The TV and radio presenter speaks to us about his new show, his cringeworthy run-in with Toadie from Neighbours and the birthday treat that almost broke him
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On your new series Unskilled Adult, you and your famous friends take on trades you have no idea how to do. Who was your best employee, and who was your worst?
I’m tempted to give best and worst to the same person. Ryan Shelton was wildly, head-scratchingly, perplexingly frozen and inefficient. We had to cater a wedding. But ultimately he was the best because he probably made me laugh the most. Which is not what you need as a boss but I enjoyed it.
In terms of tenacity, I would say Bret McKenzie and Lu Dal Din. We had to pour a concrete slab, which, of course, none of us have done … We thought it’d take an hour – it took about six. So we did it at night, in the car headlights, in pouring rain. In that moment I was like, this isn’t a normal TV show – [our guests] would be so within their rights to turn around and say, “Mate, this sucks.” Normally, you have a green room and some lollies and you’re on camera for an hour. So they definitely get an award for best employees because there was a lot of laughing and spirits were high. Kiwis are hardy. They just get on with shit.
What was the most stressful job?
It doesn’t get much higher stakes than cooking for a wedding. And there really was no backup! And cooking for 80 people is a lot! God. I had a lot of respect for chefs before that but I cannot believe the pressure they experience …
The more you research it, the more you understand there’s a head chef for a reason. Our understanding was based on watching The Bear and Googling. But no one wanted to be the head chef. Off-camera, there was a lot of: “I think you should be the head chef!” “Well I think you should be the head chef!” It was the crown no one wanted to wear – so unfortunately I got it. … There was a moment where it was getting a bit tense and one of the waiters came in and said, “The groom wants his own butter in a little bowl.” So I asked Ryan to get it and he just sighed and said, “Can’t you do it?” Gee, you don’t see that in The Bear.
Was there a profession that you made you think, I’d quite like to have a bash at that for real?
I think this show really suits my attention span; getting to change jobs every three days is fun. But there is a 20% chance that woodworking is in my future. Maybe in retirement. I really did love it. Driving a digger is fucking fun, as well. And if it wasn’t for the physical toll on your body, jackhammering is pretty fun too.
You have a tradition of creating elaborate birthday cakes for your children while drinking whisky, and documenting the whole painful process on social media. Which cake broke you the most emotionally?
The Rubik’s Cube. It was, by far, the biggest overreach. Cake night is actually eerily similar to Unskilled Adult: you’re nervous to get to the choke point where, if it fails, you fail. The Rubik’s Cube cake, for example, was a cake that had a 3D printed core of all the different pieces of the Rubik’s Cube, because I had to build a solvable cake. There’s 27 pieces in a Rubik’s Cube, so I used my brother-in-law, who’s very good at 3D printing, to help me build 27 pieces that interlocked in such a way that then you can put cake in all of them so the whole thing should be able to slide around and be solvable.
That cake broke me because I was quite scared to get to that choke point. So I just put it off and put it off until 3pm which is when it finally dawns on me that no one’s coming to rescue me.
So I put all the marshmallow and rice bubble things in the pieces and froze them. That worked until it was assembled, because the kitchen was warm and they started melting. The icing started sliding off. So I had to put the cake outside because it was colder outside. That’s when I was like, this is tough. I was drunk. I was outside at 4am. A possum nearly pissed on it. I was like, this is a real low.
When I did this same interview format with Andy Lee, he said he reckons he’s better at baking than you, because you don’t bake the actual cake bit, but buy it in pre-baked slabs and then decorate it. Is he right?
Eh, I’m yet to see any evidence of him baking but it is a gripe that he has. I don’t think Andy would have a go at a builder because he hasn’t kilned his own bricks. Van Gogh didn’t go and forage for the pigment and mix the paints himself. I’m not saying I’m Van Gogh, although the analogy does sound like I am.
Do you have a party trick?
I can juggle. At high school, you could choose to do sport against other schools and I was like, why would you do that? That sounds terrifying. I was not athletic, I didn’t want to get tackled. The alternative was that you could stay at school and do a thing that was called, like, “sport education” or something. Everyone just called it “dud sport”. So on Wednesday afternoons you could do dud sport and for a whole year we did circus tricks. I learned how to juggle and a few other circus things. That was a good move!
What has been your most cringeworthy run-in with a celebrity?
When you start out in radio, you get really excited about being invited to stuff. It was Melbourne Grand Prix and we’d been invited to the Red Bull tent – I was like, “And the perks begin!”
So I was walking into the tent and Toadie from Neighbours was coming out. I’m very bad with names and faces so, as he’s walking towards me, in my head I’m like, “That’s not Toadie. Don’t say hi Toadie, that’s his character name. Don’t say Toadie.” And he nodded at me and I nodded back and said, “Jarrod.” But Jarrod’s not his name either. Jarrod Rebecchi is his character’s name. Toadfish is his nickname. Ryan Moloney is the actor. So I did just call him his character name anyway.
What’s the best lesson you’ve learned from someone you’ve worked with?
Andy and I started working in media quite young, when we were about 19 or 20, and radio and TV have a weird hierarchy that doesn’t really exist anywhere else. The talent are treated as special, delicate gods who need people to get them food and drive them places. It’s not the real world at all. It can breed arseholes because they don’t have to be nice. So I think whenever I saw someone who had this weird hierarchy around them but still chose to be kind and good and help people and treat everyone equally – it is not that I was looking forward to being an arsehole – but it was a powerful thing to see! It is something I’ve tried to emulate because it just makes the place so much more fun when everyone embodies equality and kindness.
Which book, album or film do you always return to and why?
This will be an eclectic mix. I always come back to either The Life Aquatic or Grand Budapest Hotel. I’ll never unhappily watch a Wes Anderson film. They’re always beautiful and life-affirming and creative. As for a book, anything by the wonderful Zoë Foster Blake is always high on my list.
Good job.
As a kid, I would reread all the time: always Roald Dahl and Stephen King. I get a lot of my book recommendations from Zoë – basically I read whatever Zoe’s just read. She’s my own private Booktokker. I’m now waiting on the new Kate Atkinson when she is done.
Here’s a strange one for the album. I listen to the same album whenever I’m in the gym: Ænima by Tool. That was an album from my teenage years and it’s just stuck. It’s like a sonic trigger, I’ve been hypnotically conditioned; if you play a song from it now, I’ll just start doing push-ups.
You probably were not expecting to see Kate Atkinson and Tool next to each other but there we go!
What is your most controversial pop culture opinion?
Oh …
I asked Andy this and he said, “Oh, it’s not pop culture but I think everyone should be euthanised at 90.”
[stunned silence] That’s a real controversial policy. Well, this isn’t controversial: I disagree! I think we’ve got some pretty good 90-plus year olds out there. I don’t want to be the guy turning up to David Attenborough’s doorstep going, “Thanks for everything, but have you heard about the new Andy’s law?”
What else? I don’t love paté! And I’m sick of trying! [laughing] And anchovies. I know that that’s not an uncommon one but food people say, “You’ll come around to it.” It’s not happening, guys! Anchovies and paté – that is pretty controversial. Just not as wild as euthanising 90-year-olds.
Unskilled Adult is on Stan now
