Larry Emdur: ‘I always wanted to be the centre of attention’

He is one of TV’s enduring stars and now, Larry Emdur has revealed how he became a self-confessed ‘egomaniacal TV wanker’ as he launches his new memoir.

EXCLUSIVE: Whether co-hosting breakfast television with Kylie Gillies on The Morning Show or ushering people into the evening with The Chase Australia game show, Larry Emdur is in his element, chatting to celebrities and everyday Aussies with equal enthusiasm.

Now, with the release of his memoir Happy As, he shares his most treasured family tales and behind-the-scenes secrets. Reflecting on his enduring career, Emdur tells Stellar, “I’ve had this outrageously lucky run”.

If you ask anyone on television what led them to pursue a career in front of the camera, they will more than likely refer back to their performance in a state debating competition or a lucky break they got after journalism school. Not Larry Emdur.

As he tells it in his new memoir, the road to becoming “a fully fledged, card-carrying, self-centred, egomaniacal TV wanker” began in primary school and not on speech day, but in the annual marching parade.

Up against girls trained in “physie” and boys who had consulted books on how to march, nine-year-old Emdur figured he could nail it by practising in front of the mirror and ensuring his socks stayed up.

To that end, his mum knotted elastic into a pair of garters and little Larry focused on straightening his thumbs so they didn’t look like “two little undercooked frankfurters blowing in the breeze”.

For a man who would later place fifth on Dancing With The Stars, it was a pivotal moment.

Had he not gone on to win the Rose Bay Public School marching parade trophy – having survived loss of circulation in his legs and lactic acid build-up in his thumbs – we may, he points out, have been spared 40 years of his mug on the telly.

“It’s when I realised this was where I always wanted to be,” Emdur tells Stellar. “The centre of attention, with everyone looking at me.”

As much as Happy As is – true to its title – Emdur’s laugh-out-loud chronicle of his four decades in television, the book also serves as a sepia-toned recollection of a time when childhoods were long and families were everything.

“We weren’t poor, but we never had huge amounts of money or resources, yet we never missed out on anything,” says Emdur, 57, whose evocations of suburban life in Sydney’s Bondi Beach with a mum and dad who loved him fiercely go some way to explaining his longevity in the TV industry.

“Be nice to everyone,” his father David would constantly tell him.

Meanwhile, his mum Faye pinned ribbons and certificates on the family corkboard and celebrated even the most minor achievements by placing her hand over her heart and whispering to Emdur and his sisters, “I love you. I’m so proud of you.”

Larry Emdur. ‘I’ve never taken it too seriously. Picture: Steven Chee

Larry Emdur has released a new memoir. Picture: Steven Chee

While Emdur points out that her pride was occasionally misplaced – his first job was stapling pizza boxes together and his second job only lasted a day after he gave away too many ice creams to his mates – he credits the simplicity of his upbringing for keeping his ego in check.

“I’ve never taken it too seriously,” he says, expressing gratitude that 15 years at the helm of Seven Network’s The Morning Show along with a high-profile role hosting The Chase Australia have kept him so busy.

“I’ve had this outrageously lucky run,” he says, talking to Stellar from his new apartment where wall-to-wall glass offers a panoramic view of Sydney Harbour.

“Sometimes I’ve gone from one network to the other just a day after my contract has finished and that’s really unusual. The only thing I can really put that down to is I’ve tried not to be a diva or a nasty person.

“I’ve always been polite where possible; that’s the only real constant. Because it’s certainly not talent.”

While his career was built on successes such as The Price Is Right, Emdur also had duds, notably The Main Event and Family Double Dare, which he says was axed after one episode.

As he adds, he learnt quickly that while he “can care to the point of a heart attack” about some jobs, decisions are largely made way above his head.

“I learnt early to chill out and I found that the less I cared about things, the more often they came,” he says. “Only foolish people rely on TV. It’s such a dangerous place and the tide changes so quickly.”

That’s why he worries about reality-show contestants who buy into the hype and counsels them to carefully manage their moment. “If you develop an ego in the [television] environment, you’re dead in the water,” he explains.

“I’ve seen egomaniacs and narcissists, I’ve seen them crash and burn pretty quick. People hate them and talk about them behind their back.”

While the father of two has embraced Instagram, the platform where he has 157,000 followers, Happy As goes back to an era before social media and cancel culture, a time when mistakes at work were more likely regarded as part of the learning rather than grounds for an apology or sacking.

’If you develop an ego in the [television] environment, you’re dead in the water’ Picture: Steven Chee

Emdur relates how, upon being sent to interview Michael Chamberlain, the father exonerated in the death of his nine-week-old baby Azaria, he had unwittingly referred to himself by a title he’d been given because of his talent for covering fluffy animal stories.

“It turns out, introducing yourself as ‘The Dog Reporter’ to a man whose baby was taken by a dingo is not the greatest way to build a rapport,” he recalls dryly.

Then there’s the time he missed Queen Elizabeth II emerging on the Royal Yacht Britannia because he was too busy looking at bikini-clad girls on the Brisbane River.

Or the occasion in which he had flown to New York to conduct an interview with John Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono, but his sole preparation had amounted to reading author Albert Goldman’s unflinching 1988 biography The Lives Of John Lennon, which he’d picked up in the airport bookshop.

When Ono refused to answer questions about the book, proclaiming it “rubbish”, he was forced to wing it. Emdur suspects she felt sorry for him and ended up giving him one of his best ever interviews.

“She said to me afterwards that I reminded her of her son,” he recalls. “She saw a boy doing a man’s job and she just played along for whatever reason.”

Compare that to the controversy that ensued when his Seven colleague Matt Doran issued an apology to Adele last November, and had to explain to viewers why he hadn’t listened to her new album before an exclusive interview, and you understand why Emdur is grateful he got his start when he did.

Yet part of Emdur’s charm is treating superstars as ordinary people, like when he invited a newly famous Jason Donovan over to his family home to go for a surf. His parents chatted away to their son’s new friend despite having no idea who he was.

While Happy As – the title was suggested by Emdur’s primary school mate, Robbie – gives an insight into celebrity antics, its most heartwarming stories are anchored in family life.

There’s the seduction of and grand marriage proposal to Sylvie, his Polish-born wife of 28 years; his childhood eating pies and hanging out on a boat with his dad; Puberty Blues-style surf (and sex) culture; and the growing realisation that his dad’s smoking was eventually going to kill him.

“Reading back over the book, if I’m not stealing something, I’m crying,” says Emdur, who adds that his father’s death in 2004 hit him hard and led him to encourage others to stop smoking and to campaign for the Raise Foundation.

“It was a turning point where I realised it’s OK to open up,” he says. “It’s something I hadn’t considered much because my life has been very jazz-handsy and game-show host.”

‘My dad always told me … look for the lighter side, wherever you can’. Picture: Steven Chee

Having taken up meditation to manage the increased work demands of The Chase, Emdur applied the techniques to the writing of his book last summer.

He’d rise at 4am at his holiday property and write solidly all day, pausing only for a quick swim. Despite leaving school without his HSC – and with a loose relationship with punctuation – he enjoyed the process.

He recounts how he contacted one old girlfriend after re-reading the love letters she’d sent him, to which he’d never responded.

“I wasn’t being nasty, I was just a boy and with my old-man glasses on and being the father of a daughter, it wasn’t good enough,” he says.

One thing he believes he has done well, however, is offer his children the same sense of calm he enjoyed growing up.

Jye, 28, and Tia, 23, have now moved out of home, but he recently honoured his family with a new tattoo, a heart intersected with three arrows.

Sylvie, he says, has been his rock, sticking with him through periods of unemployment and being understanding even when she was eight months pregnant with a broken leg while he was in Melbourne surrounded by bikini models on The Price Is Right.

It’s clear, however, that she shares his sense of humour, with an effusive comment leading the endorsements on the opening page of his book. “Oh look, it’s very sweet,” reads her review, “but you’re not going to win a Pulitzer.”

While Emdur’s memoir is full of wit, it’s also a reminder of less complicated days before the explosion of stress and mental-health issues.

“My sister is an adolescent psychologist and she’s so busy with issues that just weren’t around for our generation,” he says.

“My mum knew how to manage sunburn, but how do you manage stress and anxiety?

He’s also aware from hosting daily television through the several years of bushfires, floods and the upheaval of a pandemic that “no-one has escaped misery in the last couple of years”.

Larry Emdur features in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Daniel Nadel

It is, Emdur says, why he’s always looking to give viewers a laugh.

“I look forward,” he says, tempering his optimism by noting that it’s a pretty easy thing for him to say as he sits in front of a cheese platter.

“I just try to brighten things up, whether that’s on The Morning Show or The Chase.

That’s what my dad always told me: to look for the lighter side, wherever you can.”

Happy As: Stories Of Summer, Childhood And The Magic Of Family by Larry Emdur (HarperCollins, $34.99) is out Wednesday.

Originally published as Larry Emdur: ‘I always wanted to be the centre of attention’