Jimmy Giggle: ‘Being a sex symbol is hilarious’
TELEVISION presenter James Rees — that’s Jimmy Giggle to preschoolers and parents — opens up about fatherhood and life as an unlikely sex symbol.
Stellar
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TO the harried parents of Australia, he is something of a saviour, the handsome guy with the owl and the silly voice who plays a vital role in keeping kids entertained while dinners get made. But according to James Rees, aka Jimmy Giggle of Giggle And Hoot fame, the real person they should be thanking is his dad, Mark.
“Dad always had his video camera with him,” Rees tells Stellar. “And we were constantly on camera performing, my brothers and I. He’s got videos of us doing puppet shows, dancing around, doing karaoke, dressing up, pulling funny faces.”
And when the financial advisor wasn’t pointing a camera in young Jimmy’s direction, he was feeding him a steady diet of British comedy, such as Monty Python, The Two Ronnies or The Benny Hill Show — “all that sort of slapstick stupid comedy which, funnily enough, I’ve ended up doing for a living”.
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When he went to an open-call audition for the ABC at age 21, Rees had no TV background — at the time, he was a uni dropout pulling beers in a bar. But the broadcaster plucked him from the 5000-strong crowd and flew him to Sydney from Melbourne to negotiate a contract. Instinctively, the inexperienced performer with the expressive eyebrows knew he needed one person by his side. “Dad came with me. And still, Mum and Dad are always there for support if we’re making a tough decision,” says Rees, 30. “But I’ve always been the one out of my brothers who was super independent, so it kind of grates them a little bit that I make decisions so fast and just do it.”
One of those quick calls was moving in with his now wife, Tori, just months after they met working at a pub in Mount Eliza in Victoria. “It became clear this was a special relationship we were forming,” he says. Just a year into dating, they moved to Sydney for Giggle And Hoot.
“Everything we’ve done has been as a team. It’s a special thing when you find that someone to be your teammate. We just went for it, and nothing’s really been an issue to be honest.”
Ping-pong moves between Sydney and Melbourne, along with the birth of their son Lenny, now three, further bonded the pair. “She’s an amazing woman and an amazing mother,” Rees says of Tori, a stay-at-home mum.
“I’ve learnt a lot about being a parent from her. I’m not an A-list celebrity, but when you’re in this little bubble — people telling you that you’re great and that you’re funny — you need someone who can give you a reality check.”
Being Mr Giggle also comes with mum fans, one of whom passed her number onto Rees, via Tori, after a meet and greet. The ever-patient Tori burst out laughing, Rees says, and they’ve kept laughing as Facebook pages like I Could Teach Jimmy Giggle A Thing Or Two popped up.
The sex-symbol label baffles him. “I’m on preschool television, it’s kind of a strange thing — it’s just hilarious. Sideburns aren’t that trendy, let’s be honest, and the pyjamas are just not attractive, so I don’t know what they see... but I’m happy to take that, fine. As I’m getting older I’ll take anything!”
He’s popular on the play-date circuit, too. “But I’m just Lenny’s dad after a while. We’ve got two trampolines at our joint at the moment and that’s just the biggest winner. I’ve got a bubble machine, so they win, really.”
Filming takes up three days a week, but when Rees isn’t fulfilling his Giggle duties he’s a hands-on dad, taking Lenny to swimming and soccer and on public transport adventures.
“He’s got such a different view of the world, it’s so sweet and naïve,” he says. “You forget about everything for a while when you go and do something with someone who hasn’t seen it before. It takes you back to when you were a kid and the joys of life you forget.
Everything is so honed in on making money and providing for your family and trying to keep the plates spinning and the balls up in the air... but you forget about the really special things, the simple things.”
Rees and Tori would love to give Lenny siblings, but he candidly admits creating a bigger family hasn’t been easy.
“We’re trying; it’s proving a little difficult... It has been a bit of a struggle. It’s one of those things where we’re like, ‘Do we intervene and do something different?’ We’re at that stage. But we’re sure it’ll happen, and we’ve just got to be patient.”
For now, his little boy is helping him refine that trait. “It’s not the most glamorous thing in the world, being kicked and walked over,” he says of parenting with a laugh. “You just have to take a breath every now and then, and get in touch with your patience.”
Giggle And Hoot’s Hootastic Concert is touring from September 30. Visit livenation.com.au.