Three things with Rove McManus: ‘I burnt them on some kind of ceremonial pyre’

Rove Live – or just Rove as it was known towards the end of its run – was one of the most successful talkshows in Australian TV history. In 2009, after 10 years in the hosting seat and with three Gold Logies to his name, Rove McManus called time on the small-screen juggernaut. Since then, he’s gone on to author five children’s books, while his company, Roving Enterprises, continues to produce Channel 10’s nightly news show The Project.

The longtime standup comedian has kept gigging too. In June he’ll premiere a new live comedy format called Slide Night! at the Sydney Opera House, where he will reimagine the holiday photo nights of yesteryear with a cast of fellow comics. “A fun take on the old and boring slide nights that we were subjected to when I was younger,” he says.

As a child, McManus had creative methods for fighting boredom. He would make his own paper toys, which he stored in a beloved metal box – until the day he burned them all in a fit of teenage rage. Here, he shares the regret he feels about that moment, and the stories of two other cherished personal objects.

What I’d save from my house in a fire

It’s a teddy bear – well, it’s not really a bear because it doesn’t have ears or look like a bear. But I got it when I was very little. We were on a road trip from Perth, where I grew up, to Sydney. My parents and four kids, all under the age of probably 10, which must have been an absolute nightmare.

At one point we stopped for a toilet break and I saw this thing by the side of the road, which was once a teddy bear but was now just a ragged mess that had been run over multiple times. But I just had some connection with this thing and I needed to take it with me. My mother was adamant – there was no way we were putting this filthy piece of toy roadkill in the car. She wouldn’t let me pick it up.

I don’t know when it was – weeks or months later – but it turns out Mum had collected it from the side of the road and somehow fashioned it back into being a bear, or at least a cuddly toy. She’d completely remade the back, which was missing, created a vest to cover the fact that it didn’t have a torso, and sewed little buttons into it. And then to cap it all off, she stitched this crooked little smile on its mouth. And she gave it to me as a present.

I still have it 40 years on. It feels like a beautiful symbol of my mother’s love.

My most useful object

This was a tough call because I have a label maker, which I absolutely love. Except you do run out of things to label, I have discovered.

However, there is another item that I have had for a long time – I’ve broken and bought new ones again and again. An egg cooker.

I think eggs are a perfect food; there is nothing else you can eat for breakfast, lunch or dinner without people questioning you. I love soft boiled eggs in particular. And it’s really hard to get a perfectly soft-boiled egg – but this egg cooker does it perfectly.

It’s called the Eggo. There are other ones on the market, but this is the first I ever found, back in probably the late-1990s. It’s shaped like an egg and has wings and little feet. When the eggs are done it makes a chirping noise that is absolutely tremendous. I have two – the one I use and another as a backup.

The item I most regret losing

I’ve got an item that I not so much lost but got rid of, which is worse. That can really gnaw at you.

When I was little, I had a box full of drawings that I used to call my “cutouts”. If you’re a kid now and you love Bluey, there is no end to the merchandise you can buy. But we didn’t have that when I was growing up. So I would draw the characters from TV shows that I liked, colour them in and cut them out.

I would make a backdrop on a bigger piece of paper and move these cardboard cutouts around like little toys. It was just a cheap and easy way to have my own toys to play with. I put all my cutouts in this big, beautiful metal cigar box that my pop had given me.

Then when I got to my teens, I went through this phase of ridiculous rebellion where I thought that I’d moved on from being a child, so I’d do away with childish things. I got rid of all of these cutouts – I burnt them on some kind of ceremonial pyre, which I deeply regret at this point in my life. I don’t know what happened to the box, but I got rid of it too.

If I could go back and change anything from my life, it would be keeping that box.