And why wouldn’t he be?

He’s 12 months into a history-making fourth term as mayor of the Gold Coast and is already eyeing off a fifth to break his own record.

He’s also achieved major wins for the Glitter Strip after playing an integral role in the allocation of Olympic venues for the Brisbane 2032 Games – and he’s not done yet.

His huge grin is partly due to delivering the punchline to an amusing anecdote about the Olympic venue discussions which saw him label his Brisbane counterpart Adrian Schrinner a “freeloader”.

It’s also partly due to the massive T-bone he is tucking into at the revered Cavills Steakhouse, a Gold Coast dining institution at Runaway Bay where the mayor is sitting for this week’s instalment of High Steaks.

The noted gym junkie, who at 66 still bench presses 140kg (which might be why Queensland opposition leader and power lifting participant Steven Miles sought him out as a gym buddy), was meant to have an afternoon workout, but he likes the look of the menu so much he cancels, preferring to relax with a steak and a pint of Guinness.

“Let’s cut the G,” he says, referencing a practice well-known to fans of the dark Irish nectar where drinkers aim to intersect the G on the Guinness logo with their first sip from the glass.

He delights in giving a demonstration and then settles back contentedly after wiping the foam from his lips.

Life is pretty good.

It’s certainly a damn sight better than it was in 2017, when he was desperately fighting to save the life of his wife of 37 years Ruth on the floor of a Singapore airport after she suffered a massive heart attack on their way to a European holiday.

Tate, with the help of a couple of Changi Airport staff, spent a frantic 25 minutes giving CPR to the mayoress before she was eventually revived and rushed to hospital.

She spent days in a coma, weeks in hospital and months receiving further treatment, including the fitting of a pacemaker.

The incident had a deep impact on Tate, who would later that year have his own battle with bowel cancer as rumblings of a Crime and Corruption Commission investigation into the Gold Coast City Council swirled.

Tate would win both battles, with the CCC delivering a report which was described as “a scathing rebuke” but found no grounds for criminal proceedings or rulings of misconduct.

But the triple whammy of seismic blows took its toll and Tate could have walked away from politics for good – if not for the wise words of the woman whose life he helped save.

“It was 50-50,” he admits on whether he was going to pull the pin on his time as mayor.

“It was like anyone in a high pressure job – you have to be passionate, you want to assess that you are all in.

“If there’s a doubt that if you can’t be all in mentally and emotionally and physically, then you get the next person off the bench.

“In that time where post Ruth’s (health scare) and my bowel cancer thing, I thought: ‘well maybe it is time’.

“Then I had a good long talk with Ruth and she goes: ‘Well are there other issues you want to deliver for the city because if there aren’t, we’ll just go travelling – but if you have and you feel that you are the one to do it, well then you have got to have a crack’.

“So I did.”

It is hard now to imagine the Gold Coast without Tate at the helm and while he has his critics, particularly among those who feel he is too pro-development, no legitimate rivals have emerged to challenge his crown.

Rumours were rife that several sitting councillors wanted to run for mayor at the 2024 election – but only if Tate was not going to stand again.

He did and after increasing his vote in 2024, he is already eyeing off 2028, which would take him tantalisingly close to the 2032 Olympics.

Tate made plenty of headlines – and ruffled a few feathers up the M1, during the climactic countdown to the announcement of Olympic venues for Brisbane’s turn as host of the Greatest Show On Earth in seven years’ time.

Whether it was endorsing a left-field vision for a new Olympic stadium at Doomben Racecourse or slamming the planned Brisbane Arena as part of a push for the blue ribbon swimming events to be held on the Gold Coast, Tate was never far from a headline.

He successfully lobbied for hockey to be moved from rugby’s spiritual home of Ballymore to the Gold Coast venue which hosted the 2018 Commonwealth Games and he hasn’t given up hope of snaffling rowing from Rockhampton’s crocodile-infested Fitzroy River.

But he says he only ever entered the fray with the intention of being “here to help”.

“I don’t want it to be misconstrued that I’m trying to wrestle a sport from Brisbane or anywhere else,” he says.

“I’m trying to look at where is the best venue in Queensland.”

A qualified engineer, Tate was fiercely critical of the mooted Brisbane Arena, primarily because of the plan to construct a temporary pool for the swimming, a move which he says would have added about half a billion dollars to the construction cost for the reinforced foundations required to support such a vast volume of water.

“Now that they are doing the swimming at a new aquatic centre in Brisbane, I bow my head to that,” he says.

“My beef was about the drop-in pool – that’s no legacy.”

While Tate was often front and centre during that Olympic venues debate, he was – perhaps unfairly – criticised for being MIA during the drama whipped up by Cyclone Alfred.

Tate timed a vacation to the US to coincide with the NRL’s opening-round blockbuster in Las Vegas and was having a great time until pundits from the Bureau of Meteorology started taking note of some intense weather building in the South Pacific.

Tate wasn’t the first civic leader to be on holidays during a disaster, and he won’t be the last.

While he tried for days to return to the Gold Coast – one flight was cancelled due to mechanical trouble and several other options evaporated – it was left to his capable deputy Donna Gates to act as the city’s voice.

There’s nothing like a natural disaster to send a politician's profile soaring, but Tate insists there was no fear of missing out – only a fear of what was happening at home.

“It’s not FOMO,” he says.

“It’s like this: everything I love is here on the Gold Coast.

“My family, my friends, my city.

“I wanted to be here to be part of this disaster management and recovery as soon as I could.

“It’s not about get my ID level higher.

“I think my ID level is high enough when I’m in Vegas and I’ve got people coming up to me buying me beers because they’re Aussies and Kiwis living on the Gold Coast.”

There’s no denying Tate is something of a cult figure and his often hilarious sound bites – whether intentional or otherwise – frequently wind up on segments on shows like The Project.

Sometimes it’s his razor-sharp comedic timing getting airplay, while on other occasions it is a mangled metaphor during an off-the-cuff comment.

In homage to his wife’s near-death experience and his bowel cancer diagnosis, he called 2017 his anus horribilis.

His description of a cross between a poodle and a doberman once left jaws dropping during a breakfast radio interview, while he made headlines only last week for cheekily suggesting vagrants living in a Gold Coast park could be given one-way bus tickets to Byron Bay.

“English is my second language,” says Tate, who was born in Laos to an Australian engineer father and a Thai mother (he spent primary school in Laos before moving to his dad’s hometown of Sydney where he attended the prestigious Scots College).

“And 27 per cent of people on the Gold Coast are born overseas,” he continues.

“They don’t mind me not having the Queen’s English, so my attitude is that’s 27 per cent of the population and 90 per cent of them would vote for me.

“That’s a bloody good base to go off.

“Do I worry about getting into trouble? No, that’s my middle name.”

The Gold Coast has long enjoyed, or perhaps more accurately, endured, a big brother, little brother relationship with Brisbane, but Tate has never been afraid to stick it to the state capital.

The recent Olympic venues debate was a case in point, where Tate called Schrinner a “freeloader” for not stumping up cash for venues while the Gold Coast was prepared to foot the cost of its own indoor arena as well as the upgrades required to bring the hockey down the M1.

So, is it all just part of diplomacy and negotiating, or does he genuinely like winding his counterpart up?

“It’s all strategic,” he says.

“Brisbane’s got the Olympics, but how can we leverage that?

“It’s not personal, Adrian’s a great guy.

“Would I have a Guinness with him?

“Absolutely.”

TOM TATE

Gold Coast Mayor

STEAK

Black angus T Bone, broccolini and chunky fries

VENUE: Cavills Steakhouse, Runaway Bay

RATING:10/10