I’m A Celebrity host Julia Morris releases anti-self help book

Fed up with the fallacy of perfect marriages and celebrities who peddle wellness, I’m A Celeb host Julia Morris is flipping the script with an anti-self help book.

There’s a well-established convention in the publishing world that the moment someone has written a book, they send it off to a few people to read with the expectation that they’ll write an endorsement for the cover.

But Julia Morris was having none of that. Even though the popular television host could’ve asked her international comedy pals Dawn French and Catherine Tate or, indeed, any one of the celebrities who have appeared with her on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!, which she co-hosts with Stellar columnist Dr Chris Brown, she didn’t want to impose.

“I get the feeling that if you’ve got a million in the bank you probably don’t have the same problems as the rest of us.” (Picture: Cameron Grayson)

“I’m not asking someone for a quote,” she exclaimed to her husband, Welsh comedian and writer Dan Thomas. But even when he pointed out that she’d be happy to write an endorsement for someone else’s book, she still wasn’t keen. “I’m going to write them myself,” she told him, and then promptly did.

So it is that Morris’ new book – billed as “hilariously half-baked life advice from yet another deluded celebrity” – comes highly recommended by the author herself.

“A literally genius,” she labels herself in the gloriously mangled testimonial on the book’s cover. “The author is not only beautiful and thin but also not old,” she adds.

One of the most versatile faces on our screens and stage, Morris has a trademark knack for observing a person or practice and sending them up, but this time she’s turned the wry wit on herself.

Fed up with the growing number of celebrities who spout unsolicited self-help advice, she’s subverted and satirised the genre with her own special brand of inspirational quotes and, as she calls it, “nice but not very bright advice”.

After a busy few years hosting various television shows, acting in the top-rating drama House Husbands and touring with live comedy shows, you might think Morris would have chosen to use Melbourne’s months-long lockdown as an opportunity to rest.

“I’m heartened every single time I see a kick-arse woman over 50 heading up another show.” (Picture: Cameron Grayson)

Instead the 52-year-old mother of two daughters doubled down, helping her teenager and tweenager with their online learning while writing Julia Morris Makes It Easy, the guide that she hopes will knock all other self-help manuals off the bestseller lists.

“It was inspired by all the celebrities at the beginning of COVID coming forward thinking they were helping people with things like their rendition of the song ‘Imagine’,” she tells Stellar with a groan.

“I decided I’d really like to do a piss-take of a self-help book because it feels like anyone who is famous at the moment, from Gwyneth [Paltrow]onwards, thinks they need to share their advice. I get the feeling that if you’ve got a million in the bank you probably don’t have the same problems as the rest of us.”

Riffing off well-known self-help books with chapters titled “The Power of Negative Thinking” and “The Zero Habits of Highly Ineffective People”, Morris’ contribution to the lexicon is clearly designed for laughter more than for learning.

Part autobiographical, part instruction manual, the book is both a deep dive into a comedian’s brain and a relatable chronicling of what Morris calls her inner “nutbag”, unmoored from the usual “people pleasing” behaviour that governs normal civility.

“I decided I’d really like to do a piss-take of a self-help book because it feels like anyone who is famous at the moment thinks they need to share their advice.” (Picture: Cameron Grayson)

In one chapter she relays how she became infuriated in a cafe when a chef refused to serve her two fried eggs on toast even though there was a fried egg included in a burger on the menu.

After remonstrating with the waitress, Morris recalls how she proceeded to order two burgers and a side of toast, and then set about dismantling the meals to produce her desired eggs on toast, much to the embarrassment of her family.

So did that actually happen? “Oh yes, it really did and there’s much worse,” she says, going on to describe how she can’t leave a hotel room untidy, spends her life trying to get the laundry to “ground zero” and is – in her husband’s words – “very particular”. She also outs herself as one of those people who makes plans, then typically cancels.

What’s delightful about Morris’ book – and the woman herself – is that in an industry where television hosts typically appear on our screens looking groomed and serene, she lifts the lid on the mental chaos.

While others will manufacture the odd “behind-the-scenes” scramble, Morris throws open the door to her inner world, happily talking about the rage that came with menopause, the regular sessions with a psychologist and the fact she wants to walk out on her marriage at least once a year.

“I want to make it better for the generations of women behind me, just like the women who went ahead made it better for me.” (Picture: Supplied)

While she admits the book is an exaggerated version of her thoughts, she reveals that menopause hit her hard in her mid-40s, and came around the same time her husband was diagnosed with breast cancer. So is it menopause that drives some of her angry and obsessive behaviour?

“I’d say it’s probably a deep-seated personality disorder mixed with a general rising fury, and learning how to deal with that rising fury and then making fun of learning how to deal with it while actually dealing with it,” she reveals.

“I like the idea that even though I’ve turned up the volume on my nutbag, there’s a real basis of truth to how strong our feelings are at times. Certainly, from speaking to lots of my friends, we’re all feeling a bit overloaded, but I didn’t want to give advice in the book. I just wanted to make people laugh.”

It’s a sharp backflip from the woman who, in 2017, told Stellar that she’d never write a midlife manual for women because it would involve “too much bum on seat”. She laughs uproariously at the reminder now, admitting that the book was a team effort with Thomas, who was the one to suggest that she include her quirky hand-drawn illustrations and rescripted platitudes. Initially, she reveals, they fought mercilessly.

“Your partner will never be like a boss,” she says now. “Whereas they’re like, ‘Um, I just want to have a little word about how we could just maybe expand this idea,’ he’s like: ‘That’s terrible.’ But after the first six weeks, I really enjoyed working side by side with Dan because he’s had a proper job and is better at organising his thoughts than I am.”

“I really enjoyed working side by side with Dan because he’s had a proper job and is better at organising his thoughts than I am.” (Picture: Supplied)

The couple has endured challenges during their 18-year relationship, including an ectopic pregnancy, a mid-flight miscarriage, Thomas’ cancer – from which he’s now clear – and a frightening anaphylaxis episode four years ago, during which he stopped breathing, but Morris is candid about the long haul of marriage.

“Once a year we’ll have an argument and I’ll think, ‘This is bullshit, we don’t need to live like this,’ and he’ll feel the same way. We’ll get into a bit of a blame game where you can’t do anything right and they annoy the living daylights out of you and you just imagine having a flat by yourself where you can sit on the couch all week.”

When she raised the issue with her psychologist, the reply made her laugh: “Well, if this is just about having a separate apartment, you could just rent one and go and sit there,” her psychologist pointed out. Morris reveals that she checked out the rental market and was horrified by the prices.

In any case, she adds, harmony is quickly restored and then they’re in a good place for ages. “I can’t imagine being without him and alone,” she says, before noting: “If we split up, I couldn’t do the admin.”

Morris is open about the fact that cognitive behaviour therapy strategies have helped her turn negative thoughts and behaviours into more positive ones. As an example, she says she’s infuriated that the family’s new dog, a cavoodle called Ken – full name Ken Oath Thomas, pictured with Morris – keeps weeing on the floor after she’s taken him outside for that purpose each evening.

But instead of lingering in that fury, she’s accepted that she may have to wait longer outside until he’s done his business.

“You start to find your voice in your 40s and I now use it to call stuff out.” (Picture: Supplied)

“It’s like my religion,” she says of the therapy, which also informs how she communicates with her daughters, Ruby, 14, and Sophie, 12. She explains how Ruby was recently out in the city when her phone ran out of battery, leaving her stranded and her parents beside themselves with worry.

When they finally did make contact, Morris says she was fuming with anger but realised that unloading on her daughter would do nothing to help the open communication she’s trying to foster.

While Morris is thrilled to have produced another book, her second after her 2013 memoir Don’t You Know Who I Used to Be?, she’s slightly miffed that she didn’t take up the opportunity for a break that was afforded by lockdown. Instead she dovetailed the writing with an appearance as the kitten on The Masked Singer last September and hosting a truncated version of I’m A Celebrity in the “jungle” of northern NSW in January.

During the latter, she worked 26 days straight without a break, but rather than bemoaning that fact, she says she’s grateful the television industry no longer puts women out to pasture when they reach a certain age. She reveals she’s even cut back on the botox, though does fear that using less has made her look older and more worried. “It’s probably because I am older and more worried,” she adds.

Nevertheless, she no longer worries that she won’t find another job. “It’s so exciting at 52 to still be in work, which certainly wasn’t the case [for people of this age] when I was growing up,” she says. “I’m heartened every single time I see a kick-arse woman over 50 heading up another show.”

Julia Morris stars on the cover of this Sunday’s Stellar.

In fact, as she tells Stellar, she posted a photo of her younger self on Instagram and wrote in the caption: “This girl would have already been dreaming the life I am getting to lead.” More than ever, she wants to acknowledge that girl and her dreams by speaking up with wisdom and authority.

“I was such a ‘yes-man’ in my 20s and 30s,” Morris says. “But you start to find your voice in your 40s and I now use it to call stuff out.” To that end, she says she’ll not only speak up for herself but call out others who are speaking or acting inappropriately. As she says: “I want to make it better for the generations of women behind me, just like the women who went ahead made it better for me.”

Julia Morris Makes It Easy is available now in audiobook from Audible. The book (HarperCollins, $34.99) is out May 5 and is available for pre-order from Booktopia now.

Originally published as I’m A Celebrity host Julia Morris releases anti-self help book