Andrew O’Keefe on his stint in rehab following mental collapse

He is the popular TV host who began to unravel in public before checking himself into rehab. Andrew O’Keefe opens up about his emotional and mental collapse, which he says was sparked by the death of his father and end of his 18-year marriage.

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Six months after checking himself into a Sydney rehab facility following his emotional and mental collapse, Andrew O’Keefe has revealed he wasn’t “treating myself terribly well”.

“I got to a point where I knew it wasn’t sustainable, to work, to grieve, to feel pain and not to sleep and so I took myself off to the clinic,” O’Keefe, 48, said.

The Chase host is not new to drunk and disorderly scandals but following reports in 2017 and 2018 that his partying was out of control, O’Keefe checked himself into an unnamed rehab facility in April for professional help.

It would be two months before he returned to work.

Andrew O'Keefe opens up about his demons. Picture: Tim Hunter.

His collapse he traces back to the 2014 death of his father, judge and ICAC commissioner Barry O’Keefe, and the breakdown of his 18-year marriage to wife Eleanor, a social worker and the mother of his three children — Barney, 16, Rory, 14, and Olive, nine — in November 2017.

The newly single father and co-parent found himself “slightly adrift in the world” when, a month later in December 2017, he lost his weekend job of 12 years, fronting Weekend Sunrise.

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“(Seven) was repositioning certain players with the network,” he said.

O’Keefe would not be drawn on rumours drugs or alcohol contributed to his collapse, prompting his rehab stint.

His Seven Network minder, on his behalf, flatly refuted the suggestion there was an association between rehab and substance abuse.

O’Keefe at his father Barry’s funeral in 2014.

When O’Keefe entered the Sydney clinic, Seven was caught shorthanded and forced to run repeat episodes of The Chase, it’s critical news lead-in, until their host returned in June.

“I was already entirely exhausted to a point where the issues of my marriage dissolution were becoming more grinding, day by day,” he said, breaking his silence to speak to The Sunday Telegraph this week.

“I wasn’t in good health, I’d also suffered (the) loss of friends and family at the same time. “There’s another issue that I won’t go into that was particularly poignant that came up after 40 years which I knew the existence of, but had never really impacted me in the way that it did.

O'Keefe confronts a photographer after leaving Sydney’s Downing Centre Local in March, 2019.

He later tries to shield his face from the cameraman’s lens.

“I needed to be in a place that was not part of my normal environment because I needed to break what had become my normal modes of thinking and reacting to certain situations and feelings. So I sought help around dealing with a lot of the painful emotions that I have been experiencing and of course painful emotions generally breed unhelpful behaviours because no one likes to live with the pain, they want to get rid of it as soon as possible.”

For a decade, O’Keefe was the subject of the kind of rock ‘n’ roll headlines that once plagued his beloved “Uncle John”, Australian music legend Johnny O’Keefe.

Stories about the host of top-rating television game show The Chase include being “off his face” in Tasmanian nightclubs and being booted out of women’s toilets, of an alleged “48-hour bender” in a Brisbane hotel during which he was photographed cavorting with a sexy semi-clad woman and of appearing before a Sydney court after being pulled over driving an unregistered car.

O’Keefe’s and wife Eleanor separated after 18 years of marriage. Picture: Laura Moore

The O’Keefe males possess, he said, “a strong strain of something that verges on mania”.

Having a high profile — being a star — can add to the mental load.

“I think most people not in a high profile role find some time in their day, in their week, just to sit with their thoughts, whereas if you work in television for example, you don’t,” O’Keefe said.

“You have someone ringing you up until midnight to do a charity gig, And you’ll be greeted by very well meaning and enthusiastic fans, but suddenly you have to be someone that you are not — and you’re constantly being distracted by the emotional work that you have to do. “And that’s why you need a break. That’s why you need to go somewhere where no one will distract you.”

Speaking to The Sunday Telegraph at the end of a week in which Seven’s new CEO James Warburton took the axe to staff and programming at the broadcasting company and Basil Zempilas, the man who replaced O’Keefe at Weekend Sunrise, makes way for Matt Doran, the cigarette loving, gum-chewing, wisecracking host clarified the greatest danger to his own wellbeing is not substances but “pattern of thought”.

O’Keefe was named new host of Weekend Sunrise alongside Monique Wright. He was later replaced by Basil Zempilas.

O'Keefe on the set of TV games show Deal Or No Deal.

Stepping away from our photo shoot to take a call from his children who are on a school holiday pony camp, he said he is open with his children about admission to the rehab clinic.

“The kids know exactly what happened. In general, discussions in our house have been very open and very candid. There’s no obfuscation,” he said.

“It’s clichéd, but you very rarely learn anything from your successes, from the happy periods in your life. They’re great. They make you feel good and it’s an element of humanity that you constantly long for, but you don’t learn much from that. You learn much more from your mistakes and from your miseries.”

To make the point, he references his late “Uncle John”, whose life and music he brings to the stage in a show he’s been crafting for years and will co-produce, Andrew O’Keefe Shouts Johnny O’Keefe.

O'Keefe and Eleanor with their three children Barney, 16, Rory, 14, and Olive, nine.

After launching a national tour this week, O’Keefe will perform at The State Theatre on November 23 in a show that is part musical concert, part spoken word tribute to JOK, who died in 1978 following an accidental drug overdose.

“It’s really a kind of chronological step through his life. I use the songs to try and demonstrate aspects of his personality, his upbringing, his view of life, and his history as well,” said O’Keefe, who is enthusiastic about doing more musical stage work in the future, one of his great loves since he was five.

“I’ll be hoping to explore a lot more of live performance. It’s what I realise I love — it’s my chief love. I got into television because it was the love of creation and performance but there’s nothing as immediate as an audience — and you know you’re getting your craft right or wrong when you’re standing in front of an audience and sweating and they’re out there and you can hear them breathing.

“Now there’s a thrill. Some would call that an addiction.”

Originally published as Andrew O’Keefe on his stint in rehab following mental collapse