Rove McManus Articles/Reviews

[Paddlefoot]

Hey everyone just thought I'd let you know there's a artcile bout Rove ( I think it's about his show) and there's a pic too.
I can type it up and/or scan the pic if anyones interested.
Paddlefoot

[Bear]

Yeah id like to have a look if ya dont mind putting it up.

:p

[chicken]

Me too but only if you want to. *begs*

[Paddlefoot]

Ok hi everyone! So two people are interested? wow...
Haha nah I was gonna post this earlier but I kept getting sidetracked...as I tend to do these days...sorry!
But long at last here it is:

Everybody Loves Rove – The Guide, The Canberra Times
Feb 11 – 18

Vibrant variety series Rove Live is back for 2002 with a fresh package of entertainment. Karen Wisby talks with the self-styled talk-show king about fame, fortune and the future.

A few years ago, some obnoxious little prat nobody knew turned up on our screens with all the charisma of a well-shod television host but none of the airtime. He was loud, brash and they said the format couldn’t last. Now it seems everybody loves Rove McManus (yes, that is his real name), host of channel ten’s Rove Live.
The vibrant McManus produced and hosted 40 shows last year, winning the timeslot more often than not.  Now he’s back for another 40 plus his radio show and his touring stage show. Is there anything more he can fit in?
“Sometimes I just sit there and think: I’m not working hard enough,” he laughed. “But I can relax fairly easily. When I get home I just switch off. I do almost nothing – watch TV, play a computer game. And I find exercise really clears my head. It helps keep me from going out of my mind.”
Last year the show boasted Hugh Jackman, John Travolta, Emma Bunton and Lenny Kravitz. This year, the show sets a high mark with Eric Bana promoting Black Hawk down in the first installment Tuesday night.
One would have thought Rove had run out of stars but it appears he has them on tap.
“It’s lucky really,” he said of the stream of celebrities the show hosts. “It’s a really good time to be in Australia right now, with the Golden Globe nominations ad everything. There are also several movies productions happening here. The interest in Australia is attracting is bigger than it used to get and we’re more respected. These days when a movie premiers in Australia, they bring a star down. That certainly works in our favour, it wasn’t anything like this five years ago.”
McManus admits he’s just like any of us when confronted with a huge star. He to, gets a bit wobbly at the knees.
“I’m just like someone that’s watching at home but I actually get to talk to the person,” he said. “Sometimes I really get awestruck and I get that feeling when I see someone huge in the flesh for the first time, sort of that ‘Oh wow, oh-my-godfather’ feeling. But you try to keep a level head as well, after all you are the host of a TV show.”
A few of the stars stand out in McManus’ mind, but none more than a certain great Scottish comedian. “Billy Connolly was a breeze” he said “It was meant to go for 8 minutes but went for nearly half an hour. That’s due to hum. You don’t have to ask him anything; he’s just always switched on. John Travolta was good to> I’d never met him before and he’s such a huge star. He could have been a complete a…hole and got away with it because he’s so famous but he wasn’t. He was a really good person.”
Of course it hasn’t always been clear sailing for McManus. His first foray into commercial television was a late-night program on channel nine, which was cancelled after a year.
“We had ten episodes on channel Nine in our first season. It aired live on Wednesdays at 11pm and we were nominated for two Logies for the first season,” McManus said of the show’s short-lived success.
“We had four young comedians with all this time. It was like giving us the keys to a lolly shop.”
And then it ended.
“It was strange. I never really found out why the show ended,” he said. “One day we were in a meeting talking about next year, then the next meeting we were told there was no next year.”
McManus has certainly found his niche at Ten, where he produces and hosts Rove Live. He said his life as a producer came about because he didn’t really want to be forced into doing silly little stunts.
“It’s a but like the chicken and the egg,” he said when he was asked if producer or host happened first.
“The two just kind of happened at the same time. When I went into meetings and negotiated, they asked about some of the things you would want, like creative control. I wasn’t really fussed about creative control as such, but I just wanted to be able to say no to some things, like donning a frog suit with a basket of fruit on my head singing ‘I’ve got a lovely bunch of coconuts’. “So I was told if I wanted to do it my way, I’d have to do it myself.”
So what happened to the obnoxious prat we saw three years ago?
“I’m still an obnoxious prat, but people know me now,” McManus said, taking the jibe with humour.

Rove Live screens Tuesdays at 9.30pm on Ten Capital.


It also comes with two largish pics but I tried to scan them and my scanner conveiniently broke...sorry!

Hope you guys enjoy it,
paddlefoot

[chicken]

ohh Thanks heaps paddlefoot. Realy do appreciate it.  

[suhj]

THANKEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[Bear]

Thank you so very much for putting the article up for us to read. Much apreciated.

Luv Claire

[EVIL EVOR]

Rove live in Britain

By Robert Fidgeon - News.com.au
November 04, 2004


ROVE McManus is set to have his own show on British TV next year.
England's Channel Five has commissioned the two-time Gold Logie winner to make a pilot of an export version of Rove Live to screen in Britain each week.

"It's a great compliment to the team who work on our show that a TV network on the other side of the world would want us to beam in a tonight show from Melbourne," McManus said.

"The really exciting part of this is that they are not just replaying the Australian show.

"They're allowing us to create a new version for the UK.

--------------------------------------------

Roving to Britain

GOLD Logie winner Rove McManus announced yesterday that he is producing a pilot program for a version of Rove Live to air on Channel5 in Britain. "The pilot that Channel 5 has commissioned will be a special version of Rove Live that will be beamed to the UK each week into a late-night timeslot," he said in a statement. "The program will be produced in Australia and will include elements of the Australian show plus material created exclusively for the UK. Craig Campbell will be the executive producer of this new program in addition to the Australian version of Rove Live." Skithouse, Ten's sketch comedy, has also been bought for the British market by the Paramount Comedy Channel.

[Leishpod]

ah... what the?


it won't exactly be rove live then.. surely...

[wheehah]

unless he goes to the uk maybe? i don't think that would happen though

[Laney]

Originally Posted by EVIL EVOR

Skithouse, Ten's sketch comedy, has also been bought for the British market by the Paramount Comedy Channel.

why?? don't the british realise that their sketch shows are so much better than ours and that skithouse is a crap version of everything else they already have! don't get me wrong, skithouse, i think, is the only sketch comedy show which people have taken a liking too which airs over here at the moment, but i think i'd be surprised if it worked over in the UK.

[unfrufru]

Knight of nights

March 25, 2005





Rove McManus
Photo: Marina Oliphant



With a tonight show as its flagship, Rove McManus created a youthful media empire. Brigid Delaney discovers TV's reluctant mover and shaker.

Rove McManus celebrated his 30th birthday last year at a bowling green with 80 friends and family members, an ironic nod to a sport for the elderly. He paced the drinking and was quite reflective about the occasion.

"Turning 30 had connotations of coming of age because you are older. It's not the 20s where you can still pull off 'I'm closer to being a young teen person.' You hit 30 and it's got this apparent air of authority to it."

More than a year on, part of McManus's persona is that of the impish manchild. Often referred to as television's "golden child", he is sweet, funny, and not too threatening - a perfect son-in-law, boy next door or light entertainment talk-show host.

Previous media profiles have painted McManus in a cartoonish light - a child trapped in a child's body (McManus is 173cm), obsessed with animation and toys, wearing casual clothes and lolling on oversized couches in his office with his pals.

But look below the surface and you'll find a successful businessman (ranked nine on last year's BRW rich entertainers list), a perfectionist who demands creative control and who is a very smart operator. His wife, actor Belinda Emmett, is battling cancer, and a fire burnt down his office. These hardships and time have provided gravitas and wisdom in spades.

We meet in McManus's new office on a grey Melbourne day in the grey suburb of Abbotsford. It's down the road from his warehouse, destroyed in October due to an electrical fault. The night of the fire, McManus and his workmates were at the pub. A round of beers had just been bought when the phone call came.
The warehouse was home to McManus's company, Roving Enterprises (which also makes skitHouse and the AFL show Before the Game, and produces the music industry's awards), since 1999 and was an Aladdin's cave of props, equipment and videotapes.

After any fire there is always the sharp smack of loss - over and over again. "For every one thing you find that you have saved there are five or six things that are gone," McManus says. But he realises there's one thing you can never lose - experiences.

He says with intensity, "I wish I could know everything ... I want to read a lot, I want to watch a lot, my mind is a sponge but it's overwhelming, there's too much to know ... I want to know about history, I enjoy cooking. I want to know more about spices and what spices work for what things ...

"I want to know everything about every movie that's ever made and every actor and all their histories and I want to know about our history and ... at the same time I want to know about feudal Europe."

He has been learning Spanish and already knows some French.

Why is he trying to cram all this learning into an already busy life?

"I think you are taught the most at the worst possible age. High school is when you study history, biology and you don't give a rat's arse. I would love to sit and learn things now, but that's the maturity that comes with being older and that's when you have the self-reflection to say 'What do I want to know about myself? What do I want to learn?'"

Roving Enterprises' executive producer, Craig Campbell, describes McManus as a "committed workaholic who knows exactly where he wants all of us to be. He's so committed to the company, he's here from morning to dusk. He's incredible. He insists on reading every bit of fan mail."

David Mott, head of programming at Channel Ten, which screens Rove Live, agrees. "Rove is heavily involved in the creative end, he's more than just a host."

It's a position he has guarded carefully. In the early days, there was more pressure to acquiesce control to the networks.

McManus's television career began at community TV Channel 31, where he developed his own show. After that, Channel Nine took him and his show on for a season. John Stephens, the then head of programming (now at Channel Seven), says the show "was impressive but a bit narrow. At the time, Nine was looking for a possible replacement for the host of Hey, Hey It's Saturday but he [McManus] didn't want to do it."

Ten stepped in after negotiations broke down with Nine.

But becoming a TV personality for hire was never McManus's goal, says his manager, Kevin Whyte, who looks after a stable of other comedians including Dave Hughes, Merrick and Rosso and Judith Lucy.

"He's not a hermit, but he's not running down the red carpet kissing people. One of the things that keeps him engaging to audiences is that he doesn't live exclusively in the showbiz world. He's not a person that ever really wanted to be a star - he sees so much more in the world."

But while McManus has an expansive approach to life - trying everything from diving with sharks to playing a tetchy crab in Finding Nemo - a strong vein of nostalgia runs through our conversation.

For his 31st birthday, he requested a book from his mum containing recipes of childhood meals. "She did sausages and onion with this amazing gravy. I've tried to do it and I can't get the gravy - and I thought: what am I doing wrong?"

The Perth-born McManus calls Melbourne and Sydney home, has recently closed deals for his shows in Britain, New Zealand and France, and has an affinity for Margaret River, Rottnest Island and Broome. He also loves to dive and says he is often happiest in the water.

But where is his spiritual home?

"My parents' place. Going back there is a feeling of [being] safe that I love ... because I'm not Rove McManus the TV guy, I'm little Johnny McManus that grew up in the house 30 years ago." The nickname Rove was coined by his siblings and it stuck.

Friends who went to his January wedding talk about the love in the room - much of it radiating from his sprawling family. He is the third of four children and his upbringing in the Perth suburb of Willetton sounds like a middle-class Cloudstreet.

"My dad's mother and her sister, when they got married, bought houses next door to each other so my dad grew up with his first cousins, and they are still living there 70 years later. It's the East Fremantle principality where we are the mafia - everyone knows everyone else," McManus says.

There were early mornings of TV cartoons, afternoons of kicking the footy and playing with cousins (one now an AFL star) and the still vivid excitement of being a competition winner in a children's variety show.

"They pulled out my entry and I won a television. I recognised my drawing and they read my name out, flashing on the screen, and I came running out to Mum and Dad in the bedroom and I think I was crying."

McManus moved to Melbourne in the mid-'90s to pursue a comedy career, first as a stand-up comedian, then in television, and all the while the clan swelled around him.

"I come from a very close-knit family, a very big family that's just growing by the year as we all get older."

McManus refuses to discuss publicly his relationship with Emmett, but friends describe him as "extremely loyal".

He is well known for helping out friends by giving them a break on his show - a legacy of being part of a tight-knit group of comedians in mid-'90s Melbourne struggling to get a break.

One of their number, Merrick Watts, recalls an almost nerdish McManus who "was a really bad dresser - black jeans and Blundstone boots, but [while] it wasn't like any of us were massive paupers, it was struggle street. We used to all shop at op shops."

The young comedians - including Hughes, Wil Anderson, McManus and Merrick and Rosso - were "people who weren't getting a lot of breaks in the stand-up rooms and the way they were run. The older darlings were getting more of a break," Watts says.

When McManus broke into television, however, he helped clear a path for the others.

"I remember being jealous of Rove when he got a TV show, but it was a happy jealousy," Watts says. "He's one of the hardest-working people in showbiz - and he'll be around for a long time."

TV veteran Bert Newton agrees: "I believe Rove is the television talent of the new millennium. He's reinventing what people like me were lucky enough to pioneer in television."

The question is - will he want it?

Of course he'd love the show to keep running - in its heyday, Rove Live was rating above 1 million viewers but for the past two years figures have been oscillating between 700,000 and 900,000 an episode.

But fame and the A-list leave him cold. Occasionally he will go to the pub or one of Melbourne's tucked-away little bars, but he prefers hosting dinner parties, seeing a film or spending time with his family.

"I'm incredibly proud of my sister, who's raised three fantastic kids. To me, what she's done is far more than anything I've ever achieved, which in a lot of ways seems very superficial ...

"I've met this famous person or I've been to that wonderful event - and when you're long gone, what's that? It's nothing, nothing - stats on a piece of paper. She's got these three incredible kids and that's tremendous - that's more than I could wish to accomplish in a lifetime."

What the...?

Rove McManus on offending viewers
"People said because I am Catholic it was disgraceful that I made jokes about the Pope, but to me, if I am a Catholic, I can laugh at it."

On criticism that the show is middle brow
"Some people could say it needs to be edgier, some people say it needs to be funnier. I've been told I've been mean to people ... You're not going to make everyone happy."

Best guest
Nancy Cartwright from The Simpsons. "Just watching all these characters coming out of this little blonde lady, I was like a school kid clapping my hands saying, 'Do it again, do it again'."

Worst guest
American comedian Scott Capurro talked in 2001 about having sex with the Virgin Mary. "Until this day, there are parts of me that will never be OK with that incident."

On asking guests personal questions
"It would be like inviting someone over to your house and being rude to them. I'll ask something if it's relevant ... We had Pat Cash on talking about feeling suidical but it was relevant because he had a biography out at the time."

[Renee_Turner]

I would call this thread 'Rove article', but there probably won't be enough specifically comedy-based articles to keep it going. So here's a spot for the narky reviewer or unhappy columnist.

This is from the Herald Sun Sunday Eye.


Rove never on the nose
Rove McManus's supporters and critics have hit the The Eye inbox with comment about his nationwide tour
20may05

THREE weeks since the Logies and still any mention of Rove "some bits are live" McManus sparks argument.

Among Eye readers, it's about a 50/50 split on whether he's funny or not.
So news that he was hitting the road for a live stand-up tour got people buzzing all over again.

Maryanne leapt to his defence, saying we were being too harsh.

"Cut the poor guy some slack," she told us. "The people of Australia voted for him to win a Gold Logie, he didn't single-handedly vote himself in."

Fair point. It was a public vote, and we're sure those stories about thousands of copies of TV Week with the voting coupons cut out being dumped in bins behind Channel 10 are just stories.

Then Robert got stuck in.

"Oh joy, Rove is hitting the road. Some one should be hitting him. With a humour stick," said Robby boy. "Oh give me a break, the guy is not even funny, his show is crap, his interviews are an embarrassment, with hardly any laughs from the audience."

Ouch, but the last word comes from Janet, who remembers Rove from his early days on the stand-up circuit.

"I remember laughing my a--- off on countless occasions," she told The Eye.

"As for wearing suits onstage, I only recall Rove being a jeans and T-shirt guy.

"Oh, but 'I love Rove' was definitely on dunny doors at the Espy.

"And Rove was always clean and didn't smell (unlike those dunnies)." Thanks for that little extra detail, Janet.

[Gutter Monkey]

I think I know which Janet the Janet metioned here is .... and she knows her comedy.

[Mythor]

Changed the thread title anyway, for any future articles. There'll probably be some once his tour gets underway?

Don't know what show "Robby boy" has been watching, but I've seen Rove and his guests get a lot of laughs at times. His interview with Hugh Jackman and John Travolta was considered good enough to put on the Swordfish DVD, so he can't be doing too bad.
It's a bit soon to be writing off his tour I think.