TV Week Logies 2015: Why nominee Andy Lee is comedy gold
ON Sunday, Australian comedy’s dynamic duo, Hamish and Andy, will compete against each other for TV’s top gong. Win or lose, funnyman Andy Lee has plenty to smile about.
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ANDY Lee has one gag he’ll never tell again. As the Australian cricket team prepared to take on New Zealand at the ’G for the World Cup final in March, the comedian and cricket tragic had the players in stitches.
He’d been invited by coach Darren “Boof” Lehmann to tell the team a joke, a tradition usually shared among the players as a way to help the side relax. But on special occasions, the big guns are brought in.
Lee, alongside comedy cohort Hamish Blake, had previously held court before the Boxing Day Test in Melbourne but the pressure was on a solo Lee for round two.
“Most players sidle up and say, ‘Don’t muck it up,’ although they might’ve used a different word than that,” he says.
“I acknowledged that was the most important part of the day — if I got the joke right, we’d go on and win and that’s exactly how it played out.”
So what was the winning joke?
“I’ll never reveal it. It was the super power that won us the World Cup. What if the joke got into the hands of the Zimbabweans? I’ll give you the context. It was about a British couple in a doctor’s waiting room …
“And, yes, the MCG was the second hardest room apart from the Logies.”
That’s exactly where Lee will be on Sunday, with the pressure on again for TV’s night of nights at Crown, He and Blake are both up for the coveted gold gong.
It’s the third time Lee’s been nominated and the second time he’s competed against Blake for the title. (Lee’s never won, while Blake took gold in 2012.)
Their comedy travelogue, Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year South America, is also a contender for Most Popular Light Entertainment Program.
The pair are hamming it up in TV land despite no longer being contracted to a network. In fact, they’ve stitched up a return to their radio roots, starting back full-time at Southern Cross Austereo in the national weekday drive slot from July.
Bar 2004’s ill-fated The Hamish & Andy Show on Channel 7, Lee and Blake have managed to parlay some of their incredible success on the airwaves into a lucrative TV career with one-off specials and appearances on Rove before signing a mega-deal in 2011 — rumoured to be worth up to $17 million — for their Gap Year series.
Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year debuted that year before rolling out into three more seasons: Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year in 2012, Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year Asia in 2013 and Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year South America last year.
Their Logie nods go some way to vindicate their TV ventures given, at times, a lack of critical acclaim.
The debut episode of their US-based first Gap Year was called, among similar criticisms, “big on talk, short on laughs”. Lee, 33, takes it on the chin.
“Gap Year in New York was an amazing undertaking … We were overwhelmed,” he says.
“In the first two weeks, the show wasn’t really what we wanted it to be, but by week three or four I felt it really became the show it is now.
“We knew the (initial) response was going to be more negative than positive and that’s when work really kicks in and you hope that people reading (the reviews) give you a second chance.
“Thankfully, Australians were happy enough to watch the show grow and the past three years have been really fun.”
Despite earning the goodwill of the viewing public, Lee doesn’t rate his chance of winning the gold Logie, tipping instead The Project’s Carrie Bickmore.
“Nor should we win,” Lee says. “Hame and I go on holidays for six weeks a year to do our show and there’s amazing talent who basically do our entire year’s work in a week in terms of hours in television.”
But all eyes will be on Lee anyway. Not for his Arthur Galan suit: an upgrade from sartorial errors of the past — “When our show was axed by Channel 7 in 2004, the first thing we did was run down to wardrobe and steal all the suits. And we proceeded to wear those suits for years”, he laughs — but for his partner on the red carpet.
He’ll step out with new girlfriend, PR graduate and model Rebecca Harding, 24, whom he met at a Richmond cafe where she was waiting his table.
“I asked her out and she said no because she was completing her masters (in communications). She basically said, ‘I don’t want to hear from you until I’ve handed in my last assignment.’ I said, ‘All right, when you finish, let me know.’ ”
They’ve been dating since last year but aren’t living together.
Both Lee and Blake have been enjoying some down time between wrapping the final Gap Year last year and their radio return in July.
While Blake and wife Zoe Foster Blake have been lapping up parenthood with their son, Sonny, who turns one next Sunday, Lee and Harding were also taking the next step.
Their first public outing was during the Australian Open in January, months after hooking up, which must please Lee given he’s remained largely private about his love life since splitting with model Megan Gale in 2010 after four high-profile years together.
His new relationship might be more under the radar but the one-time Cleo Bachelor of the Year is still a paparazzi target.
“That’s a strange thing for Bec but she’s pretty laid-back,” Lee says. “It is harder for females being critiqued for their appearance. If I was filmed putting my shirt on and I’ve got love handles, that’s kinda funny and who cares? So I feel like it’s more of an invasion for females than males.
“I was never big on ever changing the way I lived my life (to avoid the paparazzi) even with my previous partner (Gale). ‘Right, we’re going to the pub and that’s that.’ People take photos, that’s annoying, but we can’t be sitting at home all the time.”
As well as spending time with Harding, Lee’s been on several adventures a la keeping the Aussie cricket team amused.
After healing after last year’s shoulder surgery (needed for a torn socket sustained while reindeer racing in Finland during filming for Hamish & Andy’s Euro Gap Year, later exacerbated by playing cricket), Lee was back to indulging his passion for sport.
When he’s not playing it, he’s watching it. He divides his time between a house in Richmond and one on the Mornington Peninsula where he can pursue his love of pars and putts.
“I like the ability to play golf at any given moment,” he says in all seriousness.
The sports nut even has a VB vending machine in his living room for ultimate man-cave refreshments. It also means his place is something of a drop-in centre for mates who’ve had an argument with their other halves.
“It’s not counselling, more just a safe haven. Kind of like Assange’s embassy. Table tennis? Yep. Wanna talk about it? Not really. Let’s just have a beer and play some pool.”
Lee’s been a Carlton supporter since he was a kid, watching the Blues play at Princes Park with his dad.
He’s known to travel to the team’s interstate matches on a whim and crossed the Tasman last weekend to Wellington for the boys’ Anzac Day win against St Kilda.
He still occasionally plays trumpet and sings for Zoophyte, the funk rock band he founded with older brother Cameron.
They’ve just recorded their new album and their latest single, The Empire, was selected for the US spin-off of Shameless, starring William H. Macy. They did a recent gig in New Caledonia where the band has found fame.
Earlier this year, Lee and his schoolteacher dad Michael travelled to Uganda to help build schools for the Cotton On Foundation.
But while TV’s treated Lee and Blake well and with some R&R now under their belt, it’s time to get back behind the mic. Radio is Lee’s happy place.
“We’d come to a spot with Gap Year where we’d researched Africa and the Middle East and one had Ebola and the other has ISIS, and Hamish has a new kid, so it felt like maybe we should be a bit smarter,” Lee says.
“It’s not the end of our travels, so we’ll bide our time. In the meantime, being able to chat to everyone on radio is perfect.”
The radio superstars’ frat-boy humour will be back on air 4-6pm weekdays from July, a move that must thrill their patient bosses at SCA.
“We love (radio),” Lee says. “Not because you get to sit there in your tracky daks and listen to music for half the working day, but there’s nothing more immediate. Everyone says social media is, but I disagree. People are in their cars by the thousands and they engage, call up and they’re on air straight away.
“It’s so much fun to be able to chat to people and share stories. I’m continually surprised by the people who call us. Hamish and I are well aware we’re not the funniest people on our shows, the listeners generally are. You get to work every day and it’s a lottery, you have no idea what’s going to come up. It’s exciting.”
LEE grew up in Canterbury in Melbourne’s leafy east, the middle child between muso Cam and writer Alex, who’s expecting her first child in August.
“Canterbury’s quite well-to-do now,” Lee explains. “I remember Dad buying the house for $52,000 in 1980 and Mum’s dad ripping him to shreds and calling him an idiot for spending too much money. It wasn’t Dad having an amazing ability to predict the future of real estate — he’s wonderful at teaching kids — but he got lucky.”
It was a carefree existence of street cricket, riding bikes to the park and later going to gigs with Cam and plays with Alex.
Like Blake, Lee excelled academically. He was studying university-level accounting at high school and was destined to be an accountant before a disastrous internship with whitegoods retailer The Good Guys at 18.
“I accidentally cancelled $80 million worth of cheques instead of presenting them. This
was data-entry stuff over two days, so I put a lot of work into that f---up,” Lee says.
“It was a Sunday back-up system and they discovered everything on a Wednesday. They reset all the computers and thanks to me everyone across the whole company had to do Monday to Wednesday’s work again. I went in in my cream slacks and chambray shirt and said I didn’t want to do accounting any more and then went to the beach.”
Lee also promptly changed his subjects at Melbourne University from accounting to more marketing and advertising-based pursuits. He reckons if he hadn’t met Blake at uni, he’d be an ad man. Either way, family and friends will always come first for Lee.
“Being by yourself is a good thing,” he says. “Hopefully, most people have a chance to do it at some point. People think they can’t cope (with their own company) but there’s a lot to like. I love being available to family and friends. If someone rings up and says, ‘Hey, wanna go to Perth for the footy?’ ‘Yeah!’
“And I love helping friends who’ve got kids and being quasi uncle. That’s fun.
And while he hasn’t been entrusted to babysit little Sonny Blake as yet, Lee says he’d like to start a family of his own one day. But only when the time’s right. He’s cautious after seeing enough friends’ marriages fail.
It’s interesting talking to Lee minus his sidekick, the perpetual jokester Blake. Lee’s prone to deep thoughts on life and love and feels genuinely lucky and humbled that his style of comedy resonates. He hopes he and Blake will be the old men of the airwaves one day.
“Hamish and I always wonder when someone will tap us on the shoulder and tell us we belong on the AM dial now,” Lee reflects.
“I often listen to the older duos on radio and think, ‘Gosh, if we can still be doing that together even if there’s no one listening and make each other laugh well into our 50s and 60s, that’d be pretty cool.’ ”
GOLD LOGIE NOMINEES FOR 2015
Carrie Bickmore — The Project
Hamish Blake — Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year South America
Scott Cam — The Block
Asher Keddie — Offspring and Party Tricks
Andy Lee — Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year South America
Stephen Peacocke — Home And Away
TOMORROW: LIVE COVERAGE OF THE LOGIES AND RED CARPET PICTURE GALLERIES
Originally published as TV Week Logies 2015: Why nominee Andy Lee is comedy gold
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