After walking away from the entertainment industry in 2018 to become a real estate agent, Tom Williams is finally back on our screens.
Williams was yesterday unveiled as one of the stars on Channel 10’s I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here.
He entered the jungle last night along with Rhonda Burchmore, Nikki Osborne, Erin Barnett, Tanya Hennessy, Dilruk Jayasinha, Ryan Gallagher, Myf Warhust, Charlotte Crosby and Miguel Maestre. Two more celebs, widely believed to be ex-footballers Dale Thomas and Billy Brownless, are set to be unveiled tonight.
The reality show is a TV comeback of sorts for Williams, who prior to 2018 had been a fixture on our screens for more than 15 years.
His long and successful career in showbiz was actually the result of a “life-changing” phone call to former radio duo Merrick and Rosso, a call that put him on a path to stardom.
In the early 1990s, Williams was “a half-baked model” who appeared in a few catalogues, TV commercials and even the music video for Melissa Tkautz’s song, Read My Lips.
“Simon Baker was one of the other guys in the clip and the three of us (including Tkautz) became very good friends for a number of years there,” Williams previously told news.com.au.
Despite booking a number of high-profile jobs, including his role in a rather memorable Coca Cola commercial, Williams said he never really took modelling that seriously and was more focused on his job as a carpenter.
“It managed to get me a bit of money and I got to hang out with good-looking birds all day,” he said about modelling.
“But it was the 90s. The most important things in my life at the time were bands and scraping together enough beer money. There weren’t really any aspirations to get into the entertainment business.”
And then came the phone call that changed everything.
It was 1999 and Williams was listening to his favourite radio duo, Merrick and Rosso, who hosted the drive show on Triple J.
“They were running a competition called ‘That’s Not Particularly Incredible’,” Williams recalled, “They asked listeners to call in with things they were thinking of that weren’t particularly incredible and at the time I had a dream of inventing a trailer for elderly people’s scooters.”
All these years later, Williams maintains it’s still a good idea.
“I saw an old lady crash her scooter once. She had all her shopping hanging off her handle bars and I thought, ‘She needs a trailer.’ Australians love trailers, old or young, everybody loves a trailer.”
The idea was right in Merrick and Rosso’s sweet spot and they instantly warmed to Williams.
“He was the real deal,” Merrick Watts said, “and still is”.
Tim ‘Rosso’ Ross told news.com.au: “He was such an enthusiastic and funny caller and we just loved his spirit. We were always looking for regular callers and he stood out straight away.”
The radio hosts called “Tom the chippie” back the next day and invited him to be a caller on the show for a second time.
“I was working on a house in Coogee and Rosso rang back and asked me to play a game called ‘World Series Merrick and Rosso’ which was a regular segment,” Williams said.
“But when Rosso rang up I thought it was one of my mates and I hung up on him. He called back and said, ‘No mate, it’s actually Rosso. Can you play this game or not? Stop f**king around because we’re on in half an hour’.”
Williams quickly became not only the hosts’ favourite caller but also a fan favourite and before long he was popping up on the national radio show at least once a week.
“This ‘chippie from Manly’ had a hilarious take on everything and reflected how people listened to Triple J at work and how the music, and what we went on about, connected with them,” Rosso told news.com.au.
“Because he was such good talent it made sense to have him on every week and I even made him his own jingle.”
Merrick and Rosso had given Williams his big break and it directly resulted in him landing his first ever full-time TV role.
“Channel 7 had come up with this show called Room for Improvement,” Williams said.
“They’d cast all the other people but they needed a carpenter. I think somebody in the production house said, ‘There’s this guy on Triple J called Tom the chippie from Manly, he reckons he’s really funny. You should go and test him’.
“They rang Triple J and then Rosso rang me and said, ‘Channel 7 are calling. They’ve got some TV show and they want you to be a part of it’.”
At the time Williams thought the call was just the beginning of a Merrick and Rosso “stitch-up”, but he went along with it anyway.
“This lady rocks up with a video camera to my worksite and she’s shooting away and I was fully taking the piss,” Williams said.
“She was kind of laughing and let it go for a bit and finally she said, ‘Look, you’re funny, I get that. But do you actually want to do it seriously because we’re going to shoot this show in two weeks and if you want a shot at the job you need to give me something serious’.
“I was like, ‘F**k, I thought this was a stitch-up’.”
Williams landed the job and after two seasons of Room for Improvement he was approached to star on The Great Outdoors which he appeared on for the next seven years.
Several other hosting roles followed including a not-so-successful gig on The Mole in 2005.
“Not good memories,” Williams said when asked about the show.
“The audience hated me. The dedicated Mole fans thought I stank. We did a live show to eliminate one of the contestants and we shot it in Martin Place and the fans would boo me and bash on the windows.”
In 2005 he was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars and went on to win the show with his dance partner, Kym Johnson.
“That show was the time of my life,” he said. “It was a ride”.
He hosted Gladiators in 2008, then Australia’s Greatest Athlete and in 2013 was named co-host of Channel 7’s The Daily Edition which he was a part of until 2018 when he decided to leave the industry to become a real estate agent.
“I think I did as well as I could for as long as I could in TV and I was looking for a career that would sustain me into my 60s - and TV wasn’t going to do that,” Williams told BW magazine about his decision to enter the real estate industry.
Regarded as one of the nicest guys in showbiz, Williams remains incredibly humble and said he owes everything to Merrick and Rosso.
“It was life-changing,” he said about that first call to the radio duo, “it was the ultimate break”.
And all these years later, the three men are still great mates.
“Tim (Rosso) was a groomsman at my wedding and Merrick and I are very close,” Williams said.
“We talk to each other in good times and bad and apart from Channel 7, who have shown me incredible loyalty, Merrick and Rosso were the linchpin to my adulthood for sure. I love them dearly.”
I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here! continues tonight at 7.30pm on Channel 10
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7r7HWrGWcp51jrrZ7xKernqqklravucSnq2ispmS%2Fpq3LoquyZaSrfKq5jJpknJ2cmq%2BztdOyZqKlXZZ6pLHLnplmqJiku6Z5wpqjpWWkna61ecKhmKeflZl6tbvMZq6ipJyerq6%2FjKWgn51fo7K4v4ysq6iqqWSFda3AcHCecGdts3ewkGlwnZ6UmoJ6fcSeZ2qblWWEcQ%3D%3D