The last time Shaun Micallef was nominated for a TV WEEK Gold Logie, way back in 2010, he admits he was “a bit cavalier” about the award.
“It was me, Wil Anderson and Adam Hills from the ABC up against the talentless bums on the commercial networks,” the 61-year-old comedian recalls, conceding Home And Away star Ray Meagher was a “deserved winner”.
While he missed out on the top gong, the show he hosted, Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, scooped Logies for Most Popular and Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program. Shaun won for Most Popular Presenter, and it was for this award that Shaun read Sir Laurence Olivier’s 1977 honorary Oscar acceptance speech, much to the amusement of the audience.
“I can only do that once,” Shaun says. “Or maybe I’ll do that again [if he wins]. People won’t remember.”
Shaun Micallef is nominated for the TV WEEK Gold Logie Award in 2023 (Image: Paul Suesse)
The Logies have indeed been a big part of Shaun’s life on television.
In 2000, he wrote for Logies host Andrew Denton, and a year later was given the job himself. Beforehand, he watched all the Logies he could find – most of them were hosted by Bert “Mr Logies” Newton.
“I thought, ‘I want to do what Bert does’,” Shaun says. “I wanted to take audiences by the hand and guide them through the evening, and I think that’s what [host] Sam [Pang] wants to do this year.”
Yet, Shaun’s relationship with the Logies would appear to be um… complicated. In his autobiography, Tripping Over Myself, released last year, he calls the Logies a “tawdry Z-grade burlesque of the Emmys”.
“And it absolutely is that as well,” Shaun says. “But I’m not saying I didn’t like it. As Ray Martin used to say about the Logies, they’re the only game in town.
“You have to believe in it [the Logies]. You can be sceptical, but not cynical.”
Shaun is nominated alongside six other Aussie stars. (Image: Paul Suesse)
There is a symmetry between this year’s Logies and 2010 for Shaun. Once again, he’s up for the Bert Newton Award For Most Popular Presenter, this time for his long-running sketch show, Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell. And the show, which ended last year after 15 seasons, is also up for Most Popular and Most Outstanding Comedy Program.
Any Logie wins this year would be “a lovely salute” to the show and those who made it. But as for the show’s legacy, Shaun sums it up simply as “nothing”.
“It was so topical, I can’t imagine anyone making any sense of it if they watched an episode from last year.
You’d be thinking, ‘Who are they talking about? Who’s Scott Morrison?’ It’s good for us that people remember it, but aren’t able to see it – they’ll remember it more fondly than it deserves.”
”You have to believe in the Logies. You can be sceptical, but not cynical.”
Looking back over his 30-year career in TV, Shaun admits that while he’s had “some absolute disasters”, he’s had a “pretty good summer”.
Shaun famously quit his job as a lawyer when he was 29, worked as a writer on iconic ABC live comedy show The Big Gig, then landed his first appearance on screen as an extra holding an umbrella in the back of a skit on sketch-comedy show Full Frontal, alongside Eric Bana.
“Eric Bana – whatever happened to him?” Shaun jokes.
