Peter Hellier Articles/Reviews

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Sidekick makes a stand
October 19, 2005
Page 1 of 3

Peter Helliar is topping off a busy year with a comedy film and a national stand-up tour. Jill Stark reports.

He hosts his own radio show, juggles numerous TV commitments and has created a comic alter ego who's beginning to bear all the hallmarks of a cult legend. He even has fan sites dedicated to him. But, to many, Peter Helliar will always be known as the loveable, tubby guy on Rove.

Now that he's slowly emerging from the shadow of his Gold Logie-winning friend's success, he'd be forgiven for wanting to shake the shackles of the sidekick tag. But when we meet at the Abbotsford HQ of the Roving Enterprises empire he helped build, Helliar is surprisingly philosophical about his public persona.

The irony seems lost on him as he ushers me through to Rove's office like a child capitalising on a parent's absence, saying, "He's away for the afternoon so we're all right to use it".

It's a little boy's paradise crammed with stuffed toys, cartoon memorabilia and signed, framed pictures of Hollywood stars. The room bears testament to a winning formula of youthful playfulness and comic freedom that has made Rove Live one of the most enduringly popular TV shows of recent times.

But I can't help thinking that if Rove is the head of this household, then Helliar is the boy who would be king. He's been an integral creative part of the show both on camera and behind the scenes since it started on Channel Nine in 1996. And while Rove has been quick to point out that a Logie win for him is a win for the team, doesn't Helliar hanker for some personal recognition?

"This is his show, and I had no real ambition to have my own show," says Helliar. "I'm really happy to be on Rove. It's a show I'm proud of, and I feel I've contributed to the kind of show it is. In the end, his name's on it, so if it hadn't worked he would have to cop that. I'd be just walking out the back door."

It's a statement that could be construed as mean-spirited, were it not accompanied by Helliar's familiar boyish giggle. There's little to dislike about the man, and much to admire. He's enjoyed success as a comedian, TV personality, writer and radio host, and on Rove Live he regularly rubs shoulders with Hollywood stars.

Yet the trademark showbiz aloofness is absent in Helliar. Indeed, he admits proudly that his social circle consists of a group of friends he's known since primary school. Married with two young boys (threeyear- old Liam and Aidan, nine months), Helliar's unlikely to be snapped by the paparazzi staggering out of a nightclub in the early hours of the morning

"Having two kids and turning 30 you go, OK, it's time to settle down a bit, and I've probably being doing that over the last year or so. But I've never been one to go to a lot of functions. Friends say, ‘Why don't we ever see you in the social pages?', and I say, ‘Well, because I'm busy working'. For me, if I was going to go out, I'd rather spend it with my mates than at the launch of a handbag. I've known them for 25 years, so they keep me pretty grounded. And changing nappies and getting up to give Aidan a bottle in the middle of the night keeps you really grounded as well."

On the day we meet, Helliar's appearance suggests his aversion to social excess has suffered a momentary relapse. Clutching a bottle of water and dressed casually in a Johnny Cash T-shirt, jeans and sneakers, he looks like a man in search of a good night's sleep. It's the Monday after the AFL Grand Final and last night, with a formidable hangover, he took to the stage in a small room in Fitzroy's Bar Open for a cut-price stand-up gig.

It was a low-key warm-up to a national tour that will take Helliar back to the stand-up comedy roots that launched his career. The tour comes on the back of a hectic fortnight of public appearances, including his duties on Channel Ten's irreverent footy panel show, Before the Game, a presenting slot at the Brownlow Medal ceremony, the launch of his new Austereo radio program, Pete's Show, and his regular Tuesday night slot on Rove Live.

This year has been busier than most, thanks to the soaring popularity of his hapless Before the Game incarnation, AFL last draft pick Bryan Strauchan. It's allowed Helliar to train with his beloved Collingwood, but has also forced him to admit, grudgingly, "Strauchanie gets more press than I do".

Perhaps he's hoping that a return to the stage will fill as many column inches as Rove's recent stand-up tour. "I still think of myself as a stand-up comedian who just happens to be on the radio and television, and I think that's why I'm going back to do it," he says.

"It's been two years since I did a show, and you start getting itchy feet. The longest I've probably ever gone before without a gig is about two months. Even after two months you rock up to do a gig and you still feel really scratchy and a bit rusty.

"I'm always aware that I'm on TV a few hours a week at the moment, and at some point I won't be. That's why I still like doing stand-up, because you don't want to be the guy who went off to do TV and disappeared for 10 years, then lost his TV work and all of a sudden is going back to stand-up rooms."


The new show, Frisky, promises in the media blurb to be a "search-and-destroy mission on popular culture", but nobody seems to have told Helliar, who sings from a different hymn sheet.

"I almost decided to do less pop culture, because in a way it's a bit easy to insert a celebrity's name here and do Paris Hilton jokes. Reality TV will get spoken about, but I'm obsessed that there's a drive-through doughnut store now - surely these are people who need to get out of their cars. America has an obesity problem, and Australia now has one, but our thing was we're not as bad as America because they have doughnuts for breakfast - and now we're having doughnuts for breakfast. It's pretty scary stuff."

Helliar is a veteran of the Melbourne comedy circuit, having cut his teeth at standup clubs alongside the likes of Wil Anderson, Merrick and Rosso and his Before the Game colleague Dave Hughes.

They're a generation of comics who had their profession legitimised through lucrative TV and radio deals. But it wasn't always that way.

"I think when people like your Greg Fleets and your Anthony Morgans, and Judith Lucys, Lynda Gibsons, going back to Rod Quantock as well; when these guys started it was a real gamble, because there was no real career in it. You could make money, but you had to work really hard, and do it live.

"But I think in the mid-'90s it started becoming a bit more of a legitimate career choice. The doors were opening up. If you worked hard you could maybe get a break and get yourself on TV or radio. You start off and you might get a stand-up spot. I did my first when I was 19, and I was like, ‘Oh my God. I've made it'. And then that gets your mum and dad and nan off your back. That's why I've got so much admiration for those guys who started in the '80s and beforehand. They were doing it really without the promise of anything."

The entertainment industry is a fickle business, as Helliar discovered when Fox FM sacked his Drive show co-hosts but spared his job. At 30 he's shrewd enough to have an eye to the future and has written a comedy film to be produced by Laura Waters, producer of the ABC's recent smash hit We Can Be Heroes.

Meanwhile, he'll continue creating comic characters with a form of self-deprecation that verges on masochism. "If I think it's funny, I'll do it. That's what I really admire about people like Gina and Jane, who do Kath and Kim, or Magda. They're not afraid of looking bad. If I was afraid of going, ‘Jesus, this Magpie jumper's a bit tight on me', I wouldn't do anything. That's part of the Strauchanie character - he's obviously unfit for an AFL footballer, and that's why he get laughs."

But for Helliar, whose worst and least subtle heckle was being hit in the face with a saucepan at a gig in Cranbourne, stand-up will always be fraught with more terror than live television.

"There are times when you're not going well and people just won't laugh. If you're having a quiet night and the audience is not responding, you're not only thinking ‘These guys don't like me', but you're actually thinking, ‘These guys hate me'.

As long as you do it, you still take it personally. You're thinking, ‘Why do they hate me?' You can't always walk off blaming the audience. Anyone who gets on stage obviously has an ego. To jump on stage and not get laughs is a blow."

Peter Helliar performs at the Northcote Social Club tonight (doors open 9.30) and next Wednesday, October 26. Tickets: $20+bf.Tel: 94861677 www.northcotesocialclub.com