When much-loved presenter Larry Emdur pictured life at 60, he thought he’d be sitting in a boat. On a lake. Fishing. Not in the busiest time of his life – notching up 40 years in a notoriously fickle industry, hosting two top-rating shows and developing a whiskey empire as a side hustle.
And he certainly didn’t contemplate being the reigning TV WEEK Gold Logie Award winner – from his first-ever nomination.
“I would have thought I’d be retired – or been kicked out of the business – keeping in mind that’s very much the nature of our business,” he tells TV WEEK with a laugh.
“If you’d told 50-year-old me I’d have been on The Morning Show 10 years later, I wouldn’t have thought that for a moment. And I was completely at peace with that.”
If 2024 hasn’t been jam-packed enough, there’s another milestone: his 60th birthday. Larry turned 60 on December 9, and while many might think that could precipitate a slight existential crisis, Larry is feeling “surprisingly good”.
“Probably because everything is going really well – and I’m feeling energised and excited,” he muses. “I’m feeling pretty healthy compared to – you know, I’ve got mates who are retiring and don’t like their work and have different health challenges. And I feel like, in relation to that, I’m in a pretty good space, touch wood.”
However, there was one incident that tested his trademark positivity. Larry was walking alongside Perth’s Swan River, ahead of the annual Channel Seven Telethon in WA. It was a sunny day, he was pumped to raise a lot of money for sick and vulnerable children. Then he noticed there were a lot of “elderly people” with official race numbers on. And then there was the sinking sensation that he looked like he belonged in the official seniors event.
“I’m like, ‘Oh, Jesus – I look like that. And that’s a terrible thing to realise when you work in television,” he says. “I’ve always thought I was just a young kid – this silly young kid in the place – and it turns out I’m not that anymore.”
It’s certainly a long way from being the network’s youngest newsreader when he was 18, hosting Seven’s overnight news. He keeps a photo of that time on his desk now.
“I can remember the smells in the newsroom, the coffee, and it seems like just yesterday,” he says. “I don’t know where that time’s gone, but I’ve had a ball.”
Larry has had a bucket list since he was 50 and steadily ticked off many of his goals: write a book (his 2022 memoir Happy As was a best seller); make a movie (2019 short film Larry Time won awards); and his initial bespoke project to create 60 bottles of whisky for 60 mates for his 60th has exploded into an international success, The Ben Buckler now being exported across the globe.
Launching a comedy career was a teeny-tiny footnote on that list, with Larry saying he’d always enjoyed sitting up close at a comedy night, marvelling at the skills of comics.
“I’ve looked at those stages going, firstly, I don’t know how they do that, and secondly, I think it would be the most frightening place on Earth,” he shares. “So, when I had the opportunity to do it, my first response was, ‘No, go to hell.’
“Then I thought, with 60 coming up, if not now, when? I’ve got that tattooed on my chest, and I see it every morning when I get out of the shower,” he says. So I went, ‘OK.’”
His first attempt was – with a “tummy full of butterflies” – reading a story on stage at The Comedy Store as part of presenter and podcaster Osher Günsberg’s Story Club.
“I was OK with that,” Larry explains. “But then my mate Monty Franklin [the Australian comedian and social media sensation] commented on my [Instagram] post, saying, ‘Great, mate – you can open for me tomorrow night.’
I felt sick as soon as I said yes.”
But he did it. And while it went rather well, he’s adamant it’s a one-off and not a new career for post-TV days.
“It will – probably – never, ever be repeated,” he insists.
Those four words tattooed on Larry’s chest are his mantra.
“Some days, they mean more to me than on others,” he says. “On those days, I draw on its [the tattoo’s] power. I go, ‘You know what? That’s there for a reason. You’ve been teaching that to your kids, so you just suck it up, princess, and you can do it’. They’re powerful; they’re good days.”
There are plenty of good days on the set of The Morning Show. He and co-host Kylie Gillies have notched up 17 years on screen and dominated the ratings. And, despite initial trepidation, Larry is enjoying being host of the high-rating quiz show The Chase Australia.
After such a standout year, what’s left for TV’s Mr Nice Guy? Larry’s thoughts turn to off-screen and his close-knit family – wife Sylvie, daughter Tia and son Jye. He’ll celebrate 30 years of marriage this month. He and Sylvie long to have an extended stint overseas.
“It’s difficult] with my Morning Show duties,” he says. “I [only] get a couple of weeks off here and a couple there. I think that’s our next big move. I don’t think that’s in 2025, but that’s our next big step when all this [his television commitments] finishes.”
While the Logies sweep (“You say swept the Logies, I say fluked,” Larry clarifies) was among his career highlights, he says walking Tia down the aisle in February was his 2024 highlight.
“That was spectacular and that’s the important stuff,” he says. “TV stuff is great. And the whisky stuff is great.
But if I don’t have the love of my family, I’m nothing – that’s the big stuff.”
The Chase Australia airs Weekdays, 5pm on Channel Seven
The Morning Show airs Weekdays, 9am on Channel Seven
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