Rove McManus
Rove McManus (born John McManus, 21 January 1974) is an Australian talk show host, comedian and owner of the production company Roving Enterprises.
Born in Perth, Western Australia he moved to Melbourne to pursue a career as a stand up comedian. After hundreds of gigs, he was asked to host The Loft Live on community television (Channel 31). Rove landed ten late night episodes of his own tonight show, Rove on GTV9 in 1999. Channel Nine did not continue with the series.
The Ten Network gave Rove and his production company, Roving Enterprises, another shot at hosting ten episodes of his show in late 2000. The resulting Rove Live is now a weekly talk show on Network Ten as well as on TV3 in New Zealand. The show involves celebrity guests, publicity stunts, comedians and live bands.
In 2002 Rove was nominated for the Gold Logie Award and Rove Live won the Logie for Most Popular Light Entertainment Program. In 2003 Rove took home three Logies, including Most Popular Presenter, Most Popular Light Entertainment/Comedy Program and the coveted Gold Logie for most popular personality on Australian television. In 2004 and 2005 he repeated his 2003 award haul, including Gold Logies.
He voiced a crab in the 2003 animated blockbuster, Finding Nemo. He is represented by personal management company Token Artists.
Roving Enterprises has produced a number of programs apart from Rove Live including the sketch comedy program Skithouse and the AFL Football program, Before The Game. Roving has also produced the ARIA Awards since 2002, hosted each year by Rove up until 2004.
In July 2004 he announced his engagement to his girlfriend of three years, Australian actor Belinda Emmett. They married on January 29, 2005 at the Mary Immaculate Church in Waverley, a suburb in the east of Sydney, Australia.
Rove returned to his roots during 2005 with a live solo stand-up comedy show which toured Australian cities Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney and Adelaide whilst still returning to Melbourne each Tuesday to film his weekly TV show Rove Live. New Zealand locations were also added, in Wellington and Auckland. On the 6th of September 2005, Rove hosted the 200th episode of Rove Live
In 2004, he had - for a short time, an official fatwa placed on him by John Safran, thus declaring a "holy war" between Rove and the UK sharia court. It was later removed at Safran's request.
He also campaigned to have the prime minister to appear on his show during the 2004 federal election. Claims have been made that members of the public heckled John Howard to appear on his show without success. Eventually McManus himself approached the Prime Minister for an interview and was declined. Some viewers saw this as an attempt to discredit Mr. Howard during the election. Some allege that McManus desperately supports the Australian Labor Party because of this sequence of events and extremely consistent satire criticising the Liberal Government.
On the 25th October, 2005 episode, Rove Live had a segment that Rove himself deemed "controversial", a live TV vasectomy. For the Season Finale he offered six cars as prizes on his show. It is likely these two segments were aimed at increasing ratings.
His final show for 2005 rated at about 747,000 viewers Australia-wide, which is considered too low for a show as expensive as Rove Live. The show was revamped for 2006. The first episode of the new show went to air 14 February 2006.
Radio
In 2002 the Austereo radio network commissioned Roving Enterprises to create a weekly radio program. Starring Rove McManus alongside regular TV colleagues Peter Helliar and Corinne Grant, the show was originally called Saturday Morning Rove. Broadcast from Fox FM every Saturday from 10AM to Midday, it was actually pre-recorded the day before to allow the performers to have a full weekend off media commitments.
In 2004 the program moved to Friday mornings allowing live phone callers, and was re-titled Rove Live Radio. It was discontinued at the end of 2004.
The style of the program was very similar to Rove Live, and included segments such as "Musical Microscope" and the annual "Free Sauce Week".
Criticism
Rove won the 2006 Fuglies award for "Australia's ALL TIME Most Overrated TV Star". [1] The Fuglies are annual awards, celebrating the worst of Australian television. It is held in the run-up to the Logie awards and votes are collected over the Internet.
Arrest
Rove was arrested in 2003 for allegedy pulling down the pants of Australian Cleaning identity Big Kev. He pleaded very, very guilty and was handed a suspended sentence.
Other work
When Bert Newton fell ill in early June 2005, Rove hosted his show Good Morning Australia in his place.
With Bert Newton, Rove co-hosted a special - Ten Seriously 40, a historical look back at the Ten Network. The program was also produced by Rove's company Roving Enterprises
Trivia
- Is a huge fan of the Fremantle Football Club.
- Prior to being on television, in 1999 Rove was a regular on triple J radio. He had a segment on the breakfast show (starring Wil Anderson and Adam Spencer) on Friday mornings from 7 to 7.30a.m. hosting “know your millennium”, a quiz show that looked in the past – not the future.
- Australian Football League star player Shaun McManus, who plays for Fremantle, is Rove McManus' 1st cousin.
- In 2000, he was nominated for a Logie in the Most Popular New Talent - Male catergory
- Highly respected amongst his peers, and in this way, often touted as the successor to Daryl Somers
- Rove is interested in professional wrestling, occasionally incorporating wrestling catchphrases into his talkshow; for instance, he sometimes yells out wrestler Booker T's catchphrase "SUCKA!" (The entire catchphrase is "Can you dig it, sucka?") Pro-wrestling idol Ric Flair once appeared as a guest on Rove Live; the interview went into overtime and Rove got into trouble backstage.
- Rove also made an appearance at Explosive Professional Wrestling's Evolution Night One 2005 show. In this appearance he teamed up with Psychofett and Brad West to attack the Forefathers stable. He also was on the Melbourne leg of the International Assault tour as a special timekeeper.
- Rove was a runner in the Queen's Baton Relay (which carries a baton around the host country before the Commonwealth Games). He based a segment of one of his shows on trying to obtain special privileges using his uniform and replica baton. He was able to run around the Victorian Parliament chambers and meet the Premier of Victoria Steve Bracks as well as Bert Newton who had just moved to a rival network.
- Rove has been known to frequent nude beaches and is an avid collector of child pornography.