June 11 2003

Cameron Adams

the trade discriptions act might have had something to say about the title Rove Live last week. Rove's 'chat' with the monosyllabic Avril Lavigne was more cut-up than her jeans. Considering Lavigne would have been on stage in Sydney at the time Rove Live was on air (they moved to sydney to film the show last week, partly to accomodate her) it was probably a choice between pre-recording Lavigne or missing her altogether. Avril didn't do much TV in the country, and after watching Rove, it was clear to see why-she was disinterested to the point of being comatose. Rove isn't the best interviewer but he may as well have been prodding the responces out of a block of concrete. With one-word answers after one-word answers and more "likes" "ums" and "whatevers" than the entire Clueless script, she's the interviewee from hell. Whether she's shy (which she denied in another seriously dull interview in Melbourne) bored or just plain rude is up for debate. The fact she only came alive when presented with a koala to pat proved that she could actually perk up, but only when she wanted to. Her "singing" on the show was like watching ameteur karaoke night. Her voice sounded more like feral cats fornicating than an international superstar. Sure it was a bad-voice day, but she couldn't hold a note it it was superglued to her hand. considering it was pre-recorded, why someone didn't say "Avril, that was woeful, do you want to try again or do a different song?" is a mystery. Or perhaps they filmed the song after the interview and wanted their revenge? And Micallef's musical guest last week, The Whitlams, broke the show's no-miming rule. As this columnist stated, the race for guests has heated up. Word behind the scenes is Rove is getting more big names (Avril, the Charlies Angels stars) by highlighting how they treat stars with more respect than other talk shows. But imagine if Avril had sung that flat on Micallef: surely he would have acknowladges it on air- and probably to her face. Instead, Avril's performance will go down in TV talk-show history as a career-threatening exapmle of what not to do.

Credit: Beth