Rove McManus

Rove McManus (born John McManus, 21 January 1974) is an Australian variety show host, comedian and owner of the production company Roving Enterprises.

Career history

Television

Born in Perth, Western Australia, McManus grew up in Riverton and attended Orana Catholic Primary School. He moved to Melbourne to pursue a career as a stand up comedian. He hosted The Loft Live on community television (Channel 31) and subsequently 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 offered McManus and his production company, Roving Enterprises, another ten episodes of his show in late 2000. The resulting Rove Live became a weekly talk show on Network Ten, and is syndicated on TV3 in New Zealand. The show involves celebrity guests, publicity stunts, comedians and live bands.

In 2002, he was nominated for the Gold Logie Award and Rove Live won the Logie for Most Popular Light Entertainment Program. In 2003, McManus won three Logies, including Most Popular Presenter, Most Popular Light Entertainment/Comedy Program and the Gold Logie for most popular personality on Australian television. In 2004 and 2005, he repeated his 2003 award haul, including winning another Gold Logie.

Roving Enterprises has produced a number of other programs including the sketch comedy program Skithouse and the AFL football program, Before The Game. Roving Enterprises has also produced the ARIA Music Awards since 2002, hosted by McManus until 2004.

McManus undertook a live solo stand-up comedy show in 2005, touring the Australian capital cities and Wellington and Auckland in New Zealand, whilst still returning to Melbourne each Tuesday to film Rove Live.

In 2004, he had a fatwa placed on him by John Safran in an episode of John Safran vs God, for dropping Safran's scheduled appearance on Rove Live. It was later removed. He also campaigned to have Australian Prime Minister John Howard appear on his program during the 2004 federal election. On the 25 October 2005 episode, Rove Live had a segment that Rove himself deemed "controversial" when it aired a live TV vasectomy. For the season finale, he offered six cars as prizes on his show. After falling viewing figures, the show was revamped for 2006, with the first episode of the new show airing on 14 February. In 2006 his long time supporting presenter, Corinne Grant, left the show.

Radio

In 1999 he was a regular host on Triple J radio. He had a segment on the breakfast show (starring Wil Anderson and Adam Spencer) on Friday mornings, Know Your Millennium, a quiz show that looked into the past.

In 2002 the Austereo radio network commissioned Roving Enterprises to create a weekly radio program. Starring 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 of 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.

Other work

When Bert Newton fell ill in early June 2005, Rove hosted his show Good Morning Australia in his place.

With Newton, Rove co-hosted a Roving Enterprises television special Ten Seriously 40, a look back at the history of the Ten Network.

McManus voiced a crab in Pixar's 2003 animated film, Finding Nemo.

Personal life

McManus is represented by personal management company Token Artists.

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.

Criticisms

Rove won the 2006 Fuglies award for "Australia's ALL TIME Most Overrated TV Star". ^* 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.

Rove has been criticised for allegedly stealing and plagiarising of other comedians' works, particularly from American talk show hosts Conan O'Brien, David Letterman and Jay Leno.

Trivia

He is a fan of the Fremantle Football Club.
AFL player Shaun McManus, who plays for Fremantle, is McManus' 1st cousin.
McManus is interested in professional wrestling
He was a runner in the Queen's Baton Relay (which carries a baton around Australia before the 2006 Commonwealth Games). He based a segment of one of his shows on trying to obtain special privileges using his Commonwealth Games 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.

External links

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