Triple M’s Gus Worland and brother Steve launch joke book, The Bloke-A-Saurus
MEN’S mental health is no laughing matter, but radio presenter Gus Worland and his brother Steve have released the great Aussie joke book, Bloke-A-Saurus, to raise awareness of a very serious issue.
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IT’S taken months to create and showcases the first time he’s worked on a project with his brother Steve. But radio personality Gus Worland cannot think of a better place for his first book than the toilet. The brothers say The Bloke-A-Saurus, which is a pull-together of bad eye-rolling dad jokes and great Aussie yarns, is the kind of book you can share with the family or simply leave in the throne room.
“I see this as the perfect toilet book, one where you can just open it at any page and go for it,” says Gus, who heads the popular breakfast radio show The Grill Team on Triple M. “We’re both dads and we both have older kids and one of life’s great joys is embarrassing your kids with bad jokes, especially if they have their friends over. And this book is perfect for that.”
All jokes aside, royalties from the book will go to support men’s mental health, an area that the brothers have supported since they received the heartbreaking news almost 11 years ago that family friend, Angus Roberts, had taken his life.
In the years since, Gus challenged audiences over male stereotypes on television show Man Up and went on to help establish the Gotcha4Life Foundation which aims to positively impact men’s mental health. The Foundation raises money to train male Lifeline crisis counsellors and goes into schools to spread the message to young boys and teenage males that it’s OK to not be OK and to speak up if they need help.
“He gave me so much love,” Gus says of the childhood mentor who taught him and his friends, including best mate Hugh Jackman, how to swim and advised him through the early stages of his career. “And when I found out he had died I thought he must have died in a car accident or something. When someone said he had killed himself, I couldn’t believe it, I literally went to the police station and told them there must have been something suspicious because he wouldn’t have done something like this.
“But with suicide it’s often the guys that have a big mask on that you wouldn’t expect to do that. It’s the number one way to lose your life if you’re a 15 to 44 year old man in Australia. We have a real problem in this country and it’s hurting us.”
Earlier in the year when Australian cricket captain Steve Smith was found guilty of ball tampering, he was ordered to complete 100 hours of community service. As a result he started talking at schools on behalf of Gotcha4Life.
“The first school we went into was Menai High where Steve (Smith) had gone himself and we had a bit of a Q&A session,” Gus says of the talk to boys in years nine, 10 and 11. “I asked Steve a whole lot of questions and he gave honest, vulnerable answers. Within a few hours of leaving the school I had a phone call from the headmaster who said he had two boys come into his office already who had both admitted they were going to hurt themselves and they were really concerned and didn’t know what to do.
“They felt that after listening to Steve they had to say something. I called Steve and told him ‘You have never saved a life scoring 100 but you have now saved a couple of boys’ lives’.
“We have now done another dozen schools together and at all of them, within a day or two, we have heard from the school that boys have come forward in need of help.
“Open, vulnerable conversation can do so much good.”
The brothers reflect on their own strict, traditional childhood attending private boys school Knox Grammar on Sydney’s north shore where the motto is ‘do the manly thing’ but says the climate for boys to acknowledge their feelings and ask for support is changing.
“There is that Aussie male thing that says ‘She’ll be right, I’m fine, It’s all good mate, Everything’s bonza’ but you’re not telling anyone anything,” Steve says. “That cultural shift will ultimately be the most important change that can happen.”
Gus adds: “When we started The Grill Team nine years ago if I’d brought up in the planning meeting that I wanted to talk about men’s mental health it would have been “whaaat?” But now it’s like ‘OK, what angle do you want to take it from?’
“I believe it’s like turning around the QE2, we are turning it around but it’s going to take a little bit of time. I really believe that if you build a safe environment for men to talk, we will talk as much as the girls.”
* The Bloke-A-Saurus, Simon & Schuster, $32.99, out this week