 5: fucking Sleandyon and Brian Adams and Third Eye Blind and
Speaker 5: all kinds of other nineties stuff. And then I was like,
Speaker 5: I'm never going to get a job in the daytime.
Speaker 5: And one of the daytime jobs dies, so so I
Speaker 5: sent started sending tapes around the different stations around this country,
Speaker 5: and the guys in Adelaide were like, oh yeah, let's
Speaker 5: want to come down. And so I got a job
Speaker 5: in the daytime and I my girlfriend and it was
Speaker 5: at the time we're not together anymore. It was years ago.
Speaker 5: I left her, left my family of my friends, left everything,
Speaker 5: and I just got on a plane and went to
Speaker 5: Adelaide and I said, I've just got to go. I've
Speaker 5: just got to go. And as I left.
Speaker 3: One of the were you following you were you just
Speaker 3: following that career or were you following your gut where
Speaker 3: you're you just gut?
Speaker 5: It was just I just knew I had to do
Speaker 5: this thing. I just I couldn't put words into it,
Speaker 5: like what is follow your gut? Follw your gut is?
Speaker 5: And what is intuition? It is simply a subconscious reflection
Speaker 5: of something that you've already seen or experienced or you understand,
Speaker 5: but you may not you may not be able to
Speaker 5: put into words. That is all intuition is. You don't
Speaker 5: have some sort of divinity put through you. It's just
Speaker 5: your subconscious is able to make decisions quicker than you
Speaker 5: can think about it cognitively. Right, This stuff happens automatically.
Speaker 5: And I was just like, Oh, I have to do
Speaker 5: I have to go, I have to go. And so
Speaker 5: I got there and within about a month I was like,
Speaker 5: oh fucking hell, I'm in Adelaide. This is weird town
Speaker 5: on the edge of a desert. Like the whole snowtown
Speaker 5: thing was going on at that time. I was like,
Speaker 5: this is fucking strange here. And when I was leaving Brisbane,
Speaker 5: Darryl is an amazing audio operator. As I left, he said,
Speaker 5: you'll be in Sydney within six months. I was like,
Speaker 5: what the fuck are you talking about. I don't even
Speaker 5: know when I'm going to be in six weeks. I
Speaker 5: just know I have to go now. I just got
Speaker 5: to go and look mate. Sure enough, about a month later,
Speaker 5: I was like, I've got to get out of here.
Speaker 5: This is That's not big enough. I've got to go.
Speaker 5: I've got to get bigger than this. And so, because
Speaker 5: I've just been in Europe right and for the first
Speaker 5: time as an adult, and you know, it was I
Speaker 5: was like, oh my god, the word's bigger than Brisbane. Wow.
Speaker 5: And so as January, there was an old TV show
Speaker 5: here called Recovery. It was on Saturday mornings. I don't
Speaker 5: do that anymore. And I got an email from the
Speaker 5: same guy who now moved to Sydney and he was
Speaker 5: working at a cable network down there, and he said,
Speaker 5: one of the hosts of the afternoon Request show has
Speaker 5: just left. You should send him a tape. And I
Speaker 5: was like, well, if we're going to make a tape
Speaker 5: for that show who was asking about presenters, I'll send
Speaker 5: Daryl one as well. And so I roll I rode
Speaker 5: my escape. I found the tape the other day and
Speaker 5: I rode my skateboard around the beach in Adelaide and
Speaker 5: walked through the park and I did this whole pitch
Speaker 5: and I posted it. That was it. Two weeks later,
Speaker 5: I was on a plane to Sydney for an interview.
Speaker 5: And here's the thing, because I worked at the radio
Speaker 5: station and I wouldn't want to tell him I would
Speaker 5: have breached a contract. Right, So good night, everybody, see
Speaker 5: a lot of guys gonna get him my Kingswood. Fang
Speaker 5: to the Adelaide airport, get on the plane, fly to Sydney.
Speaker 5: It was like two and a half hours. Land, get
Speaker 5: a cab to the restaurant, meet the boss, have a
Speaker 5: chat for a couple of hours, get back to the
Speaker 5: you know you sleep at my brother's house for a
Speaker 5: couple of hours. Then go back to the airport, get
Speaker 5: back to Adelaide, flight out, rolling at nine to fifteen story,
Speaker 5: a bit like guys, how are you good? I did
Speaker 5: about two or three times and then they said, yeah,
Speaker 5: you got the job. And I went in and resigned
Speaker 5: and my boss kicked me in the shins twice. And
Speaker 5: I was doing then I was doing live TV every afternoon.
Speaker 5: We were making three hours of television five days a week.
Speaker 5: We're making fifteen hours of live TV every day. So
Speaker 5: by the time Idol came up, I've been doing this
Speaker 5: six days a week for nine years.
Speaker 3: This is why we're on this podcast, mate, because it's
Speaker 3: people don't realize they see the tip of the iceberg,
Speaker 3: you know, and I use that metaphor everything that goes
Speaker 3: on underneath from you your sleepless nights, so you traveling
Speaker 3: around the country to you put you know, being present
Speaker 3: as in putting out applications, you know, taking opportunities.
Speaker 4: It's like people, people don't appreciate that.
Speaker 3: The amount of effort works sacrifice, right you talk about
Speaker 3: you know your girlfriend, I'm off to the personal sacrifice
Speaker 3: that it takes in order to that committed to what
Speaker 3: you know, to follow what your gut was telling you.
Speaker 5: But that's the thing that it took. It took nine
Speaker 5: years of being kind of shit and just working really
Speaker 5: harder getting better and having my ego belted to the
Speaker 5: ground by my bosses who were like, you could be
Speaker 5: so much better than this, just stop fucking yelling or
Speaker 5: speak slower, or and me not being such an idiot,
Speaker 5: not wanting to be told what to do, but eventually realizing, oh,
Speaker 5: if they tell me what to do, it'll be all right.
Speaker 5: But I did, honestly, and I squandered a lot of it, man,
Speaker 5: because I didn't know. Once I got to Sydney, I
Speaker 5: didn't understand. I didn't know how to handle what was happening.
Speaker 5: Because once we got on that that really big show,
Speaker 5: when the things went fucking crazy. Man, and let's.
Speaker 4: Talk about that much. So how did you? How did
Speaker 4: that go? So you've done nine years?
Speaker 3: You know, you just got just got up there and
Speaker 3: just formed the office like you had been doing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: here's the thing, naturally like it''s rair mate. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: I've got to give that to you.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that. But the thing is like, people only
Speaker 5: ever saw me when I was in that moment a right.
Speaker 5: It's like we're recording this right before the Olympics start.
Speaker 5: But you know, like say, for example, if you saw
Speaker 5: Ariana Titmus walking down the street, you'd be like, holy shit,
Speaker 5: she can walk because you've only ever seen her swim
Speaker 5: fuck can happen? So you only people only ever saw
Speaker 5: me when I was in this Oh man, fucking Finally,
Speaker 5: everything's quiet moment, all right. The other twenty three hours
Speaker 5: it was hard, and that's where things like alcohol and
Speaker 5: drugs and whatever else started getting into things. To deal
Speaker 5: with that, I tip from the top. Not a great
Speaker 5: way to deal with that, and I got very lucky
Speaker 5: that I didn't die. It got, you know, to the
Speaker 5: point where you know, unfortunately the story is not a
Speaker 5: not an uncommon one, and I wish it had a
Speaker 5: different ending. But I had the same meanning that every
Speaker 5: person ever tells this story does. Like I had it
Speaker 5: all and I'd drunk it away. That's exactly what happened,
Speaker 5: through the magic of you know, divorce and alcoholic decisions
Speaker 5: and you know, dumb investments with you know.
Speaker 3: Flee they take. Let's let's start at the beginning. So
Speaker 3: you've got Australian idol. You come onto that, Yeah, and
Speaker 3: you're the face of that. So how did that do
Speaker 3: you do? You remember sort of coming off of that
Speaker 3: thinking my whole life is going to change.
Speaker 5: No, no, no, I just didn't. I was just holding
Speaker 5: on with both hands. Were just it was just nuts.
Speaker 5: You've worked on big TV shows, but you know you
Speaker 5: mentioned you're a Special Forces operator that people don't get that. Like,
Speaker 5: my mum was a civy doctor in the military for
Speaker 5: fifteen years, right, so I was at her base all
Speaker 5: the time. And people don't understand how much rehearsal goes
Speaker 5: on in the world of you know, any kind of
Speaker 5: military operation. They will literally practice it every day for
Speaker 5: a year, so that when the window of opportunity opens,
Speaker 5: they're in and out in sixteen minutes and seven seconds
Speaker 5: like a fucking Clooney film.
Speaker 4: Right, it's nice and it's nice.
Speaker 5: They practice it and practic and practice, practice, practice, press progress,
Speaker 5: so you know, it's yeah, and you could the whole
Speaker 5: thing will fall apart of one person isn't in the
Speaker 5: right place at exactly the right time, and if everything
Speaker 5: isn't working perfectly all right, And that's the same thing
Speaker 5: when you're working on this big shows there's like one
Speaker 5: hundred and fifteen people and it's it's this perfectly choreographed
Speaker 5: dance between everybody, and it only works if everyone is
Speaker 5: doing exactly the best job of their life. And that
Speaker 5: is amazing to be a part of it. Is I
Speaker 5: might be one of the people in front of the camera,
Speaker 5: but there are yasily over one hundred people who are
Speaker 5: the very best in the business and the only reason
Speaker 5: that any of us are there because everyone else is there,
Speaker 5: and that's the only reason those show makes there. And
Speaker 5: it is just wonderful to be a part of something
Speaker 5: like that because especially when it's live. No one really
Speaker 5: does live anymore too expensive, but especially when it's live,
Speaker 5: the stakes are real high.
Speaker 3: And I bet you love that though. I bet that's
Speaker 3: where you were in your life. If I mess up
Speaker 3: right now, then it's live is going out millions of people.
Speaker 5: That's what makes it so exciting. But there's nothing like
Speaker 5: it's the most funny you can have with your clothes on.
Speaker 5: It really is. It's just unbelievable because ultimately, what am
Speaker 5: I doing? What's my job? You know, I think about
Speaker 5: it right now, like I have to think about really carefully.
Speaker 5: What's my job? My job is to make people feel
Speaker 5: less alone. That's it. My job is. That's it. Whether
Speaker 5: it's a podcast or the book I write, or you know,
Speaker 5: any kind of TV that I make, it's to give
Speaker 5: people a feeling that, oh there's other you know, I'm
Speaker 5: being connected with here down the lens. And it's something
Speaker 5: I work really hard at doing. And same with the
Speaker 5: podcast and something I work hard at doing, you know,
Speaker 5: vocally at least to give people that sense of connection,
Speaker 5: of the sense of intimacy, and you know what is entertainment. Ultimately,
Speaker 5: I don't make anything. I don't make a house of
Speaker 5: building a house next door to me. These guys get
Speaker 5: to the end of the day and go, fucking that's
Speaker 5: a good war, boys. It's going to stand for one
Speaker 5: hundred years, Yes it will. I make waves of an
Speaker 5: electromagnetic spectrum that get thrown out into the air, never
Speaker 5: to be seen again. I trade in emotional responses. That's it.
Speaker 5: I'm there to give an emotional reaction. There's a lot
Speaker 5: of work that goes into it. And people might think, oh,
Speaker 5: what you literally just read out loud for living, especially
Speaker 5: if there's an auto keep involved, like if you want
Speaker 5: to break it right down. Yes, possibly, Yet there are
Speaker 5: There's definitely ways of language and ways of addressing a camera,
Speaker 5: and ways of using your voice and ways of the
Speaker 5: way you hold your body can change the experience of
Speaker 5: the person watching that and make them feel closer or
Speaker 5: further away from you. And I work really hard and
Speaker 5: I study that shit, and I watch myself back and
Speaker 5: I make sure that I get it right, because ultimately
Speaker 5: I only get the job if I am the best
Speaker 5: choice at the time. And I know there are there's
Speaker 5: me twenty years ago, just knowing I just have to go.
Speaker 5: That guy is breathing down my neck, man, and I
Speaker 5: have to be I work really hard to stay the
Speaker 5: undeniable choice when it comes to these things, all right.
Speaker 5: I don't accidentally get these jobs. They give these jobs
Speaker 5: to the best person that because it's a business decision
Speaker 5: for them too. They want to give it to whoever's
Speaker 5: going to give us the best value, the best that's
Speaker 5: who we get. And I worked fucking hard to make
Speaker 5: sure that I can stay that person and it gives
Speaker 5: which is nice. It's going to give me something to
Speaker 5: do when the show's aren't.
Speaker 4: And when when did the transition come? Usher? From from
Speaker 4: andrew Gie to Usher Ginsburg? Was that? Was that Australian idol?
Speaker 4: Did you think I was kind of around myself?
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was kind of twards the end of that
Speaker 5: was towards the end of that, I was, look, I
Speaker 5: don't believe in an intervention. That's God, all right. I
Speaker 5: you know, went to a school that tried to tell
Speaker 5: me there was hell and things like that, and then I,
Speaker 5: you know, I actually went to the Middle East and
Speaker 5: went hanging a second what what was it? Three hundred
Speaker 5: and eighty five was when Helen a Constantine stood here
Speaker 5: and pointed at a hole on the ground. So three
Speaker 5: hundred and fifty years and hang on with all the
Speaker 5: posts of this guy in my school. He was a
Speaker 5: white dude. I don't see any white dudes in Nazareth.
Speaker 5: What the fuck is this? So? Yeah, ye, anyway, so
Speaker 5: I met this guy and we had this kind of
Speaker 5: interesting conversation. I met this shaman, and I'm an interest.
Speaker 5: I'm interested, all right, I'm interested. I'm not a convert,
Speaker 5: but I'm interested. I'm like, Okay, there's something going on here.
Speaker 5: I don't know if it's what you say it is,
Speaker 5: but there's definitely something happening here. And so he told
Speaker 5: me if I changed my name, I changed my life.
Speaker 5: And I was like, all right, then if I can't help,
Speaker 5: can't hurt. And so privately I did it, I think
Speaker 5: two thousand and nine, and I was like, oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 5: I think it was more to do with nominative determinism, right,
Speaker 5: I think it was more to do with how I
Speaker 5: thought about myself, and certainly once I got sober, because
Speaker 5: it was a private thing right for a couple of years,
Speaker 5: But once I got sober, it was like, ah, it
Speaker 5: really helped me. It really helped me delineate between the
Speaker 5: two versions of the person that I am. Right, there's
Speaker 5: a point in the mean. I got sober using a
Speaker 5: twelve step program, which I thoroughly recommend. It worked for me.
Speaker 5: It doesn't work for everyone. And there's one of those steps.
Speaker 5: It's not unlike sitting with you in a in the
Speaker 5: tear gas tent and you know it's real hard, but
Speaker 5: you're essentially you. There's a searching and feel. It's moral
Speaker 5: inventory where you literally look at all the times that
Speaker 5: you've been pretty shit to yourself and to others. And
Speaker 5: then you have to tell it's another man and you
Speaker 5: sit down and you are honest with him and for
Speaker 5: the first time, some of this stuff is coming out
Speaker 5: of your mouth like you thought you'd never take. You
Speaker 5: take it to the grave. But by doing that, what
Speaker 5: you're doing and he amazingly and it's you know, you're
Speaker 5: able to do it for other people. I'd like to
Speaker 5: do it for somebody else. One day they say cool,
Speaker 5: manrry that for now. I'll carry that until so you
Speaker 5: don't need to carry it for now. And I was like,
Speaker 5: but how is anyone going to like me? How am
Speaker 5: I ever going to fall in love? How can I
Speaker 5: be with myself for this person that did these things?
Speaker 5: And he said, like, got good news for your power.
Speaker 5: It's from California. I got news for your power. You
Speaker 5: get to live the rest of your life not being
Speaker 5: that guy anymore. Oh fucking awesome. And so as a
Speaker 5: way of part of that step, one of those steps
Speaker 5: is to then go and make an amends and meet
Speaker 5: the people that you hurt and try, well you can
Speaker 5: to make it better unless it's going to cause them harm.
Speaker 5: And so there's a few people that I will never
Speaker 5: go back into their orbits ever again, for their own
Speaker 5: safety and their own good, because it wouldn't be right.
Speaker 5: And yet though I get to make amends to them
Speaker 5: by just living my life and making choices that were
Speaker 5: in the exact opposite direction of the choices I made
Speaker 5: that were the ones that hurt myself and hurt people
Speaker 5: like them. And so giving the name gave me an
Speaker 5: opportunity to change. I looked at the world, but people
Speaker 5: ask me about this sometimes and I think, well, I
Speaker 5: went to on grade three missus Mss Smith. Miss Smith
Speaker 5: said goodbye to us at the end of November December,
Speaker 5: see you next year, kids, And missus Carrington was there
Speaker 5: in grade four. Same lady, different clothes, different way of
Speaker 5: walking through the world. She got married over the summer.
Speaker 5: There's one person in this world, and one person alone,
Speaker 5: that calls me a name that nobody else call me,
Speaker 5: calls me. And because of that way this person calls
Speaker 5: me that name, it changes who I am as a
Speaker 5: person and changes what I value. And that name is Dad.
Speaker 5: So I would put it to you that there's a
Speaker 5: lot of people that change their names, and a lot
Speaker 5: of people that will understand what it is I'm talking
Speaker 5: about when they you know, when they have that name dad,
Speaker 5: or when they get married, or if they choose to
Speaker 5: take a partner's name or whatever. Particularly if you're a parent,
Speaker 5: Mum or Dad. Changes you feel about the world when
Speaker 5: that name comes your way, not like oh fuck, come on, mate,
Speaker 5: you can wash your own ass, not that. When it's like,
Speaker 5: what's trust dad to tell Wolf this morning? But he's
Speaker 5: four and a half, Like, okay, trust is here? We
Speaker 5: go I'm just trying to tell and so yeah, that's
Speaker 5: kind of why that was there, and it's been really useful.
Speaker 5: I thoroughly recommended. I mean, Calvin Broadhouse is not in
Speaker 5: your playlist, but Snoop Dogg is Osha Jackson is. No,
Speaker 5: you don't know who that. You know, you don't care,
Speaker 5: but he's actually on my desk as that's ice Q.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so what does osha mean?
Speaker 5: That's the Hebrew words for happiness.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's super cool.
Speaker 3: You talked about the drugs and alcohol. Was that as
Speaker 3: worse post or pre Australian idol?
Speaker 5: I was, you know, as someone who's struggled with a lot,
Speaker 5: with anxiety and various other things as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 5: was yet to discover that stuff. Man. You know, I
Speaker 5: was offered antidepressants when I was twenty five, when I've
Speaker 5: been in to Sydney for six months and it was
Speaker 5: real bad, and I went to go see a doctor
Speaker 5: and he said, yeah, this is what's going on for
Speaker 5: you. You need to be on any presence. I'm like, fuck that, man,
Speaker 5: I don't mean it with a kind of guy that
Speaker 5: needs to take anti depressants, No, thank you. I just
Speaker 5: have a beer like a man. Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah,
Speaker 5: and so yeah, like you know what happens to you know,
Speaker 5: untreated anxiety that you're self medicating with alcohol, it just
Speaker 5: gets way worse. And so there was this one day
Speaker 5: about seven years later. I was I was had discovered
Speaker 5: by this point that physicality and moving my body made
Speaker 5: my head feel better. But literally I could not outrun it.
Speaker 5: At some point it gets so bad. I can't outrun it.
Speaker 5: Nothing I can do it can make my head feel
Speaker 5: any different. Actually, I was running in the soft sound
Speaker 5: on BONDI I don't know. I was like there was
Speaker 5: a bad afternoon. So I was like nine laps in
Speaker 5: and I was like doing going to do ten k's
Speaker 5: of soft sand that day, and I felt like someone
Speaker 5: had grabbed me around the throat and they had my
Speaker 5: fucking larynx in their hands. I felt someone touching my skin.
Speaker 5: There was nobody there, and I felt the constriction the
Speaker 5: touch on my I was like, fuck, this is bad,
Speaker 5: and I ran up the hill. I got on the
Speaker 5: phone and I caught my doctor and I went straight
Speaker 5: to his office and you could hear it in my voice.
Speaker 5: They stayed open. They let me in late, and I begged,
Speaker 5: please give me the drugs and they take a while.
Speaker 5: They would have worked had I not been still drinking,
Speaker 5: because all I did was just pissed them out. But
Speaker 5: eventually it got so bad that I had to had
Speaker 5: to stop. And yeah, there's a I got really like.
Speaker 5: It wasn't like one particularly massively humongous night. It was
Speaker 5: just it's just another fucking night, right, but yeah, where
Speaker 5: but they had been getting progressively worse, and I it
Speaker 5: had been a long time. I could not remember at
Speaker 5: all the last day I hadn't drank. It would have
Speaker 5: been years by that point, and it was no longer
Speaker 5: a choice for me to drink. It was like as if,
Speaker 5: for example, you know, we're on fucking deep recon Way
Speaker 5: in the Philippine jungle and a massive Maussie bites you
Speaker 5: on the forum and I'll say, man, if you slap that,
Speaker 5: you'll give away our position, but it's itching so badly
Speaker 5: you can't and eventually go bang because you can't not
Speaker 5: hit it right. And it's that like I didn't want
Speaker 5: to do this, but I was unable to not do it.
Speaker 5: It was like so one of our kids as a
Speaker 5: pen analogy, right, it's not anaphylactic, thankfully, but they can
Speaker 5: get really sick. Now, if I tell you, hey, and
Speaker 5: you know we're coming over, but one of the kids
Speaker 5: is a penaalogy, there's no fucking way you'd get any
Speaker 5: peanuts anywhere near them, right, because you can kill a child. Right.
Speaker 5: So similarly, with the tiniest amount of a trace element
Speaker 5: of peanut will kill somebody. So similarly, the tiny a
Speaker 5: molecule of alcohol touches my body, touches in my tongue,
Speaker 5: and I'll have an allergic reaction. And that allergic reaction
Speaker 5: what it will do is it instantly, It stops me.
Speaker 5: It changes how much I think is a good idea
Speaker 5: to drink, and also it changes my sense of right
Speaker 5: and wrong, and I will keep having this allergily. It's
Speaker 5: like if someone starts breaking out in hives because they
Speaker 5: brushed up against a plant or something, say, excuse me,
Speaker 5: can you please just stop breaking out in weltz? They can't.
Speaker 5: Their body's just doing this thing. So I can't stop
Speaker 5: everything that is happening. I cannot stop that allergic reaction
Speaker 5: until the alcohol wears off, which is sometimes the next day,
Speaker 5: sometimes later. And so similarly, like if I have this allergy,
Speaker 5: if I drink, I break out and funck with like similarly,
Speaker 5: not everyone's like this.
Speaker 3: I love the way that you lay out in layman's terms.
Speaker 3: It's almost to kick yourself moment you're like, wow, you
Speaker 3: know that's that's me the majority of the time. When
Speaker 3: I drink, that's me when I do this.
Speaker 5: When I do I try a thousand different ways. I
Speaker 5: tried a thousand different ways to try to make it
Speaker 5: in it better, but every single it was fun. And
Speaker 5: then it was fun with problems, and it was just
Speaker 5: problems and it was unable to stop up rappening, and
Speaker 5: I just kind of realized that I'm you know, there
Speaker 5: was that loud Sue line, I think, be careful of
Speaker 5: the direction you're headed. You may just end up there.
Speaker 5: And I just kind of work up one morning going
Speaker 5: I'm going to die if I keep doing this, I'll
Speaker 5: either get arrested or was like, no matter what, it's
Speaker 5: gonna I can't. Eventually this is I'm going to forget
Speaker 5: because I was toying. I prescription painkillers are a part
Speaker 5: of it. Benzos were a part of it. Like I'm
Speaker 5: going to be that fucking guy that forgot. He has
Speaker 5: already taken his value, you know, and then have a
Speaker 5: couple more drinks and they go normally take value this
Speaker 5: time of night, and then ooks tod eighty goodbye, and
Speaker 5: that's you know, And so I just realized I had
Speaker 5: to stop, but I couldn't again. I didn't want to
Speaker 5: be a guy that couldn't drink, So I had to
Speaker 5: trick my own brain to go, it's cool, man, We're
Speaker 5: just gonna not drink until you have a responsible relationship
Speaker 5: with that, all right. But it was only a couple
Speaker 5: of weeks and then I was like, oh, I can
Speaker 5: never do that again. Look, I know that if I
Speaker 5: had a drink today and it's been fourteen years and
Speaker 5: four months or something like that, if I had a
Speaker 5: drink today, like, it won't be tomorrow, and it might
Speaker 5: not be next week. But I can guarantee you by Christmas,
Speaker 5: everything that I've built is gone. And I'm not willing
Speaker 5: to risk that. I'm not willing to do that, you know,
Speaker 5: because I know I can't stop it once it starts.
Speaker 3: Do you know what, I think a lot of people
Speaker 3: should take take this. I say warning it because there's
Speaker 3: a lot of people that actually go through that, but
Speaker 3: they go, oh, do you know what, I'm not going
Speaker 3: to let alcohol control me.
Speaker 4: Nothing can control me. And it's like, I love what
Speaker 4: you just said.
Speaker 3: Then you know that if you start drinking, everything that
Speaker 3: you've built up to now comes crumbling down. Old fucking
Speaker 3: story made it happen so many times I've been there.
Speaker 5: It sneaks out. It sneaks out like there was while there,
Speaker 5: because it sneaks out in other things. Right I was,
Speaker 5: you know at six fifteen am, I think I'm sitting
Speaker 5: on the toilet on a fucking mobile betting app, putting
Speaker 5: a multi on a fucking horse that is going to
Speaker 5: run in Hong Kong. It's like, what the fuck am
Speaker 5: I doing? Tying this to a Singaporean table tennis thing?
Speaker 5: What a like? So the profit, the profiteering of addiction
Speaker 5: in our country is just so shit house and it's
Speaker 5: just reprehensible how many billions dollars are made off addiction,
Speaker 5: and all it is is people who are It's an
Speaker 5: avoidant behavior, an avoidant behavior trying to because the uncomfortable
Speaker 5: feelings are just too overwhelming. So I'd rather stimulate myself
Speaker 5: with this thing and deal with thinking about or work
Speaker 5: on what happened to me. There are billions of dollars
Speaker 5: getting taken out of people's grocery budgets on gambling and
Speaker 5: alcohol in this country, but fucking we don't care. And
Speaker 5: yet we get upset at people for being shit and
Speaker 5: you know, shit parents and spending all their money and like, man,
Speaker 5: fuck you. You know, there's so much pain. There's so
Speaker 5: much pain and there's way better ways to deal with it,
Speaker 5: but there's so much money being made out of that
Speaker 5: pain and so much money.
Speaker 3: You say you use your career as a coping mechanism
Speaker 3: to do all this.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's that's the time. Yeah, it's like, yeah, it's.
Speaker 5: Very different now, it's very very different now. Like before
Speaker 5: I got sober, that was it. I just wanted to
Speaker 5: reach for that moment. But then after getting sober that
Speaker 5: my man, David, he's very much like man's chop would
Speaker 5: carry water. Dude, Just fucking be a worker amongst workers.
Speaker 5: You don't have to be the super fucking star. Just
Speaker 5: be a guy that people can rely on and everything
Speaker 5: else will work out. And he's right.
Speaker 3: I think that's where you build trust, Right, is reliability
Speaker 3: When you can rely on someone's that's where trust also
Speaker 3: has belt. Oh come whenne is dude, he's going to
Speaker 3: turn up, he's going to give the best. He's going
Speaker 3: to put one hundred percent in a day. Everything he does,
Speaker 3: there's no distractions, there's no excuses.
Speaker 4: He's going to get on and do it.
Speaker 5: But it's also about being there for everybody else, right,
Speaker 5: the other one hundred and fifteen people that I mentioned,
Speaker 5: you know, I just I came to the idea of, like,
Speaker 5: if I can make everyone's day the easiest day they've
Speaker 5: ever had on set, and if I have them thinking
Speaker 5: that's the most professional guy I've ever worked with when
Speaker 5: they leave, then what that will make is that I
Speaker 5: will have done the very best I could have ever done.
Speaker 5: But I'm not doing it for me. I'm doing it
Speaker 5: for them. I'm doing it so I've got my words
Speaker 5: all done. I know exactly how to get the right
Speaker 5: reaction out of somebody. I know exactly. I've spoken to
Speaker 5: the producers about what storylines are following. I know who's
Speaker 5: you know, triangulated with who. I don't know where the
Speaker 5: emotion is. I know exactly where the cameras are, I
Speaker 5: know where the lights are.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 5: Bang, I hit it and I quit it, I mean
Speaker 5: and out, all right, We're not doing it seventeen times
Speaker 5: because we can't because excuse me, can you just cry
Speaker 5: once again? Please, because we fucked the line and just
Speaker 5: pretend you got told you've got broken up with Please
Speaker 5: can't do that. And it takes a lot of work.
Speaker 5: But if I'm doing it for everybody else on set,
Speaker 5: including the people who are watching, then that's way better.
Speaker 5: And it's not about me. But I end up benefiting
Speaker 5: from it because I end up doing absolutely did you do?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 3: And the proof is in the pudding? Because you were
Speaker 3: nominated for a Golden Logan. Let's talk about you know,
Speaker 3: I love I love your journey and people don't realize
Speaker 3: the iceberg effect of what goes on underneath all the
Speaker 3: hard work sacrifice that we've spoken about.
Speaker 4: What was it like geting nominated for me?
Speaker 5: Well, to be honestly like, it was an extraordinary It
Speaker 5: was an extraordinary honor and it was you know again
Speaker 5: who it is. There was none a hope in ill
Speaker 5: that they would have ever happened ever had I'm not
Speaker 5: you know, got much shit together right, no fucking way
Speaker 5: and trophy or no who I became to be the
Speaker 5: person that got nominated for that thing. I get to
Speaker 5: keep forever, right, And.
Speaker 4: That's nice, yes, sort of come back full circle.
Speaker 3: That has almost proven that, Wow, if you if I
Speaker 3: hadn't done this, and I haven't, you know, changed the
Speaker 3: way that I am and who I am, then.
Speaker 5: Truly at this moment to look at that, like to
Speaker 5: look at people like like I can't compare myself to
Speaker 5: everyone who I've been nominated with, but you know, to
Speaker 5: look at people like Blake and macrliff, who I just
Speaker 5: I just amazing, Julia Morris, unfucking believably talented. Right to
Speaker 5: be seen in the same category literally as those guys
Speaker 5: is as good as it gets, right. But I got
Speaker 5: to tell you that just because I stopped drinking and
Speaker 5: using and doing all a dumb shit doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: that guy is still inside going come on, man, he's
Speaker 5: really good ready, Like that's still there. You just find
Speaker 5: better ways to deal with it, right, And you know,
Speaker 5: we talk about practice, We talk about rehearsing, and I
Speaker 5: sat in We're in my office, right, I sat here
Speaker 5: and I practiced losing a LOGI because what happens when
Speaker 5: you lose an award. They've got that fucking shudden for it,
Speaker 5: a camera up your nostrils. They're looking for the micro
Speaker 5: expressions of derision and hate, you know, a little thing
Speaker 5: that flashes across your eyes and oh, he's fucking gutted. No,
Speaker 5: I didn't want a second of that at all, because
Speaker 5: anyone that stood there and hold that thing in their
Speaker 5: hands would have deserved it, and I didn't want them
Speaker 5: ever think anyway. So I literally sat here at my
Speaker 5: desk behind me, and I would practice over and over
Speaker 5: again in my mind, imagining Hamu's black. And then there's
Speaker 5: a kind of meditation that I like to do. It's
Speaker 5: called meta. It's called loving kindness meditation, where you truly
Speaker 5: wish nothing but the best for a person who might be,
Speaker 5: you know, a bit of a shit in your life.
Speaker 5: And I would sit there and I would just feel
Speaker 5: as hard as I could in my body, just the
Speaker 5: true most amount of incredible, legitimate joy, because I know
Speaker 5: how hard it would have, how much work it's taken
Speaker 5: me to get to this. They would have done exactly
Speaker 5: the same or more, and probably more because they won
Speaker 5: the fucking thing. It's god damn good on you. You
Speaker 5: deserve that. And I kept doing it and doing and
Speaker 5: doing until I just truly connected with how wonderfully proud.
Speaker 5: I was ever every single one of these people, and
Speaker 5: so sure enough when Darryl Summers came out and shouted
Speaker 5: Sonya Creer got on the top of his lungs, I
Speaker 5: was just I'm so happy for her. That's what I
Speaker 5: got out of that is Like it was hard, man.
Speaker 5: I had to wrestle my ego to the ground because
Speaker 5: it was like I would my brain would be writing
Speaker 5: acceptance speeches when I was, you know, riding, I was like,
Speaker 5: and this is for you, mister Johnson and grade nine,
Speaker 5: fuck you forever tillaments like that was all happening, man,
Speaker 5: like it was, and I was like, thanks, buddy. I'd
Speaker 5: have to literally say to their thoughts, I appreciate that,
Speaker 5: thank you. I'll take I'll take it as noted, but
Speaker 5: that's not gonna happenpreciate that. I'll write it down. Thank you.
Speaker 5: The noise man, oh my god, I've just laugh at it.
Speaker 5: After a while, I'd be like, that's hilarious. Really are
Speaker 5: going to go give this is things that seventeen minut
Speaker 5: long speech by now the orchest John Forman is going
Speaker 5: to play off. It's not going to happen exactly, but
Speaker 5: I ended up you know, we had a great night
Speaker 5: and you know, my wife and I danced and then
Speaker 5: we went to bed and she ate Kung Power Chicken
Speaker 5: at three in the morning.
Speaker 3: There you go, It doesn't get much better than that, mate,
Speaker 3: Happy with that? And one final question for I love
Speaker 3: you and leave you, mate, What is next for you?
Speaker 3: I know you're writing books, you've got your podcast, your
Speaker 3: mental health advocate, obviously because of the experience that you've been.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's important that you look. You can't be what
Speaker 5: you can't see. And you know, I remember when I
Speaker 5: first started, you know, publicly talking about having experienced psychosis,
Speaker 5: people just couldn't fucking believe that it came out of
Speaker 5: my mouth, right because look, I remember how much I've
Speaker 5: already described. There was self stigma that stopped me from
Speaker 5: getting help because I didn't want to be the kind
Speaker 5: of guy that needed help, and self stigma that stopped
Speaker 5: me from I'd try to stop drinking a lot, but
Speaker 5: I didn't want to be the guy that had to
Speaker 5: stop drinking. So the only way that I ever got
Speaker 5: better was by hearing stories of other people that were
Speaker 5: once where I was and were now somewhere I wanted
Speaker 5: to be. And I'm just trying to That's why I
Speaker 5: started the podcast in twenty thirteen, just to like, I
Speaker 5: just want to be able to give what was given
Speaker 5: to me. And that's it. And so yeah, I mean,
Speaker 5: this is this really interesting time in broadcasting, man, where
Speaker 5: it's either the most terrifying time to be in broadcasting
Speaker 5: the most amazing time to be in broadcasting. And I'm
Speaker 5: I have a particular set of skills.
Speaker 7: You know, are they useful to people who have multimari
Speaker 7: intollar broadcast licenses that they're trying to, you know, create
Speaker 7: business models around your leveraging for profit?
Speaker 5: Probably not? Right now, does that mean that I'm not
Speaker 5: able to then create something? I mean, there's a few
Speaker 5: times in my life I don't think I've ever no,
Speaker 5: I've described one moment. There was another moment that had
Speaker 5: later on. I've always swum out to the boat man
Speaker 5: always the comment's not going to come by and take
Speaker 5: you on a fucking whirl wind trip through the galaxy
Speaker 5: if you're not in the path of the comet. Like,
Speaker 5: no one's going to come down my front pathway, knock
Speaker 5: on my front door and say, hey, man, you know
Speaker 5: that show you always wanted to host, It's ready there's
Speaker 5: three hundred people in the studio and there's seventeen cameras
Speaker 5: and we're ready to go. No, you've got to build it.
Speaker 5: And that's kind of how it was before Bachelor. I
Speaker 5: was unemployed. I was forty. I was unemployed, and I
Speaker 5: created a show and I sold the show to the
Speaker 5: network and it was in the dating space. And while
Speaker 5: I was producing that and getting ready to make that,
Speaker 5: they go, we just pulled the Bachelor. Do you want
Speaker 5: to do that? Yes?
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 5: And so similarly, like that's again where I am. Now.
Speaker 5: I'm in the point where I'm like creating the next
Speaker 5: big TV job. The podcast is fucking great, and I'm
Speaker 5: able to do some because now I'm no longer how
Speaker 5: do we put this in the clauses in contracts that
Speaker 5: mean you want't? I think the word is disrepute. So
Speaker 5: I'm able to come. I guess I'm cover some different
Speaker 5: stuff now, which is nice. Now you're free. So yeah,
Speaker 5: it's very much as it's an opportunity to you know,
Speaker 5: the gigs that I've done, and i'd like, you know,
Speaker 5: I've never been they've never been about me. The shows
Speaker 5: that I work on, I'm just literally there for exposition.
Speaker 5: I'm there to lay pipe, man, that's it. Those jobs
Speaker 5: like I'm not a part of the artwork. I'm not
Speaker 5: on the side of the bus, you know. I'm just
Speaker 5: the guy that's there to drop the business and then
Speaker 5: give the reasons as to why this thing is important
Speaker 5: and then I fuck off.
Speaker 3: Well you're doing an outstanding job with it, mate, and
Speaker 3: your career as as certainly led you to these moments.
Speaker 5: I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so
Speaker 4: much for joining me on Headgame.
Speaker 3: If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you're subscribed so
Speaker 3: you don't miss any of our incredible stories, and leave
Speaker 3: me a review wherever you're listening.
Speaker 4: I'm Att Middleton. Catch you a again next time.
Speaker 5: M mhm