She was the good, horny, hilarious younger rising star of Australian tv within the Nineteen Nineties – till one disastrous reside TV interview virtually ended her profession for good.
Within the newest episode of Australian Story, broadcaster Libbi Gorr seems to be again on her early tv days, working underneath the alter ego Elle McFeast, and opens up concerning the night time all of it got here crashing down.
“After that episode, tv didn’t need me. It felt like I used to be cancelled earlier than cancelling was invented,” Gorr says of the notorious 1998 interview that spelled the tip of Elle McFeast.
Gorr shot to fame as McFeast in 1991, working as a subject reporter on the Andrew Denton-hosted ABC sports activities sequence Reside and Sweaty. She was in contrast to another sports activities reporter: Cheeky, generally very flirty, and with a razor-sharp wit.
Her first televised interview was with AFL participant Warwick Capper, the digital camera following as she received down on her knees to admire his toned buttocks.
Ultimately, her interviewees would come with politicians and worldwide rock stars. Her specialty was launching headfirst into interviews with highly effective males she may dazzle along with her intercourse enchantment, then run rings round along with her cheeky humour.
Trying again, Gorr calls it “Spice Women feminism. What was I prefer to work with? Most likely very tough – but when eager to be an equal a part of the dialog makes you tough, so be it.”
After Reside and Sweaty completed, she made a sequence of profitable one-off specials on hot-button matters with attention-grabbing titles like Breasts and Portrait of a Energy Pussy.
Then in 1998 got here a brand new profession pinnacle: Her very personal tonight present, McFeast Reside. It was the primary late night time speak present anchored by a lady in Australia.
Her very first visitor was a controversial decide: “Self-confessed killer and best-selling creator Chopper Learn.” The profession legal had solely simply been launched from jail.
The interview went off the rails virtually as quickly because it started.
Learn was, by his personal admission, “as pissed as a parrot.” He pawed at McFeast, who tried to maintain the interview on observe however struggled within the face of his seen inebriation.
“I did my greatest, as any girl would do at any feast with some drunk leering throughout her, peeling him off,” she recalled.
Afterwards, the staff thought it had been a superb first present – she’d held her personal and it had made for some partaking, if chaotic, reside tv.
Then the backlash started. Offended callers had swamped the ABC switchboard to complain, and by the following morning, media and politicians had been labelling the interview “crass” and “horrendous,” disturbed by Learn’s drunken bragging concerning the fellow criminals he’d killed.
She opened the following week’s present with an on-camera apology, however the harm had been carried out – the present was not picked up for a second season, and Gorr’s Elle McFeast character was quietly retired.
Gorr recalled that the controversy “went on, and on, and on … however, I do suppose the choice to open the present with Chopper Learn was a sound resolution – it was simply badly executed.”
Within the wake of the scandal, Gorr sought counselling, and ultimately discovered a brand new position, as a presenter ABC native radio.
“The deal was I needed to do overnights, swallow my satisfaction, and do it as myself – to study easy methods to do it myself,” she mentioned. Goodbye Elle McFeast.
From there, she simply stored working. One transformative second got here when she reported on the bottom from the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires – she discovered the present public affection in her Elle McFeast character was a secret weapon, permitting her to construct a rapport with survivors who wished her to assist inform their tales.
Whereas radio has been her focus over the previous couple of a long time, these tv doorways did open once more too: Gorr hosted the 9 present The Catch-Up and has appeared as a contributor on Studio 10.
Now 58, Gorr balances her personal common media commitments with one other position, instructing younger movie and tv college students.
25 years on, that notorious Chopper Learn interview is merely a footnote in her profession, reasonably than the tip of it.
Watch Libbi Gorr – To Elle and Again on ABC iView.
