Hamish Blake opens up about his ‘miraculous escape’ on stage at the ARIAs

Hamish Blake has opened up about a near-disaster he had at the ARIA awards when he had to announce a winner on stage with Andy Lee.

Hamish Blake has opened up about a “miraculous escape” he had when presenting an award at the ARIAs.

Hamish, whose Channel 9 show Lego Masters returns this Sunday, recounted the story on Tommy Little’s new podcast Flustercuck.

The incident took place almost 15 years ago when the ARIAs were a slightly bigger deal than they are today.

“Me and Andy, fresh to the entertainment industry, we get the call that says, ‘You guys can announce an ARIA,’” Hamish told Tommy.

Hamish Blake and Andy Lee at the 2019 Logie Awards. Picture: Darren England/AAP

The duo were allocated the Best Country Album category and attended the ARIAs rehearsals which were held the day before the actual ceremony.

Hamish explained that during the rehearsals, the winners envelopes have names of characters such as Bert and Ernie in them so as to not give away who actually wins.

“We go, ‘The winner of Best Country album is …’ and we open it up and it says ‘Betty Boop’ or whatever,” Hamish said. “But then in the auditorium, a video from Keith Urban rolls. He’s holding the ARIA and he’s like, ‘Hey guys, I just want to say thanks for this.’ And then it quickly stops.”

The video should not have played at the rehearsal and Hamish said there was a “a slight air of whoops, we shouldn’t have done that,” after it screened.

Convinced they knew who was set to win, the comedy duo decided to try and make some money.

“Me and Andy go, ‘Oh my god, Keith Urban definitely wins.’ So then we go, ‘Should we bet on this?’

“We’re frantically trying to get onto different sports betting apps. (But) we couldn’t really bet on it so we were a bit bummed.”

A day later Hamish and Andy were on stage at the actual ARIAs and it was time to announce the winner of the category.

“Andy opens the envelope and there’s a long pause,” Hamish told Tommy. “He’s just staring at the card that he’s opened up.

“I lean over and it’s blank. There’s no name on the card.

“My mind’s racing, his mind’s racing. We’re both obviously thinking the same thing which is we accidentally saw Keith Urbans’ speech play out yesterday, so we’re weighing up the probability that they wouldn’t have got him (Urban) to do one if he didn’t win.”

Tommy Little has a new podcast called Flustercuck.

In the end, an unsure Andy just decided to announce that Keith Urban was the winner.

Urban’s acceptance video started playing on the big screen as Hamish and Andy walked off stage and told producers that the card had no name written on it.

“They were like, ‘What do you mean? You said the winner?’” Hamish recalled. “We were like, ‘Yeah, only because we accidentally found out yesterday when someone played the acceptance speech so we just figured he probably won it.’

“There was a mad scramble backstage as they’re (producers) tearing open all the cards to make sure they had things written on them, but ours was the only blank one.”

Hamish described the incident as a “miraculous escape” and said it could quite easily have ended up like the 2017 Oscars disaster when the wrong winner for Best Picture was announced.

Flustercuck is a new bonus podcast series where Tommy Little sits down with his mates and some famous Aussies to hear about that time in their past where it all went tits up. It’s available now where you get your podcasts or via the Hit App.