Larry Emdur’s Gold Logie acceptance speech after 40 years in the TV industry

Before Sunday, Larry Emdur didn’t have a single Logie for his TV career spanning over four decades.

Now, after the 64th TV WEEK Logie Awards, the broadcast veteran has a Gold Logie and a Silver.

Accepting Gold, Emdur shared what the award truly meant to him.

“Wow. Forty years I’ve been in this business, 40 years,” Emdur said.

“For 25, maybe 30 times I’ve sat in this room and thought, ‘I wonder what it’s like sitting on this fancy table down here.’

“Oh sh*t, I just remembered. I was so convinced that I wasn’t going to win this that I said that if I did win it, I would have all the nominees’ initials tattooed on my a** live tomorrow morning.

“So that’s what you will see on The Morning Show tomorrow, night!

“I know it’s late, I’m sorry, I’ve just got a couple of people (to thank).

“Nat Barr is looking at me like, ‘Baby, I’ve got to get up in 25 minutes,’ Emdur said to the room at nearly 12am AEST.

“I love this business so much. I love being in TV, I love being on TV and I’ve never done anything else and I’ve never wanted to do anything else.

“Whether it’s sitting on ‘The Morning Show’ couch interviewing Lindy Klim who has invented a new product which is a face mask for vulvas or a 150kg truck driver who has won on The Price Is Right, dry humping me.

“Being the most axed man in television, and there have been some terrible things, plenty of times I’ve had to think do I look right, am I right for this?

Red Symons, the first time I got to host ‘Hey, Hey It’s Saturday’, I was so nervous, I was filling in for Daryl and Red Symons came up to me and he said, ‘Mate, if your eyes were any closer together they’d be in the one socket.’

“So there are times like that where I was like, ‘I should not be in this business.’

“You know, it’s about the shows, I touched on them before, The Chase family, Deb and Andrea, all the Chasers

“The Morning Show, Sarah Stinson, the whole team,I adore you.

“Kylie Gillies, my TV wife, thank you. We campaigned hard. I wrote in my book, which is now available in all good clearance bins, that Kylie and I sat on The Morning Show 17 years ago and we clicked and we’ve never un-clicked.

“We say we get married at 9.30 in the morning and then divorced at 11.30. Now I’m getting older, I need to get closer to the toilet so it can be closer to 11:28.

“I asked my dad, when I went in for my first day on the job in the seven newsroom, I asked what I did and he said, ‘Just be nice to everyone.’.”

“After a few days, he asked me how it’s going and I said, ‘Dad, I’m trying but there’s so many a******s in this business.’

“Like,so many,” Emdur joked.

“My kids, Jye and Tia, I know it’s a thing to get up and say, ‘Kids, it’s late to go bed’. They’re 20 and 30. Do whatever you want,” Emdur joked.

“Apparently they love the fact that it’s rhyming slang, if you’re going on a bender, you’re, ‘Going on a Larry Emdur.

“My beautiful wife Sylvie, thank you for everything you’ve done.

“After Price is Right, I took a couple of steps down and got axed and axed and axed and Sylvie and I said that’s it, no more crappy shows.

“Then Channel Ten called me about doing a show called ‘Celebrity Dog School’ and I said we agreed not to do any more crappy shows and she said ‘I need a new kitchen, you are doing it.’

“When I had this suit made, I had them put the nominees in here for me (gesturing to the inside pocket of his suit jacket).

“Because in 30 years time when I’m at the Shady Pines Nursing Home and I’m calling bingo, because that’s what I’m doing, I want to remember this in 30 years time.

“Thank you so much. Let’s get on a ‘Larry Emdur’,” he said to cheers and applause from the room of his industry peers.

Emdur also took home the Bert Newton Award for Most Popular Presenter.