Hey there Romeo! Why The Bachelor Matty J has won Australia’s hearts
EXCLUSIVE: They are swooning left, right and centre down Bondi way, but Australia’s favourite Bachelor has not let romantic stardom go to his head, writes Amelia Saw. Surely there’s a catch (apart from him)!
Lifestyle
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- Meet the Sydney babes vying for Bondi Bachelor’s heart
- Matty Johnson shows his racier side as The Bachelor
MATT Johnson has an amazing effect on Sydney’s women. The man known to Australia as Matty J is in the middle of a conversation when a sophisticated woman in her late 30s starts to hover nearby, lip twitching with excitement, as she realises The Bachelor is so close.
“Can I have a selfie?” she asks, like a giddy schoolgirl who has just stumbled across her favourite rock star.
Johnson happily obliges. But when she looks at the photo, she’s not satisfied. She requests three more selfies before she walks away.
Seconds later, she’s back.
“Can you record a message for my kids? They’re one and two years old,” she says.
The next 10 minutes are spent showing him family photos. A lesser man would have cut her short, but Johnson patiently nods and smiles until she leaves.
It’s fair to say this bachelor has well and truly won Australia’s women over.
The handsome marketing manager can barely walk down the street in his home suburb of Bondi without women of all ages catapulting themselves towards him.
His debut episode averaged 846,000 viewers across the five capital cities, on par with Sam Wood’s first episode, and just shy of Richie Strahan’s 882,000.
However, when catch-up viewing is taken into account, Johnson trumps all other Bachelors with a whopping 1.02 million views — 3000 more than his closest rival, Strahan.
But surely there’s a catch. Could this eligible man really have made it all the way to 30 without being snapped up?
“I think timing is the biggest factor when it comes to finding the one,” Johnson tells BW Magazine.
“I had lots of girlfriends but I never had a relationship where I had this light bulb moment where I’d fallen in love.”
Prioritising travel and climbing the career ladder to become an account director at international brand agency Wasserman, Johnson turned to online dating app Tinder to help him lure ladies. Some horror dates ensued.
I never had this light bulb moment where I’d fallen in love
“You can have banter with someone over text but then you meet and it’s literally just dead silence for five minutes,” he says.
“I’d be scraping the barrel for conversation, willing the food to come out quicker, just to give us a break from the silence.”
Things changed, however, when he moved to London in 2012 and met Australian DJ Milly Gattegno, of The Faders.
“I thought: this is what I’ve been looking for. I had everything I’d ever wanted in a relationship,” he recalls.
But after two years the couple split, and Johnson was devastated.
“It was difficult to manage initially, when for so long you think you’re going in one direction, and then all of a sudden you’re heading in a new one.”
By the time Australia met Johnson last year, he had been single for seven months, and was vying for Georgia Love’s heart on The Bachelorette.
A fan-favourite, he was runner-up for Love’s heart, physically doubling over in pain when he was rejected for Lee Elliott.
MATTY J AND LAURA KISS
Months later, Johnson admitted he still held a torch for Love, and it seems there are some reciprocal feelings.
Although happily coupled with Elliott, Love confesses she finds watching The Bachelor “weird”.
“It’s strange to see him there dating and kissing and stuff, but he had to sit there and watch me do that as well,” she says. “It was so recent that I was on there so it was always going to be weird watching that show again.”
Osher Gunsberg, who has hosted The Bachelor for the past five seasons, similarly admits there’s something “special” about Johnson.
“For some reason I just clicked a little more with Matty,” says Gunsberg, 43.
“Matty just has this extraordinary superpower. He is a confident man, yet if anyone accidentally makes a faux pas or pronounces something incorrectly, he’ll dive on that grenade and make a self-deprecating comment.
“And he’ll have that quality long after he’s stopped going to the gym and his abs have disappeared.”
Perhaps, Johnson’s unaffected warmth stems from the fact his own life hasn’t always been charmed.
“I wouldn’t say I did particularly well with girls in a romantic sense,” Johnson says of his high-school years.
“I was a later bloomer. In Grade 11 I had a growth spurt so my limbs were too long for me, I was super skinny, and I had severe acne.
“But I think those years were when I looked to finesse my sense of humour. And when the acne cleared up, it gave me a lot more confidence to pursue women romantically.”
Raised as one-of-five by his “amazing” single mother Ellie Johnson in Brisbane, he grew up without knowing his father. He credits his close relationship with Ellie and sister Kate Clifton for shaping his respectful attitudes towards women.
Indeed, Johnson believes he couldn’t have made it through the show without the support of his family.
“Walking into those cocktail parties can be daunting,” he says of the highly strung soirees in which contestants compete for his attention.
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