Andrew ‘Cosi’ Costello on his drive for success, Adelaide hotspots, and dealing with the spotlight

WHEN Andrew “Cosi” Costello isn’t on the airwaves, he’s on screen spruiking all things local on his show, South Aussie with Cosi. Get to know the local lad.

Andrew Cosi Costello on the tram. Photo by Kylie Fleming

LAID-BACK country boy Andrew “Cosi” Costello never switches off. When he’s not on the airwaves, he’s on screen spruiking all things local on his show, South Aussie with Cosi. Sophie Perri took Cosi on his first tram ride (yep, first) to shoot the breeze and take in the city sights.

What have you been doing today?

I’ve come straight from Nova. So I get up at 4.30am, then go to Nova’s first meeting at 5am, on air at 6am and then off air at 9am. So last night we were editing until about 8.30pm for the TV show so yesterday was like an 18 hour day. It’s very flat out.

So you’re one of those people who can run on little sleep?

Yeah I think so. Or try to.

What do you do to get yourself through — are you a coffee drinker?

No. I’ve never drank a coffee in my life.

You’re kidding — no tram and no coffee?

It’s true! I’ve got a very addictive personality, I’m addicted to say chocolate … so that’s why I don’t even want to try coffee because I think my life would be better without it.

So how long have you had the TV show for?

Series five is rolling out now and we are signed up for this series and next which will run halfway into 2017.

How did it even start?

I’d worked for SAFM and Triple M probably for about seven years and I was really surprised at how little Adelaide people knew about South Australia. All these cool spots and lots of them had never been, like Flinders or K.I and luckily as a kid I’d been to a whole bunch of them and I wanted to educate Adelaide people about how cool SA was. So it started very much about me wanting to educate Adelaide people about their own state outside of the city boundaries, but then as series one rolled out I started to get very interested in the amount of jobs tourism creates, which is 30,000 people — four times more than mining. Then I started looking at it going, the more people who are tourists in SA, the more jobs we’ll create, and the better it is for the economy. So that’s a big driver for me now.

So what is your favourite place?

It’s really interesting, everyone always says to me, ‘where’s your favourite place in SA?’ and I can hand on heart say, 99 per cent of the time it’s the place I recently visited. I came back from Innes National Park on the Yorke Peninsula just glowing about the place. We’re just so spoiled. We had some Chinese people filming a couple of months ago and that was crazy, the way they looked at our state was like jaw-dropping compared to us, because we take a lot of things for granted. Blue skies, clear oceans, beautiful sandy beaches, they just don’t have that.

You’re bringing the show to China aren’t you?

Yeah we just signed a deal with a Chinese network and secured just over $2.5 million of airtime in April. That’s really exciting, because I wanted to contribute to tourism in more than just South Australians travelling around SA.

Where is your favourite place in the south?

I think the McLaren Vale area has so much to offer. I think the McLaren-Fleurieu area is just a gem, what it’s got over the Barossa … is it has the sea and the vines so close to each other. So you can do a wine tour, go through Onkaparinga National Park and feel like you’re in the Flinders Ranges then go onto the beaches that you can drive your car on. It’s like SA is encapsulated in one area down south. It’s a tourism mecca that I reckon can grow so much more because it’s so close to Adelaide. Adelaide’s like a million customers just sitting there, you’ve just gotta show them how cool it is and get them inspired. We took the Chinese there and they were just in awe. We saw kangaroos between the vines. We stopped in the main street of Blackwood and there was a koala, within arm’s reach, with a little baby on its back.

All the cameras would have come out.

Oh my God, that koala had about 9000 photos in three minutes.

Where is your favourite place in the east?

Hahndorf is a real soft spot of mine. It has over a million visitors a year. Hahndorf is doing some really cool things, that street has like 140 shops — it’s just a really bustling booming area.

Where is your favourite place in the west?

I hosted Semaphore Christmas Carols on Friday night and I hadn’t been to Semaphore for maybe 12 months. I got married at the Semaphore Palais. That stretch around Semaphore, with its little entertainment area, and that main street, is a really funky, cool area. That’s a cracker.

Where is your favourite place in the north?

The Playford Alive project is pretty cool in the northern suburbs. It’s kind of Andrews Farm/Munno Para. A lot of housing developments have been built around there but built in a way that encapsulates the parklands, there’s some great lake areas. It just has a really cool feel about it. There are some really unreal playgrounds. I think as South Australians we need to find these amazing things in the northern suburbs and really beat our chest about it because I think the northern suburbs is kind of the heart and soul of Adelaide. I guess I’m a bit partial to it because I’m from Craigmore/Blakeview and spent a lot of time at Gawler. Elizabeth Shopping Centre was my shopping centre for a couple of years.

Where is your favourite place in the city?

With the development of Adelaide Oval and the hospital we’re driving past now, the green light on the casino, it’s a place to be very excited about. I like to look at Adelaide as a lady and I think that when we opened Adelaide Oval it was like Adelaide’s prom night, this girl grew into a woman, and we have this beautiful city we can be proud of. Even this tram, I can’t believe this tram is free. The mall is done up, North Tce is looking fantastic ... and if I had my way, Victoria Park would turn back into a racecourse. If we had Adelaide Oval at one end and the horse racing it would be the closest racecourse to the CBD in the world and that would be something that would attract a lot of tourism.

Have you had to do a lot of research about Adelaide?

Yeah … I think for me, I never claim to be an expert, you know I studied agriculture at university, I failed Year 12 …

And you were a pig farmer?

Yeah and I was a pig farmer for seven years.

Do you get recognised a bit?

Yeah it’s interesting … I guess it’s true to kind of, what I’m trying to do in that, people see me more as a friend than a personality or something, which is kind of replicated in some of the run-ins you have with people. Like I was in Foodland and a lady just comes up to me and says, “hey Cosi, do you know where the apricot jam is?” Or at the museum there was a group of kids doing like an Amazing Race type thing in the city and they ran up and were like, “oh Cosi, can you please take a photo for us?” And I was like “yeah of course, no worries”, thinking they wanted a photo with me, but they go, “OK can you just get us against the museum?

You’re like everyone’s helper.

Yeah it’s funny, the media is a funny game. If you’re in the media, sometimes it’s kind of like they’re just waiting for you to trip up and do something wrong or whatever and it can be pretty harsh., I try to do the best I can for the state but inevitably you’re gonna make mistakes on air and mistakes in your personal life, touch wood we’ve had a clean slate for years now, but it does loom over your head. There’s an extra scrutiny over you which is sometimes challenging. It might just be when you’re out with your mates on the beers or something like that.

Does that make you regret your job?

I think I love my job that much there’s never really any regrets. I’m pretty determined to be successful for the state. It’s interesting, maybe in the last 10 years there was a switch … my desire was to be a millionaire by the time I was 30, I invested heavily and had like five investment properties or whatever but my shift changed really when I went into The Biggest Loser which was nothing to be proud of, I was gone for four months and then had all the things taken away from me and it made me think about what was really important in life., And it certainly wasn’t money. It was spending time with family and friends, which is a mantra for the show now, it’s don’t work so hard, spend time with your family and friends, live life and get out of your comfort zone. So now money isn’t my driver, my driver is success. It’s like my drug. I wake up every morning and go to bed at night just wanting my projects to be successful.

When was a period when you didn’t have that drive?

Probably just before The Biggest Loser, I was really overweight and whatever … but since starting the TV show I’m just excited. The best example I can give you is, I bought a cattle farm in Cambodia and I set it up as a charity two and a half years ago and we loan cows to families and stuff, and I go four times a year to run it and we now have 50 families in the program. It’s interesting because there’s no financial gain but it’s great to do stuff when money doesn’t really matter. I’m doing it because I believe in it. The more successful they are, the better I feel, it’s just addictive. I interviewed Steve Irwin once and one of my co-hosts asked why he was so passionate and he said something which is so true to me, he was like, “when I wake up there’s like a fire in my belly, I just can’t get enough”. So it’s the same, I just really have this desire to get s**t done and get it done quickly.

Well you have to, you’re a father aren’t you … you have three kids? And you film with them?

Yes, not as much as we used to. Filming is very slow, for us to make one minute of TV we’re out for about an hour, so for me to edit that minute it takes about another hour. So when we take the kids, which we used to about 70 per cent of the time, it was not nearly as productive!

You never really switch off from your job, don’t you?

Not really, which is interesting because the whole TV show is about work life balance and I’m probably the one that needs to correct it! Since having the show I have never worked so hard, so it’s kind of contradicting in a way. But I figure if I can get more people to spend time with mates and their kids then that’s great.

You have a lot of fans of the show it seems, lots of Facebook followers …

Yeah 170,000 now.

Do you get bad feedback?

We’re pretty lucky because it’s kind of a hard brand to hate. We probably get one in 400 comments that are negative.

Like?

Oh “you’re fat”, or if I’m doing stuff with my charity in Cambodia you know, “you say you support South Australia but what about the homeless people here?” You’ll never please everyone. The way I look at that, I go, “170,000 Facebook friends, that’s enough to fill Adelaide Oval three times”. You go to the cricket or footy and you can’t expect 50,000 to all be nice people. It’s just the way it is.