Larry Emdur would be useless on a pub trivia team. He might host quiz show The Chase but that doesn’t mean he now has a library of facts at his disposal. He can’t name the years of Constantine II’s reign or the atomic number of polonium.
But then again, how many can? “The fun fact that I’ve learnt is that I have no memory retention at all,” Emdur tells The Nightly. “I get home, and my wife would say, ‘What did you learn today’ and I’m like, ‘I have no idea’.” His friends eager to have him on their trivia team had to be put straight — “I’m not getting smarter here, it’s not happening!” he told them.
That self-deprecating sense of humour is classic Emdur. So, when he says he’s “embarrassed” by his Gold Logie nomination this year, it makes sense. And when he calls the campaign “a bit silly” and “not my thing”, it’s because he’s not comfortable with the competitiveness of the race.
A mainstay of Australian TV for four decades, it’s bewildering to think that Emdur’s nomination this year is the first time he’s been in the hunt, ever. There were no Logie nods for his work on The Price is Right, and nothing previously for The Morning Show. At 59 years old, he’s now hosting both The Morning Show and The Chase.
“I’ve never been busier, and I’ve never been happier,” he says. But the Logie thing? “I’ve never been comfortable doing anything like that, I’m just playing my own game, having fun with it, taking the mi.