How Peter Helliar almost burned out
As a comedian, writer, actor and co-host on The Project, Peter Helliar is in high-demand. So much so that, he now reveals, it led to exhaustion and burnout at the end of last year.
Stellar
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Everybody loves Peter Helliar. And that’s a problem for Peter Helliar.
He’s juggling so many commitments beyond his current hosting role on Network 10’s The Project that he only brings up his new podcast You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet as an afterthought.
“Yeah, there’s a bit going on,” the TV personality, writer, director, stand-up comedian, author and radio host tells Stellar, chuckling as he reels off his schedule for the next three months.
It includes a national comedy tour, the release of the sixth book in his Frankie Fish children’s series and another – this one about travel – out in June.
All this gets squeezed around his “regular job” co-hosting The Project alongside Waleed Aly and Carrie Bickmore.
What pulls him where? “I always envisaged or dreamt of having a career that wasn’t just about one thing,” he says, noting his admiration of comedy polymath Ben Elton. “I’ve liked the idea of being challenged by different things.”
Directing episodes of his ABC TV series It’s A Date and, more recently, Network 10’s How To Stay Married, still intimidated a comedian more comfortable corralling the thoughts in his own head for the page or stage.
“I thought, do I have the language to communicate to heads of department and actors? Once you get in there, everyone’s on the same team.”
Helliar has always been a faithful, arguably under-appreciated, member of any team he joins. He was a crucial sidekick on Rove for 10 years and is now in his eighth year on The Project. Notably, he’s not a Gold Logie winner, despite his two co-hosts winning the award.
Yet that’s his value: elevating those around him, making them look good by releasing tension, providing the quip or bringing light to the shade. He’s always been employed because people like having him around.
In his formative years in Melbourne comedy – with the generation including Rove McManus, Wil Anderson, Corinne Grant, Meshel Laurie and Dave Hughes among them – he was the younger, faithful compatriot. Laurie once described him as “everyone’s favourite puppy”.
“He was kind of the young fan, the guy who loved comedy and loved hanging around comedians,” McManus tells Stellar.
“Fortunately, he didn’t become annoying because he knew the secret: be very good. And he has this infectious giggle at his own jokes, so it’s hard not to laugh when you’re around him.”
Helliar says that generation of comics has always been happy for each other’s success. “And I don’t feel anyone got left behind. We were hardworking, took it seriously and had fun with it, and some people had [success] earlier than others.”
Helliar was one of them – but it has particularly bloomed in the past decade, as he created his own TV shows and wrote books, as well as the screenplay to I Love You Too, a 2010 feature film.
![“We were hardworking, took it seriously and had fun with it, and some people had [success] earlier than others.” (Picture: Daniel Nadel for Stellar)](https://content.api.news/v3/images/bin/d6c7f679198916998bb95ede89bfba53?width=650)
Being in high demand has its drawbacks, though. At the end of 2019, he admits, “I was exhausted and as close to burnout as I’d ever been.”
Among other things, he’d filmed the second season of How To Stay Married (which co-stars Lisa McCune) during his holidays from The Project, which was unsettled with Aly, Bickmore and Helliar all absent at various times due to travel, outside work commitments and a pregnancy.
“Hopefully those factors won’t come into play this year,” Helliar says, noting the trio are now locked into hosting Monday to Thursday. That gives him weekends to focus on family and performing. And family is important to someone McManus describes as “the archetype of suburban Australia”.
Helliar is happy to claim the title. “Growing up for me was going to church every week then going home and watching the footy replay,” he recalls. “Very suburban, white bread, red brick.” And very family. His upcoming book co-written with his wife Bridget, Trippin’ With Kids, imparts lessons from travels with their three sons.
Bridget floated the idea of a book many years ago while they were with the kids in France. Only recently, with more globe-trotting behind them, did he agree a book was worthwhile, if they wrote it together.
Family travel has been a constant since 2013 when the couple took now 11-year-old Oscar, Aidan, 15, and Liam, 17, backpacking in Eastern Europe. Any parent knows it’s easier to not travel with kids, so what were they thinking?
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“We thought we were in a slight rut,” Helliar says. “We chatted about what we could do and just decided the thought we weren’t going to travel for a long time made us sad.”
The couple bumped it to the top of their priorities list and, he reports, “instantly life has got more exciting. We have such high regard for those moments and that time. I’m never more present with my kids than when we’ve been travelling.”
It has perhaps shaped Helliar’s comedy by taking him out of the suburbs. He has always been accessible to middle Australia, but now his comedy has a political edge.
“As a performer, he’s really matured,” observes McManus. “He’s expressing things.”
Helliar agrees. “Early on in stand-up – I’m nearly 25 years into it – you’re thinking what will be funny, walking around just hoping thoughts jump into your head. Now, the older I get, I think, what do I want to talk about? Often I start with a premise that isn’t even funny, and set myself the challenge of making that funny.
“But the first rule is always: it has to be funny. I’m not there just to make points. It’s not a pep talk. It’s comedy.”
Peter Helliar co-hosts The Project, 6.30pm weeknights on Network 10.