This was published 3 years ago
From Andrew G to Osher Gunsberg, a TV presenter stays true to himself
By Debi Enker
For more than 20 years, Osher Gunsberg has been a familiar face on our TV screens. But as he’s filled a range of roles, he hasn’t always been known by that name.
Following a stint as a presenter on Channel [V], he came to mainstream attention in 2003 as Andy G, the co-host – with James Mathison – of Channel Ten’s Australian Idol. He held that role for seven years, anchoring the final season solo after Mathison departed. Since then, he’s become one of Ten’s trusty go-to front-men for light-entertainment shows such as The Bachelor, The Bachelorette, Bachelor in Paradise and The Masked Singer.
The many faces of Osher Gunsberg: as Andy G in Australian Idol, as master of the rose ceremony in The Bachelor, and as presenter of the documentary A Matter of Life and Death.Credit: Digitally altered image
Beyond that, he’s narrated Bondi Rescue; been a thoughtful and eloquent panellist on Q&A; and, as a keen amateur photographer, hosted the ABC’s photography contest, Photo Finish. He’s appeared on The Project, Studio 10, Thank God You’re Here, All Star Family Feud and Celebrity Joker Poker, and created daytime-TV ripples when – as a vegan contestant on Ready, Steady, Cook – he dared to present a plant-based dish involving tofu.
Over the years, he’s evolved from a blond and bubbly young man into a versatile and capable TV journeyman. He can put on a happy face when required, and he’s done just that convincingly over the years. But along the way, he’s also candidly and courageously discussed his bumpy journey off-screen, in TV appearances, on podcasts and in his 2018 autobiography, Back, After the Break.
Now, he’s presenting A Matter of Life and Death (SBS, September 19, 8.30pm), a documentary directed by Jodi Boylan, which he co-produced with Rebecca Vallis, and which is part of SBS’s Australia Uncovered series. It’s about mental illness and suicide, and initiatives to help address them. “I want to find out how new science, innovative thinking and technology are helping to prevent suicide,” he says. “Because you cannot fix a problem if you do not acknowledge that it exists.”
But before that in the program, he explains that he has a tendency towards generalised anxiety, ruminating anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, that he’s suffered from depression and had experiences of suicidal ideation. Later comes information about his struggle with alcohol.
Osher Gunsberg on Bachelor in Paradise.Credit: TOM HOLLOW
Gunsberg then talks to a range of people who suffer from mental illness and a number of doctors, scientists and community workers involved in programs designed to help them. He explores drug trials and drug-free experiments, visits a railway station to find out how CCTV cameras are being used in suicide prevention, and participates in a First Nations ceremony in an effort to discover what we can learn about mental health and wellbeing from the oldest continuous culture on the planet.
He’s an engaged, empathetic and thoughtful interviewer, and he makes no effort to hide his hearing aids when the camera follows him. He’s also been open about his hearing problems. It’s a raw and revealing performance in what is clearly a project of particular significance to him.
His appearance in the documentary is very different from what he’s required to do – and does with apparent ease – elsewhere on TV. Through nine seasons of The Bachelor, he’s been the charming ringmaster in snazzy jackets, smoothly delivering envelopes and monitoring roses amid the candles and chandeliers. Ditto with the gender reversal of the objects of desire and contestants through six seasons of The Bachelorette.
He knows what’s required on the romance contests and delivers it with a carefully calibrated approach that involves both the necessary appearance of solemnity and a twinkle in the eye. Similarly on The Masked Singer, which starts its third season on Sunday, he manages to convey a giddy excitement about the identity of the mystery guests who might be encased in those giant, elaborate costumes.
He’s an engaged, empathetic and thoughtful interviewer, and he makes no effort to hide his hearing aids when the camera follows him.
His public name change came in 2009. He was born Andrew Gunsberg, but was told early in his radio days that his name wouldn’t work in that industry, so it was abbreviated. After advice from a shaman in Tel Aviv who told him about the power of a name and how what we call ourselves affects our lives, he reclaimed the surname as part of his stage name. He chose Osher because of an encounter with “the coolest man I’d ever met”, an Israeli ex-commando cameraman who looked like a fashion model and whose name means happiness.
Gunsberg is a rarity on TV. We tend to want the people who appear regularly on screens in our homes as themselves – that is, not as actors playing different roles – to remain comfortingly familiar, ideally ageless and unchanging. (Think of the kerfuffle when a female presenter alters her hair colour or hairstyle.)
But Osher Gunsberg has accomplished a singular juggling act, delivering what’s required of him while managing to stay true to himself. He’s revealed his fragility, in the process sacrificing none of his dignity and establishing an inspiring precedent for others.
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