Larry Emdur isn’t a big reader. He didn’t finish high school – “I was hopeless,” he insists – and although he sometimes buys books, he usually gives up on them after a chapter or so.
“I’ve never really read a book,” the host of The Morning Show and The Chase Australia tells TV WEEK.
“I struggle with it. I’ll get 10 pages in and it’ll mention a character and I’ll have to flip back 10 pages to go, ‘Where’s that character fit?'”
That’s why Larry’s family and friends were so surprised when he announced he was writing his memoir.
Larry’s memoir, Happy As, is a no-holds-barred account of his life.
(Image: Instagram)“My best mates were like, ‘Does it come with coloured pencils to colour it in?'” he remembers with a laugh.
Larry’s memoir, Happy As, isn’t a colouring book, but a no-holds-barred account of his life that includes his early romantic relationships, the “sliding-door moment” that led to him meeting his future wife Sylvie, and a revelation about nude photos that shocked his mum Faye.
“Mum was excited to get the book,” Larry, 57, says.
“I took it to her house and we were crying, and she was going, ‘I’m so proud, I can’t wait to show it to all my friends.’ An hour later, she texted me and goes, ‘Oh my God – I don’t want any of my friends to read this!'”
Happy As devotes a lot of pages to Larry’s childhood in Sydney’s Bondi, where he spent his days surfing or doing “silly things” – a surprising number of which involved stealing.
“I was writing the stories quite randomly,” he explains.
“Then as I read them back, I was like, ‘Oh my God – I’m stealing golf balls, money from mum’s purse for the pinball machines, I’m stealing a phone, stealing sand – a lot of crime in that book!'”
Although there’s plenty of humour in Happy As, including some hilarious stories about The Price Is Right contestants winning prizes they really didn’t want, there are heart-wrenching moments too.
Larry as a child.
(Image: Instagram)The stories about Larry’s father Dave, who died in 2004, took him a long time to write, especially the one about his dad’s beloved boat.
“I’d have a bit of a breakdown and walk away and come back a day or a week later,” he explains.
“The story with Dad on the boat I had to loop back to, in and out, over a month.”
Larry says Happy As is “not a prize-winning book”, but the essence of it is something he took from his dad’s life: to always look for a lighter side.
“If someone can flip through it and smile a dozen times and recall a time in our lives when simple things made us happy, that’s all it needs to be.”
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