FUNNY MAN

Comedian Glenn Robbins is best known as the classic Aussie dag, but now he’s in the hot seat as host with the most

WORDS KYLIE MILLER

Depending on their age and interests, Australians recognise Glenn Robbins from a variety of characters.

Since the early 1980s, he’s been a regular on Australia’s most popular television comedy series, playing a string of doddering, deluded and endearing dags. He starred as Benny G, lead singer of a reformed ’80s boy band in Mick Molloy’s film BoyTown, and played it straight in a supporting role in the critically acclaimed movie Lantana.

Now Robbins is back on air on Channel Seven, this time as himself, hosting a half-hour comic quiz show that’s “a little loose around the edges” titled Out of the Question.

The format is straightforward: Robbins sits at a table with three comic mates and serves up questions based on events in the news. As well as their answers, guests are encouraged to inject anecdotes relating to the topic. There are no prizes, no wheel and flexible rules; contestants compete for their name to be engraved on a perpetual trophy kept on set.

The idea grew from a Robbins family tradition, started about 10 years ago to spice up the conversation on Christmas Day.

“Around three o’clock in the afternoon, when you’re half way between lunch and dinner and you run out of things to talk about, I pull out this big bowl of generic questions and pass them around the table. It works really well and gets people talking.”

While at home the questions are simple – “What’s your favourite…? Would you ever…? What’s your weirdest…?” – those asked in the show are topical and based on current events.

“But this is not reinventing the wheel. I don’t think we’re pretending that a topical quiz show is anything new,” he says.

Out of the Question has featured
Tony Moclair, Fifi Box and Ed KavaleeAlthough he trained as a drama teacher, Robbins’ early success as a stand-up comedian meant he only ever taught part-time to accommodate performance and touring commitments.

He’s been a regular on Australian TV since his doddery Uncle Arthur first shot to fame in The Comedy Company in the late 1980s, and has writing and performance credits on top-rating sketch series such as Fast Forward, Full Frontal and Jimeoin.

More recently he has been attached in producing and consulting roles on series including The Ronnie Johns Half Hour and Thank God You’re Here.

He was a producer and regular panellist on The Panel, the successful comic chat-show from Australian production company Working Dog, with whom he also created the deluded and arrogant outback adventurer Russell Coight, star of the adventure parody series All Aussie Adventures.

While Coight is by no means lost forever in the bush – “absolutely not, he may return if [co-creator] Tom [Gleisner] and I get the urge” – Robbins is now better known as the daggy, but loveable butcher, Kel Knight, in the hit comedy series Kath & Kim, created by his friends and co-stars Jane Turner and Gina Riley. Robbins plays Kath’s “hunk o’spunk” husband, a proud “purveyor of fine meats” with a liking for short shorts, loud ’80s knits and “man bags”.

Robbins says while many of his comic characters are drawn from observation, those who know him well can also recognise something of himself.

“There’s a part of me in all my characters, that’s the best way for me to work, but it’s quite subtle,” he says. “But you’re also forcing an arrogance or a stupidity or a warmth or a vulnerability.”

Robbins’ own comic taste is varied and he finds all of his own characters amusing. He couldn’t play them if he didn’t.

“I like neuroses, I like identifying with the characters. I like weakness, control, I like arrogance that gets undermined, like in the case of Russell Coight. He’s arrogant, but he mucked up all the time.” Kel Knight, he says, is a “sweetheart” with the life that everyone desires.

Robbins as Kel Knight in Kath & Kim“He’s in touch with his feminine side, he loves his life, his job, his wife and he’s got a great sex life. He’s got the life that we all want; I think you can’t ask for any more in life than to love your job and to love your wife. He’s got a good heart and he means well. I don’t think he has a conniving bone in his body.”

While audiences see the real man as host of Out of the Question, Robbins describes himself as a shy person who prefers to hide behind well-drawn characters.

“In a social sense, I’m not the one who gravitates to the spotlight,” he says. “I’ve sort of been the real me on The Panel too, but you learn to be a certain side of yourself, as you do when you go out… Obviously you have a job to do with hosting.”

If the show goes as hoped, he’ll ask the questions then sit back and listen as the answers flow forth.

“It’s about relationships. It’s more about the guests than it is about me; if I don’t say anything at all I’ll be happy.”

Out of the Question screens on Channel Seven on Thursdays at 8.30pm.