The Cable Guy
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday April 1, 2002
With radio and free-to-air TV under his belt, Mikey Robins is now tackling pay with Campaign. Matt Buchanan popped in to see how he was going.
'If we can have a little bit less of the f---wits, please." When the studio floor manager says this to host Mikey Robins five minutes into a Tuesday night taping of his new pay-TV comedy quiz show Campaign, he's not talking about the guests. Or the audience. He's talking about Robins's vocabulary. And you can hear him say it because a studio light has blown and the warm encouraging laughter that recently filled the room has cooled to a bemused "Now what?" silence. Robins, who has been left to pace up and down without a microphone, looks only mildly frustrated and accepts the expletive embargo with a good-natured shrug. And why not? It's been a long day.
Up at 4.45am for his new breakfast show on Triple M, Robins is still working 14 hours later. Anyway, naughty words aren't really what he's about. Perhaps he was just testing the limits of what he can and cannot get away with on pay TV.
"I've never been in a cable show before," he says. "And it is a bit like you're working live, doing stand-up, where you can say what you want, within reason. But, well, yes, with overusing a word like f---wit ... well, as my grandfather used to say, 'There's a difference between scratching your bum and tearing your arse to shreds."'
A wise fella, that Grandpa Robins.
Campaign is a simple enough concept. Two teams, each comprising two guest comedians, view a series of clever advertisements and variously answer questions, improvise new slogans and, frankly, take the micky. Two judges from the advertising industry hopefully add a little wit of their own when they award (really quite irrelevant) points. Robins sees the show in even simpler terms.
"She's [the show] just a nice bit of fluff, with some good performers just taking the piss out of ads, basically. I'd love to take the credit, but it wasn't my idea at all. It arrived on my desk as a ready-to-go package, which basically asked, can I turn up in a suit on a Tuesday night?"
Robins must like wearing suits. Despite the fact he is committed once more to rising before the sun every morning, he said yes and, in doing so, found himself facing an altogether new challenge. For years on shows such as Good News Week and the Great Debates, Robins made his reputation as one of Australia's wittiest co-hosts and sidekicks. Now, as frontman, he must direct the laughs as well as produce them.
"You have to learn when to step in and let the comedians off the leash. And you do
learn that," he chuckles. "The first two episodes were just me screaming into the camera. Now it's like, 'Oh, yeah, there's a whole stage full of quite talented people. Maybe I should just shut up."'
Robins is aware that the field he is wandering into may well turn out to be a minefield. But, then, you get the feeling that television hosting isn't his ultimate ambition; rather, it's something new to have a go at.
And if it doesn't work there's always his first love - radio.
"At the end of the day I have to say that of all the jobs I've had, breakfast radio is the job I've enjoyed the most. There's something about getting up at that stupid hour and sitting around in a room with a whole lot of other bleary-eyed people and saying, 'OK, what are we gonna do today?'. That I still find really challenging and enjoyable. Plus, you don't have to shave and you can wear track pants if you want."
But surely there's more money in TV, and that's ultimately where you'd want to be?
"There's always been that misunderstanding," say Robins quickly. "There's much bigger bucks in radio than TV. But I'll just get this series under the belt and see how much I enjoyed it. I'm only two months into a radio show and two episodes into a cable show, so, y'know, I'm thinking more about where I'm going to go for Easter."
Campaign begins on Thursday at 9.30pm on Foxtel's thecomedychannel.
© 2002 Sydney Morning Herald