Why Myf Warhurst was terrified of getting Spicks and Specks band back together
It was a sad day for music lovers when Spicks and Specks left our TV screens. Now our favourite trio are getting the band back together, but Myf Warhurst had serious reservations.
Lifestyle
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Myf Warhurst doubts she would have ever enjoyed a television career if Spicks and Specks had launched today.
In this brutal new frontier of blink-and-you-miss-it TV, the highly regarded small-screen and radio personality believes even the ABC may have been unwilling to give a show like Spicks and Specks time to find its groove.
Warhurst, 46, readily admits she and her co-hosts, Alan Brough and Adam Hills, were a bit lost when they recorded the first episode of the music quiz show back in 2005.
Her own mother was so certain the show was headed for the scrapheap she urged Warhurst to record the first few episodes to keep for her CV.
“It was hilarious because we didn’t know what we were doing at the start,” Warhurst says.
“I mean I had no idea, to be honest.
“It takes a while, not just to build chemistry but to find a rhythm and really understand what you’re doing. Sadly, these days if you don’t have all that straight out of the blocks it’s almost like you’re doomed.
“I don’t think we would have coped with all that. People would’ve been like, ‘Oh, get this off. It’s terrible’.”
With all TV networks under financial pressure these days, the race for ratings has never been harder fought. And there have been many recent casualties.
Saturday Night Rove lasted just two episodes before it was axed by Network Ten while Channel 7’s The Super Switch couldn’t grab viewers and was swiftly switched to a secondary channel.
“There’s no money in TV anymore,” Warhurst explains.
“You can’t afford to have a show that isn’t hitting every mark but it’s too much pressure for new shows as well.”
It was a different story in 2005 when the then host of a Triple J radio show joined forces with “a friend of a friend” Brough, comedian Hills and a revolving door of musicians and personalities.
Warhurst got to meet many of her teenage crushes including Brian Mannix and Wa Wa Nee’s Paul Gray.
As Spicks and Specks gained momentum, friendships blossomed, with Hills, Brough and Warhurst becoming mates behind the scenes.
When Warhurst lived in England for a year, she stayed in a flat owned by Hills and he lived in a house nearby so there were lots of dinners and family barbecues.
Warhurst sat down with Weekend at St Kilda’s iconic live music venue The Espy to talk about reuniting with Hills and Brough to film four specials with the very same crew they used back in their heyday.
She is looking forward to the trio being back together on screen a lot more than the last time they reunited more than a year ago.
Back then she was anxious whether they would “burn the legacy” by bringing the show back. After all, fans hadn’t warmed to a revival featuring a different trio of hosts in 2014.
“I was also terrified that it would be really depressing when we came back because we are all like 10 years older,” she laughs.
“And everyone would be like, ‘Oh s--t, they should’ve just left it where it was’.”
As soon as the cameras started rolling, she realised there had been no need to worry as “the magic was still there”. So, too, were the all-important ratings.
But even if the latest specials are a runaway hit for the national broadcaster, that doesn’t mean the show will be back on screens in any regular fashion.
For starters, Hills now resides overseas for most of the year.
And Warhurst, although based in Melbourne, is a woman in high demand, hosting a popular afternoon radio program for the ABC and the podcast Bang On with Zan Rowe.
She is also a regular panellist for The Project and lends her warm vocal stylings to characters on the hit ABC cartoon series Bluey.
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As well, two years ago, she and comedian Joel Creasey took over from Sam Pang and Julia Zemiro as the hosts of SBS’s Eurovision Song Contest coverage.
Like many of his generation, Creasey says he grew up watching Warhurst on Spicks and Specks. Now having worked with her, he’s even more enamoured with the star, gushingly describing her as “one of the most spectacular humans” he’s ever known.
“We are also best friends off camera,” Creasey says.
“We recently holidayed to Sicily and Rome together where we drank way too much wine and giggled non-stop. Oh, and it’s become tradition for us to celebrate New Year’s Eve together.
“Myf hosted it at her place last year and she has really set the bar high. So naturally I’ve already started planning my menu.”
Like with most of her career, becoming part of the Logie-winning Bluey was a matter of Warhurst being in the right place at the right time.
The creators had heard her on radio and asked her to join the cast.
Although she is a self-confessed “crazy cat lady”, Warhurst has a soft spot for dogs, too, and jumped at the chance to voice aunt Trixie Heeler.
“From the minute I read the script I felt the creativity, the love, the joy in it,” she says.
“It was really smart and really funny and all about play, which kids love. And dogs. It’s perfect.”
Warhurst is on track to winning even more preschool hearts having fulfilled her childhood dream of appearing on Play School.
She admits she was more nervous reading a book for Play School’s young audience than interviewing a big Hollywood star or a music legend.
“It was an incredible opportunity, a life dream. I grew up watching Play School. I wanted to be on it with John Waters, Benita (Collings) and Noni (Hazlehurst). That was my generation. And I just wanted to hang out with them,” she says.
“But kids, they can see right through you so I have no idea how it went or if I’ll look like an idiot talking down to the kids.”
Of course, it wasn’t just Play School that inspired a young Warhurst.
Her tight-knit family moved around a bit before settling on a fruit orchard at Red Cliffs near Mildura.
“I was pretty free-range,” she recalls.
“We had horses and I would just go out riding all day. I can’t imagine any kid doing that stuff anymore. I would disappear literally all day on a horse.
“I think how wonderful that was and how much I learned to enjoy my own company. And now as I get older, I think about how much I miss the rivers. I miss the Murray and the Darling. I miss that feeling. That’s my home. That idea of being on the river feels like home.”
In Red Cliffs, the only commercial radio station played a steady stream of country and western, but Warhurst developed wider tastes thanks to her three older brothers and music-loving parents.
Her earliest memory is creeping into the lounge to play ABBA on the record player. Behind the sliding doors of that room she would turn into a primary school-age Dancing Queen.
“I wasn’t allowed to use the record player,” she says.
“My brothers would say, ‘Don’t let Myf touch the records because she will scratch them!’ I remember putting that ABBA album on and thinking it was magical. I danced around the loungeroom. It’s such a ’70s image.
“Then, apart from ABBA, I also loved AC/DC, which is a weird combination.
“My brothers were into AC/DC and I remember watching Jailbreak (video) and freaking out, but I loved it. I was into everything and I couldn’t wait to learn more about it.”
From Cantonese opera to the country tunes of her childhood, Warhurst enjoys listening to almost anything, except extreme death metal.
But she also admits that after a few wines, there are very few songs that wouldn’t get her busting some moves on the dance floor.
Warhurst is also a popular personality in her industry, which comes as no surprise because she’s a genuinely nice person.
While she has a great sense of humour, you’ll never catch her making a catty remark for an easy laugh on screen or off.
Hills describes Warhurst as “a ray of sunshine” who, in all his years working with her, says he’s never once seen angry. And that’s saying something given they’ve been on tour together many times and partied like rock stars with actual rock stars.
“Truth is, I’m not sure Myf is entirely convinced of how talented she is and how loved she is by the general public,” Hills says.
“The first few times we did a show to thousands of people, Myf was really overwhelmed by the ovation she received every night. She’d stand at the side of the stage shaking. That humility is, once again, what makes her such a great broadcaster.”
Warhurst jokes that she’s now achieved the kind of recognition that sees strangers come up to her in the street asking if they went to school with her rather than chasing her for autographs and selfies.
Those encounters are often awkward, as the modest Warhurst would never be one to utter the dreaded phrase “Don’t you know who I am?”
“What I have is no filter. I’m just me. I don’t have an act. I can’t be anything but me so that is terrifying sometimes because you feel like it’s putting yourself all out there.
“But other times it’s a good thing because people feel like they could be your friend or just someone they knew from school.”
It also means some of Warhurst’s many fans can feel a sense of ownership over the presenter. That was never more evident than when she left Triple J in 2007 to do a breakfast show with comedian on Triple M.
She was accused of being a sellout. To this day, Warhurst is still stunned by the reaction.
“They got really, really angry and that was confronting because I hadn’t had that before,” she reflects.
The show with Helliar didn’t last long before it became one of the many victims of the cutthroat world of commercial radio.
Warhurst has no regrets because she embraces whatever challenge comes her way. And she’s never been keen to conform to old-fashioned notions of what a woman should do with her life either.
“I never really dreamed of a wedding,” she says.
“I’m just not that person. I’m busy. I don’t have the energy to organise a wedding. People that manage to work and to organise a party for 150 people as well, I bow down to you. You legends. I can’t even clean my house.”
Warhurst has been with her boyfriend Daniel for three years.
“It is serious,” she explains, “but we’re not a serious couple in that sense (of getting married).
“I don’t see relationships as having set rules. I’m older now. You don’t have to get married to be together. You don’t even have to live together.
“Life is a very different prospect and it’s a long life. We don’t have to look at it in terms of those little boxes anymore. And that excites me. I don’t think, ‘Oh gee, I’m getting old.’ I think, ‘Oh wow, I have 20 years left, or even 40. Let’s approach life like we did the first 40’.”
SPICKS AND SPECKS REUNION SPECIAL IS ON SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24 AT 7.30PM ON ABC-TV.