"She tried to jump out of the car": Rove McManus on his awkward Pamela Anderson interview.

Take a deep breath everyone, because a friendly face is returning to live TV to remind you to say “hi” to your mum.

Rove McManus, his iconic catchphrase and a bunch of his comedy friends are teaming up for Saturday Night Rove, which has been described by Network Ten as “a taste of what would happen if we gave an hour of live television to the least responsible people in the country”

The show, which was originally part of last year’s Pilot Week lineup, will air every Saturday night over the next six weeks and will feature Rove, series regulars Alex Lee, Alex Jae and Justin Hamilton, and a number of Aussie celebrities who drop by for a chat and a drink.

Presiding over the whole affair each week will the queen of Australian comedy, Judith Lucy.

Listen to Rove McManus chat to The Spill hosts Laura Brodnik and Kee Reece about his new TV show, his worst celebrity interview ever and why Hugh Jackman won’t be joining him on set this year. Post continues after audio.

“What we’re doing is not your standard talk show,” Rove said on Mamamia’s entertainment podcast The Spill. “It’s me and a bunch of my friends hanging out in a television studio on a Saturday night, a show that everyone can join in and be part of.

“We don’t have a desk or anything like that, we actually have this bar that’s a hangout area for our main team. So guests who come on the show don’t just walk out on set, do an interview and then go home. They’ll be able to join in with all elements of the show.

“We’ll have a rotating spot filled with a new comedian each week, and we’ve basically told them they can do whatever they like. We’ve got Luke McGregor for episode one and we’re still not sure exactly what he’s planning to do on the show… but that’s all I need to know.

While Rove is a veteran of the entertainment industry, hosting breakfast radio and TV shows such as Show Me The Movie, he first made his mark on Australian hosting the hit variety show Rove Live.

As he prepares to set back into the world of fronting live TV, Rove is also ready to take a look back at the highs and lows that come with interviewing high profile people in a space with no safety net, naming model and actress Pamela Anderson as his most awkward interview to date.

“Pamela Anderson we had on Rove Live for the first episode of that year,” he explained on The Spill podcast. “She was running late, which is never great for a live show when you’re about to start.

“Normally I would see a guest before the show starts to break the ice and get a sense of how they are feeling and I missed that opportunity because she was running late. The whole time we kept being told ‘she’s five minutes away’, ‘now she’s 15 minutes away’ and then at one point I was told she had gotten out of the car that she was in and she was refusing to come to the show because she had had a bad day or something.

“We ended up getting her in the end and she was just not very present, but I pushed through but it was not a great chat. At one point I just wanted to stop and say to her ‘are you ok, do you want to be here, because I heard you jumped out of the car?’.

“But I thought since I didn’t know her it wasn’t polite to bring it up on air, but there is a part of me that looks back and thinks ‘well it wasn’t that good of an interview anyway, so what did I have to lose?’ So if I had that time over again I would be more inclined to bring it up.” 

According to the Saturday Night Rove team, the only rule for watching the show is “leave your dignity at the door” and we intend to do just that.

For more stories like this, you can follow Mamamia Entertainment Editor Laura Brodnik on Facebook.  You can also visit our newsletter page and sign up to “TV and Movies”  for a backstage pass to the best movies, TV shows and celebrity interviews (see one of her newsletters here).