{"id":633572,"date":"2026-04-27T07:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633572\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T07:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T07:00:11","slug":"how-the-celebrity-intervention-pitch-was-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/633572\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Celebrity Intervention pitch was won"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\t\t\t\tInstead of just telling Seven network execs their new idea for a TV show, Mick Molloy and Glenn Robbins went one better.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

To make sure their pitch got over the line, Glenn & Mick\u2019s Celebrity Intervention went and shot a pilot episode for Seven.<\/p>\n

Instead of just telling TV execs about their vision, Mick Molloy & Glenn Robbins leaned upon celebrity mates to shoot an episode.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can describe something to someone and hope they can assume the same knowledge or the same picture,\u201d Mick Molloy tells TV Tonight.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like auditioning. How good are you at auditioning? There you are in front of seasoned pros and hardened veterans going, \u2018No, no, no, this is a good idea.\u2019 And in the end, we went, \u2018Bugger it. Let\u2019s go and make it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

An episode with a willing celebrity pal was filmed with a studio audience using parts of The Front Bar set.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a half a set floating around, I bought in a couch from home, and we redressed it,\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had a full audience in, we did it all bells and whistles. When you\u2019ve got a room full of people laughing, that\u2019s a canary in the coal mine, if you like, for executives to go, \u2018I think the show\u2019s okay.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cWe said, \u2018Here it is,\u2019 and we gave it to them, and they got to watch it in an office, and they got to compare it to everything else on this slate. And they were very bullish straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Seven held off announcing the name of the show for fear of somebody else stealing the idea.<\/p>\n

Molloy said TV Roasts were the inspiration, but with a contemporary window.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea initially came about when every so often you sit down and you try and go, \u2018What\u2019s something new and something fresh we can do for the TV?\u2019 And my thoughts initially were, \u2018There\u2019s a lot of panel shows, some of them very good.\u2019 So that\u2019s an oversaturated market. But there\u2019s not many light entertainment programmes. How can you reinvent the wheel and bring something to a new audience that\u2019s in the rich tradition of light entertainment, I suppose, like Hey Hey, and other shows?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was watching one of those old school Roasts and I just was taken with how brutal they are. They line up a series of really talented people to basically sink the boot. There\u2019s no great art to it. It\u2019s just a one liner after one liner. So then I in considering this. I thought, \u2018How would you drag that into the modern era?\u2019 Because we do like the idea of roughing up our mates, especially in Australia. It\u2019s a bit of a good tradition where we cut down a tall poppy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe phrase that people enjoy most, is taking people, especially celebrities, and bringing them back to the real world. So the idea was in the modern world, everything\u2019s delivered under the guise of \u2018We\u2019re here to help.\u2019 So the brutal nature of a roast is no longer appropriate. What you do is you get your friends in and you suggest you\u2019re trying to help them by declaring all their faults. \u2018This is what you need to work on!\u2019 So it was more of a touchy-feely way of doing the exactly the same thing, which is cutting down celebrities in front of a live studio audience. It\u2019s a modern representation of the same time honoured idea, and one, I hope people at home will really enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In Week Two Sam Pang is the guest of honour, screening ahead of any timeslot clash with Have You Been Paying Attention?<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the timeslot, given our relationship with both production companies, it just felt like the right thing to do. It wasn\u2019t stipulated, but it\u2019s just good manners \u201d<\/p>\n

Lawrence Mooney as guest co-host with an appearance by Santo Cilauro.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth those guys knew Sam well before he was hosting the Logies, before he became a show biz arsehole. They knew him back when he was hosting a community radio station, doing stuff on SBS trying to host an all ill-fated game show about history, who knew that wouldn\u2019t work?\u201d he laughs.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou get to see a lot about the bloke and hear a lot about the bloke when he was coming up. You\u2019ll you\u2019ll get to meet his wrestling figurines. I mean, what old man keeps dolls? Basically, you\u2019ll get to see a fine array of shirts from the old days. Boy, that was interesting. His Eurovision experiment and many other aspects that people might not be aware of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kitty Flanagan and Urzila Carlson both feature on video, but not in studio.<\/p>\n

\u201cKitty Flanagan, who\u2019s a great friend of Sam\u2019s, would love to have done it, but was on tour at the time. But she\u2019s in the show, on video. Don\u2019t worry, it wasn\u2019t because women weren\u2019t asked to be part of it. It was because in some instances chose not to be and in some instances weren\u2019t available. But I\u2019d hate anyone to think they were deliberately excluded.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an appearance by North Korean impersonator and a video by a wrestlin\u2019s Jake \u201cThe Snake\u201d Roberts -via paid celebrity greeting video platform, Cameo.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Snake is one of Sam\u2019s absolute favourite wrestlers of all time. We thought, \u2018How can we get him? He\u2019ll be hard to track down.\u2019 And someone goes, \u2018He\u2019s on Cameo!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I ever used Cameo was Charlie Sheen on our radio show, Kennedy \/ Molloy, and it was Jane\u2019s birthday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn case of emergency, break glass. I think that\u2019s the only Cameo in the series, but I stand solemnly behind the judicious use of Cameo and will not rule it out in the future!\u201d<\/p>\n

Glenn & Mick\u2019s Celebrity Intervention 7:30pm Monday on Seven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Instead of just telling Seven network execs their new idea for a TV show, Mick Molloy and Glenn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,134,427],"class_list":["post-633572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}