The Rundown: Sam Pang facing nerves before taking on TV’s toughest gig as Logies Host

Comedian Sam Pang has hinted at feeling nervous about hosting TV’s biggest night as a former winner reveals he was too drunk to remember when he had the stage.

Have nerves hit Sam Pang as he prepares to take on the toughest gig in TV as host of the Logie Awards?

Plenty have tried to win over the audience and crowd at TV’s biggest night and some have failed.

More than a few jokes have “died” on the Logies stage.

Pang has plenty of fan goodwill around him, but a lighthearted quip from him on Have You Been Paying Attention on Monday hinted that he is well aware that the Logies gig comes with significant risk attached.

Sam Pang has hinted that he is nervous to host the Logies. Picture: Channel 9

“You will find out in my Will, which will be about two hours after the Logies, by the way,” Pang mused on Have You Been Paying Attention.

His comment came after Ed Kavalee asked him how much he was getting paid for the hosting gig.

The Logies had some memorable hosts over the years. Bert Newton set the standard as the event host, Andrew Denton showed roasting the audience worked when he helmed the event in 1999 and 2000 and Shaun Micallef won applause for his turn in 2001.

Others such as Wendy Harmer and Gretel Killeen did not have such a good reception.

Over the years taking pot shots at the Logies has become something of a sport on social media.

Osher too drunk to remember winning Logie

Gold Logie nominee Osher Gunsberg has told how he was so smashed at his second Logie Awards that he forgot meeting Dave Hughes on stage as the comedian presented him with an award for Australian Idol.

It was 2004 and Australian Idol was a TV phenomenon. Gunsberg was co-host and nominated as Most Popular Presenter and the show as the Most Popular Reality Show.

Gunsberg arrived in Australia from Canada the day of the Logies having had surgery on a broken hand, the result of a snowboarding tumble, hours before getting on the long haul flight.

The doctor gave him the powerful painkiller Percocet for the flight.

“I landed in Melbourne and I still had these pills on me and my hand was really hurting,” Gunsberg said on his Better Than Yesterday podcast.

“I washed a couple of Percocets down with six, maybe more, Crown Lagers.

“I’d love to say I remember the 2004 Logies. I have no memory at all of the 2004 Logies.

“I know afterwards that I didn’t win the (Most Popular) Presenter trophy.”

Osher Gunsberg said he was too drunk to remember meeting Dave Hughes at the Logies. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

There were other things he forgot that night – like meeting Dave Hughes when accepting the Logie for Most Popular Reality Show for Idol.

Appearing on Hughesy’s Nova breakfast show six months later, Gunsberg said ‘Nice to meet you’ on air.

“Dave Hughes goes ‘I’ve met you before …. I gave you your bloody Logie’,” Gunsberg recalled.

“In one moment I realised I had blitzed myself so hard, I don’t actually remember that extraordinary moment in my career, …. and live on-air I am now being faced with my own drinking and using and embarrassed that I did not remember this person.

“Unfortunately I ignored that.”

In 2006 he was still the life of the party and has previously told how he used the Silver Logie that Australian Idol won that year as a lucky chip at a poker table during a 3am afterparty Texas Hold’em showdown at Crown.

But the good times came at a cost.

“In 2010 I had no jobs at all on TV and by 2012 I had no jobs at all,” he said on his podcast.

Gunsberg got sober in 2010.

“I came to the realisation fairly quickly that there was a very good reason … (why) I was not being nominated and I was not being hired for these kind of things, because I was not a kind of person that you would trust with a multimillion-dollar production because what I had been doing,” he said.

“I had to face that and get about making it better.”

In 2013 Channel 10 offered him the role of host of The Bachelor and he has been the face of The Bachelor franchise ever since.

He has landed his first Gold Logie nomination this year.

The Logie Awards will be held in Sydney on July 30.

Popular host in the running for Gold Logie

I’m A Celebrity host Julia Morris is taking the ‘if you don’t ask, you don’t get’ line with her call for voting support for this year’s Logie Awards.

Morris has been nominated for the Gold Logie and as Most Popular Presenter.

Julia Morris is vying for the Gold Logie and Most Popular Presenter award. Picture: Supplied

“Me? Desperate? You bet I am. 75 years in the business & I would dearly love my first Logie,” she posted on Instagram.

“I have never won my own. Would relish your vote for Silver and/or Gold … my dress is so dreamy, you will want to see more of it on the stage 🤣 (a pre thank you to @alinlekal ).”

Cast your vote at TV Week Logie Awards 2023 (tvweeklogies.com.au)

Twist in KAK’s view on golf

It turns out Kerri-Anne Kennerley really would prefer to be playing golf.

Kennerley said “I’d rather play golf” during her ill-fated time on I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here earlier this year when she refused to take part in a challenge where she would have to find items in an exploding port-a-loo.

Kennerley quit I’m A Celebrity in disgust. Picture: Supplied

“I don’t think you’ll be too surprised to know I decided not to get sprayed with crap,” she told her campmates after bailing out of the disgusting task.

Her refusal to take part in challenges saw her savaged verbally by fellow contestant Domenica Calarco, an ex-MAFS participant.

Kennerley quit the show in disgust.

The Logie Hall of Fame member has now popped up playing golf in the Arctic Circle.

“Yes, I’d rather be playing golf. Never in a million years did I think I’d be teeing off at Lofoten Links in Norway,” she posted on social media.