Merrick Watts on rebuilding himself and his career after SAS Australia
After a crisis of confidence, the radio star pulled himself together and now has a fitter body and a more resilient attitude.
While watching YouTube clips in the middle of the night, I stumbled across an old acquaintance falling backwards out of a helicopter and into a freezing lake.
It was Merrick Watts: comedian, radio host, and then contestant in Channel 7’s 2020 military-themed reality show, SAS Australia.
I met Watts years ago when the Merrick and Rosso breakfast radio show for Nova was dominating airwaves in the early 2000s and I was briefly the intern on their Channel 9 television show, Merrick & Rosso Unplanned.
I remember Watts as gregarious, capable under pressure, and more distant on set than his on-camera presence would suggest.
Merrick and Rosso, who’d started on triple j in the late 90s before jumping ship and soaring to the top of the airwaves at the then fledgling Nova, continued to perform until Tim Ross retired their popular brand in 2009, leaving Watts facing a career downturn and a crisis of confidence.
In 2018 I chanced a meeting with Watts again on Sydney’s Bay Run. He’d lost 10kg, was running with a weighted backpack, and had lapped the 7km several times that day. He looked fit and intense, and I left the conversation struck by his transformation. That was a few months after he’d hung up his headphones at his last gig as a permanent radio host.
Following Ross’ departure from the team, Watts had stints on shows for 2Day FM, Triple M and again at Nova, but never quite matched the stunning success of Nova’s Merrick and Rosso.
After 20 years, the 46-year-old media veteran and father of two faced a choice: to retire, or keep driving forwards?
He chose retirement, and spent the next few years battling a serious comedown.
Yet in his reality TV appearances on SAS Australia, Watts turned whatever was going on inside him into a gripping performance — he finished as a finalist alongside Nick “The Honey Badger” Cummins and Sabrina Frederick.
In the coming weeks he will again take to the stage in Newcastle as part of his regional touring show — combining comedy and wine — called Grapes of Mirth, which, despite pandemic-related disruption, continues to draw crowds.
And earlier this month he revealed his appointment as an ambassador for the 2021 Year of South Australian Wine, an initiative of the South Australian Tourism Commission.
Arriving at Bertoni cafe in Sydney’s Balmain, Watts hands me a bottle of shiraz and I feel like I’m taking a bribe. He’s kept the weight off and looks like a detective in his blue shirt.
His skin is smooth, his expression hawkish. The comedy falls away as he reflects on what his time on SAS meant to him.
“Twenty years at a very high level of the business, working with a close-knit team at a very high tempo. Very demanding, very high pressure …” he trails off. “Who else does that?”
He’s expecting a response, so I supply it. The military.
“Correct. Special forces,” he says.
Throughout the SAS Australia selection process the comic revealed a durable and hardworking side of himself, but it was still a surprise to see the 46-year-old finish so strongly alongside Cummins and Frederick, who are 33 and 23 respectively — and both professional athletes.
“I didn’t want to do a reality show,” he says. “I wanted to do that show. I wondered how I would go, and I knew what it would do for me, if I got through it.”
Watts is obsessed with military history. His grandfather was in the army, air force and navy, and fought in both the First and Second World Wars. Over the past few years, Watts has reshuffled his life. He sold his luxury home in Sydney reportedly for more than $6m; a record-breaking figure for the inner west.
His two children are growing up, and Watts himself has been on a long journey from the radio host and party boy of the past to the man sitting in front of me.
As we talk about SAS Australia, the discussion turns to male stereotypes and roles. “I’m not an alpha male, but I can slip into the role. They don’t see me as part of their vibe. I love women, and women’s energy. If they’re comfortable with me in the room, that’s success.”
Watts connected with the staff on the show, who were all ex-military. Their regimented daily lives, discipline, and tough-but-fair attitude gave Watts motivation and something to aspire to.
“If you are a reliable man, particularly to your family, then it can only be of benefit. It’s not about being altruistic, it’s about being less selfish. That’s balance.”
Balance has been in short supply throughout Watts’ life, which was typified by extremes during his hot streak at radio — “I was getting up at 4am and walking into one of the most high-pressure jobs in the Australian media industry. There was no precedent” — but it also goes back further.
“There was a lot of uncertainty around my childhood, my parents and their divorce, and my relationship with my father.
“It’s what drives me to create certainty from uncertainty.”
There is an ever-changing quality to Watts. He was the class clown at school, and a people person by trade through his first jobs in hospitality. “I used to worry that I was a jack of all trades, but now I realise it’s a skill,” he says. “I can do radio, I can do television, I can do acting, I can do stand-up.
“I have very good mental dexterity, and SAS … exemplified this. I can shift quickly. That’s what I loved about radio — moving from funny stuff to news items. I love that gear-changing.
“SAS taught me to strengthen that laser-like focus, bring it all out to the maximum, and exhaust that. It allowed me to have strength but also focus on the funny side.”
Watts is especially earnest in conversation these days, a quality that worked for him during the interrogation scenes in the show.
He brings that energy to our interview, although at times it feels more overwrought than direct.
“Merrick Watts and idle hands are not good. I come from an alcoholic background, and now I can do wine tastings and barely touch a drop. Control starts with yourself.
“If you can control yourself, you have a better chance of controlling your environment.”
The turnaround in his attitude seems to have come after realising that excessive work and alcohol issues were mirroring problems in his personal life. “My ego was out of control at Nova. I behaved poorly for a protracted period of time approaching my father’s death.
“He died of liver cancer, and from the time I found out until after his death, I was a different person. I had a very short temper, no moderation, and I couldn’t wield my emotions properly.
“When he died in 2007, I said, ‘I have to make changes, and I have to create a positive out of this’.”
After cutting back on the booze and strictly regimenting his day-to-day habits, Watts began to see improvements in his mood and career.
For SAS Australia he doubled down, spending weeks putting himself through physical hell in training.
“My kids would see me going for a six-hour march with my backpack on, and they’d say, ‘There goes Dad with his psycho pack on, he’s a psycho’. I’d go in the middle of the night, come home and put myself in stress positions in a cupboard with headphones on, my hands bound.
“Without the context of the show, it appears to be insane.”
Insane or not, his commitment to preparation for the gruelling show paid off.
“When they put me in stress positions on the show, I swear to God I was just thinking about rieslings and wines for half an hour … I swear to God. It was total mind and body separation.”
Indeed, wine tasting, study and collecting is a serious hobby that has led to his business, Grapes of Mirth, a package deal of wine and comedy that tours throughout the nation’s wine regions.
Earlier this year, I went along to see him do his thing at a show in Orange. It was a well-paced mix of comedy and music. “Before I made the decision to transition out of radio, I was at a winery in McLaren Vale, hosting an event and thought, ‘Why am I not doing more comedy at wineries?’.
“I was coming up to my 20th year of radio without a break, and the end of a three-year contract with Triple M. I wasn’t jaded, but I was using the same muscle groups all the time.
“I did the comedy and wine gig at McLaren Vale and” — he clicks his fingers — “it just went like that.”
Watching his performance at the event in Orange, I couldn’t help but wonder if running the business side of things represents the future for Watts.
“Not at all! Grapes of Mirth is the two hemispheres of my personality working harmoniously. I have to be pragmatically running an event and being a boss — focused like a laser beam. Then, when I’m up on stage holding the microphone, it’s all the funnies.”
Reflecting on the gig in Orange, he adds: “On the weekend I had very good timing, and all my jokes were landing … I didn’t walk away from the weekend wincing. All of the jokes landed.”
Even if I don’t share his verdict on the stand-up, the event certainly ran well, the featured comics were funny and the audience seemed happy.
By his own admission, Watts is a “confidence player”. Discussing the time he moved to Triple M and 2Day FM, trying unsuccessfully to replicate the success of his pairing with Ross, he says: “When we started Nova, there was nothing else like it. I had absolutely no doubt in my mind that we’d take that station to number one. We did via sheer determination. The resilience is important, to get through down days.”
Watts is capable of a good degree of personal insight but, like many people, seems to have a hard time recognising that success or failure is sometimes outside his control.
“(In) March 2017 I had a crisis of confidence and said, ‘I’m not getting out of radio …’ By April, I got myself together and gave notice. As a result, I had one of the best years of radio I’ve had,” he says.
Perhaps that’s why SAS Australia was such a good fit; a show where contestants are expected to triumph over seemingly insurmountable odds through perseverance alone.
“If you allow yourself to hit the bottom, you leave a dent. If you can arrest the decline before you punch the ground, that’s what you want to do,” he says. “I saw that I was descending and decided to bring myself back up. What I burnt at the funeral pyre was self-doubt.
“I have a massive need for praise,” he adds. “I would do extraordinary things on the course, looking for praise, and they’d give you nothing.
“I used to think that people who said, ‘You’ve got to give 110 per cent!’ were crazy. It wasn’t until I was on a mountain pushing against the agony, when the DS (Directing Staff) came up and said, ‘Results, not excuses, number 10’.
“I pushed through the pain barrier, thought I could have a heart attack, but my brain just said, I don’t care, just go. I didn’t stop until I was at the front. You have to be aware that you’ll lose elements of your personality in the process. It’s saying to yourself — ‘I am going to set an internal standard that I’m going to be at, forever’.”
By completely devoting himself to his ritualistic exercise, study and work, Watts emerged from his post-radio crisis a different man. But has he completely buried the demons he was dealing with?
“The most important lessons I learnt around a military show is that the creatures on this Earth are the ones that adapted,” he concludes.
“The ones that didn’t adapt are dead.”
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout