Comedian Ed Kavalee reflects on being a dad and life with Tiff Hall
TV funnyman Ed Kavalee never knew his own father, but with wife Tiffiny Hall’s love he’s focused on being the best dad he can to son, Arnold.
Lifestyle
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Tiffiny Hall opens the front door with the same crackle of zesty optimism you would expect from a fitness trainer.
Dressed in trendy activewear, she walks through to the kitchen of her home in Melbourne’s northwestern suburbs, where her husband, television and radio funnyman Ed Kavalee, is waiting with their son Arnold, 22 months.
While Hall’s infectious cheer is no different to the energy she transmitted through our television screens on The Biggest Loser, Kavalee’s politeness and humble hospitality seem curiously at odds with his skewering sarcasm and dry wit on air.
Perhaps he’s just on his best behaviour for the pair’s first time doing publicity together.
The couple, who wed in 2014, have become the latest celebrity talent to pen a potential nursery classic.
In their first time collaborating professionally, they recount the funny, messy and gloriously chaotic first year of parenthood — from birth to bath time — in their colourful children’s picture book A First Time for Everything.
Flipping through the pages reveals even more of off-duty Kavalee, whose cartoon persona is portrayed for the most part as strikingly sentimental and a surprisingly regular summoner of salty tears.
“I’m not a big crier; I’m a specific crier,” he says, defending his drawn depictions.
Hall interjects: “He cried all through our wedding and all through Arnold’s birth. I didn’t cry at either, I’m very focused. My background means I tackle it with an athletic approach, where I’m in the zone and coach myself through it, so it wasn’t time for tears.”
Hall, who founded training program TIFFXO and is also the trainer for Chris Hemsworth’s fitness app, says while the book celebrates a baby’s magical milestones, she hopes it also reminds first-time parents that these experiences don’t have to be picture-perfect or go to plan.
“In fact, it’s funnier when they don’t,” Hall says.
The couple agree Arnold’s first bath was one of the most memorable milestones.
“It was the most emotional for me,” Hall says. “It was a few days after he’d been born, and it was so cold, that it was the first time I saw his little body, and it was so tiny and just overwhelming.
“Ed cried through the whole thing, of course.”
Kavalee, 40, chimes in: “It was also the first thing we did together as parents.
“The cliche is that (parenthood) brings you closer together — and that’s the hope — but it sort of does.”
While timing is everything in comedy and workouts, Hall, 35, admits theirs was a little off when it came to Arnold’s birth.
“It was very intense, that birth, and Ed nearly missed it. I thought the labour was going to last all day, and he hadn’t had breakfast so I told him to go and get a smashed avocado down the road … and then Arnold was born in 45 minutes. He had just got back, parked the car, walked in and I’m like, ‘Umm, it’s happening’.”
“Tiff was on a fit ball and her waters broke,” Kavalee says.
“I knew it was serious when the obstetrician took his watch off.
“Watching the birth is such a singular moment, because you’re so proud of your wife and you’ve got so much love immediately for this new little thing. And from that moment, everything is changed, and for the better.”
Having been initiated into this tribe of men last year, Kavalee admits that the day hasn’t always been easy for him.
“At the risk of getting emotional, and maybe considering it’s Father’s Day, but this isn’t something I’ve really spoken about before,” he tapers off, his face suddenly crumpling in unease, before closing his eyes.
“Yeah, I’m going to get emotional.”
As he internally navigates his way through this tricky terrain, Hall shuffles in her seat.
“Now I’m going to get emotional,” she says.
In his own time, Kavalee eventually offers up his complex relationship with the concept of fatherhood.
“I grew up with just my mum, who did an incredible job as a single mother of two,” he says.
“Incredible,” Hall choruses in a reassuring whisper.
Kavalee continues: “I didn’t know my father at all and that was his choice.
“But I didn’t feel an absence of that because my mother built a family unit that was strong in that way and I’ve been lucky through professional mentoring relationships that I have had male figures in my life. But in terms of fatherhood, I have absolutely no reference of my own — good or bad — to draw on. I just don’t.
“I’ve seen one photograph of my father and that was in the paper when he died. And I don’t say that as a ‘poor me’ thing, I say it because I don’t feel any lack. And that is a tribute to my mother and other single mothers and single parents who have done the things they do.”
What is clear is that as a result of whatever was missing from Kavalee’s childhood, Arnold is claiming his dad’s debt tenfold.
“For me — and my brother who had a similar experience — I feel as though you’ve sort of got an opportunity to provide something that you didn’t have. And to do that, I just feel lucky.
“I don’t know what I would have been (with a present father) but I don’t feel less or lacking. But what I can do is be as much of a father for Arnold that I didn’t have and I hope that he and Tiff and everyone else feels that.”
Kavalee continues: “Every now and again you do have that moment in your head when you’re like, I don’t have a reference point here for what to do.
“Because sometimes people parent in response to their parents, or in compliment to their parents. And I see that with Tiff’s parents. Tiff’s very close with her parents and they are involved in Arnie’s life which is great, and just seeing the way that they deal with Tiff and me and Arnold, you do pick things up.
“For me, fatherhood is just a really great way of paying tribute to where I’m from but also starting again and saying that I’ll do whatever I can, for as long as I can, for him.”
As for Father’s Day plans, Kavalee is keen to keep things simple.
“I’m very easy,” Kavalee says. “I’m happy with some pancakes and a coffee and to hang out before I go to work.”
For more than a decade, Kavalee has been a comedic presence on our screens and radio. He’s currently a regular panellist on satirical current affairs show Have You Been Paying Attention? and is filling in for Kate Langbroek on the Hit Network’s national drive show with Dave Hughes.
After rising to fame in Gladiators, Hall, who is a 6th Dan black belt in taekwondo and whose role as a trainer on The Biggest Loser earned her a Logie nomination for Most Popular New Female Talent in 2012, is also the author of four health and wellbeing books.
Her enthusiasm for squats has become so contagious she morphed her popularity into training program TIFFXO in 2016, with more than 20,000 people signed up at any one time.
She says motherhood has not diminished her passion for the project and has only made her a better trainer.
“I think my relationship with myself has changed a lot,” Hall says.
“I used to complain if I was tired. I felt like everything had to go to plan. I was in such a routine and so disciplined, and now I’m so much more flexible.
“If I can’t fit in my training at a certain time during the day, that’s OK. I reset and try again later. I’m much more accepting of myself and forgiving of myself. I didn’t get it before. But now that I’m a mum, I get it. Sometimes you really don’t have time. Five or 20-minute workouts is where it’s at.”
The busy pair are just as ambitious in their pursuit of a slick work-life balance as they are personal successes.
“We are lucky that while our work is quite intense, it’s in short spurts,” Kavalee says.
“We have a relay system and we have a diary meeting at the start of the week to make sure that one of us or both of us are around for Arnold. We don’t take jobs that would require us to be in Fiji for three months.”
“Yeah, we won’t be going on Survivor or into the celebrity jungle,” adds Hall with a laugh.
“I just feel like we have these four burners on the stove and that’s all I can handle.
“One is our family, one is my own individual health and mental health, and then Arnold — who gets his own — and then TIFFXO.
“That’s it. Any more, and things start to catch on fire.”
MORE:
HOW HALL BECAME POST-BABY BODY POSTER GIRL
So is there time for more children with so many hotplates bubbling away?
“I would like many but I had a very difficult pregnancy,” says Hall, who suffered from hyperemesis gravidarum, the same severe morning sickness the Duchess of Cambridge experienced during her three pregnancies.
“I call it my princess moment,” she jokes. “If I could skip the pregnancy part, I would have had three kids by now.”
Kavalee beams. “So the straight answer is yes, the long answer is whenever Tiff is ready.
“We always say now that we should have got married after our first date and we should have just had a child the next day, but that’s the beauty of hindsight, and knowing how much we love it,” Kavalee says.
A FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING (ALBERT STREET BOOKS, RRP $19.99) IS OUT ON TUESDAY