‘I dreaded the Logies’: The red-carpet burn that left Myf Warhurst devastated

At my first Logies, I presented an award. As I stood on that stage I was more nervous than I’d been when I first held hands with a boy at a Saturday afternoon screening of The NeverEnding Story. I looked out into the crowd and saw local TV identities. Legends Bert and Patti Newton were on one side of the room, Molly Meldrum on the other. So many faces from my youth, which I’d previously only seen from a long way away in the corner of a tiny box or in a magazine. It was terrifying and exhilarating all at once. I covered my nerves up by likening my dress to an oversized disco ball (referencing Jeanne Little’s garbage-bag dress) and pressed on.

At the time, it was hard to see the Logies purely as a professional work function. The thought of being there in the flesh was still just too much. No surprises though, that I slept through my alarm the next day, missing my breakfast radio shift on Triple J. I woke to 74 missed calls from my workmates. Fortunately, they saw the funny side, and I didn’t get the sack.

At subsequent Logies, I put all my efforts into having a good time and trying to charm the pants off people I loved, while also making sure I set multiple alarms for the next morning.

Then, the bad year happened. This was the rough year when I had left Triple J to work at Triple M with Pete Helliar. I loved working with Pete and he had boundless energy and optimism for the job, but I don’t think I was quite as suited to the realities of commercial radio. The 4am wake-ups were torturous. I was exhausted and stressed. I had little energy or happiness to share, which is not a good place to be when you have three hours of breakfast radio to fill with energy and humour. When you are depressed, finding the spark to entertain is hard.

At this point, clothes were my last concern. So, when I was invited to the Logies that year I farmed out the thing that I had the least bit of energy for – the clothes. For once, I enlisted a stylist and dressmaker so my outfit was sorted. I’d been winging it on my own up until this point and, sadly, I didn’t get the memo that this was also the year that fashion critics were sharpening their knives.

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That year Spicks and Specks was nominated in the Most Popular Light Entertainment Program category, which is always a magnificent thing for everyone who works so hard on a show. It is even more magnificent when you win, but we didn’t (for trivia buffs, Rove took the Logie that year). I didn’t get drunk because I was determined to wake up at 4am for work.

So, the next day, with crusty eyes and a handbag full of stories about celebs I now can’t remember the names of, I arrived at the studio, opened the newspapers, and there it was. A picture of me, taken from an unfortunate angle, showing off my double chins to their best advantage, wearing a dress that, under lights, looked even brighter than the turquoise eye shadow worn by Boy George in the ’80s.

The fashion critics didn’t take to my little one-armed number. They felt my attempt at a fun and festive peacock had failed, and that it looked like the truly glamorous birds at the Logies, who towered right over me, had taken a very glamorous turd-shaped Swarovski crystal dump on my shoulder. The story went on to say the public got to vote on the best and worst dressed, and the results would be published the next day.

The following day, on the front of the biggest local paper in Melbourne, the Herald Sun, there was a photo of me stretched to make my five-foot self look of equal height next to the evening’s best dressed, Sarah Murdoch – ex-model, glamazon and daughter-in-law of the owner of the paper.

She looked stunning in an expensive dress. No guesses as to who was voted by the Herald Sun readership as the worst dressed? Little ol’ moi.

Look, there are way worse things that can happen, but at the time I genuinely thought I was being laughed at by the entire town. The worst thing is, I’d never cared too much about clothes but this front-page business left me feeling ashamed. My dad gave me the best advice at the time. He said, “Today’s news, tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapping.” I still use that wisdom to this day, but after that year the shine was definitely off going to the Logies.

I was being compared to women who did this sort of stuff for a living, and it made me question my judgment, my appearance and my body.

At this time in my life, when everything else was going down the gurgler, I felt pretty low. I was being compared to women who did this sort of stuff for a living, and it made me question my judgment, my appearance and my body. I compared myself to people who had time, money and help and I found myself wanting.

I am on the telly, I put myself out there and this kind of thing comes with the job, so I have to be cool with it. But I was so not cool with it that year. I didn’t hate the dress (by the fashion standards of the 2000s, it wasn’t that bad), and I was an easy target. Low-hanging fruit. What’s disappointing is that, for the next five years or so, that unflattering photo of me in a dress everyone laughed at was dragged out whenever the Logies rolled around. I became known for the funny dress, rather than for what I did or said on a show where I was proud that I had to use my brain.

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Every year, the little shame flame would be reignited. I dreaded the Logies. I still dread red carpets of any kind and hide from them if I can. I’m sure that there are many women who have retreated from public life because of a shaming of some sort – and there are much worse types of shaming than being told your dress is bad.

Women everywhere are shamed over their politics, their outspokenness, weight (gain or loss, everything’s fair game), attractiveness, age, or just because they might refuse to play the performative game by being nice or appropriate and give a side eye instead.

When working at a commercial radio station, it’s par for the course that your personal life becomes public. Producers try to work out how to make anything in your life a narrative they can involve the listener in.

I kept the bad-dress narrative going by inviting the person from the newspaper who’d sunk their boot in the hardest onto the show, and I burnt the dress in front of her. There was no satisfaction. It felt wasteful. I felt stupid. The designer and the stylist were deeply embarrassed – and, all in all, it was just an experience in the bitchiness of the media that I wish I’d dealt with better and cared less about. At least for the people who are following behind me.

I kept the bad-dress narrative going by inviting the person from the newspaper who’d sunk their boot in the hardest onto the show, and I burnt the dress in front of her.

That Logies experience took out much of the joy of working in TV for me, because I realised I was living a life that was public in ways I hadn’t expected. It was only a dress, but the criticism hit me hard at the time. It made me sad later that I didn’t stand up and back myself. I would have previously, and would now. It made me sad that I cared so much about what people thought. I let the bullies win.

Bullies always move on, there’s always a new target, but the one thing I learnt, and this stuck in my heart the hardest, was to be kinder about other people’s choices. A year later, I went back to the Logies wearing a fabulous dress accessorised with a dash of f… you. I didn’t win any prizes but I felt okay and could smile in the face of the judgey folk.

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A year later, Spicks and Specks won a Logie. I’d promised host Adam Hills that I wouldn’t say anything if we won (because that never happens, so really there was nothing to worry about). But unfortunately, because I didn’t think we’d win and I no longer had an early-morning radio job, I’d taken advantage of the cheap white wine. When we did win, I ran up on stage and, slightly tipsy, just couldn’t resist having a word at the end of Adam’s much better prepared and well-thought-out speech.

I stuffed it all up by mumbling something about the show being a success because we were allowed to be honest and true to who we were, “no bullshit”. Way to go, classy lady. But I really did give fewer shits. And that felt better than a million-dollar dress.

Edited extract from Time of My Life [Hachette] by Myf Warhurst, out now.

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