The Block host Scott Cam has been forced to endure a lengthy hospital stay in the lead-up to tonight’s season premiere, having undergone a knee replacement in recent weeks.
And Cam revealed during a recent Block media day that the reason for the surgery can be found during tonight’s opening episode, during an unplanned moment with one of the contestants.
In scenes that will play out tonight, Cam welcomes the contestants to The Block for the year, and cops an enthusiastic greeting from one of the group, Victorian personal trainer Taylor.
She approaches the host for a big hug – then leaps into his arms at the last moment, taking the 63-year-old Gold Logie winner by surprise.
“Just before the show started, I had an arthroscope on my knee, and it was very sore,” Cam told media during a July 16 site inspection in Mount Eliza.
“[Taylor] ran from 10 feet away and launched onto me – I stumbled, I held on, and now on Monday, I’m getting a new knee.”
A visibly shocked Taylor, also present at the media day, said she was “so, so sorry” her premiere stunt had caused the host such grief.
And in a radio interview with B105’s Stav, Abby & Matt on Friday, Cam said he was doing his pre-Block press commitments from a hospital bed, where he’d been for the past 12 days.
“First five days is not good. Let me tell you. I’m at the back end now,” ht told the hosts of his recent surgery.
“I was on the heavy duty [painkillers] in the early days because knee replacements are pretty big. Yeah, there’s a lot of pain involved. But now I’m at the back end. I’m going home on Sunday, and I’m still incapacitated a little bit with a walking stick.”
Elsewhere in the same radio interview, Cam was forthright when speaking about the previous few tumultuous seasons of The Block, which has seen the show marred by contestant walkouts and dismal auction results.
“We had a couple of missteps for a couple of years. I feel that our casting was a bit off, and you know we just weren’t heading in the [right] direction …. we had some serious sit downs and chats, and we got it back to grassroots,” he said.
Cam said the cast mix this year was focused on “people that work hard, that people that you know put their maximum effort in, and that’s where we were lacking.
“We were choosing people that were too young, I feel, and they didn’t have the effort.”
Meanwhile, one big change to this year’s Block season has some contestants upset: For the first time in the show’s history, they’ll all live together in one big share house off-site.
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