After a six-year wait, Celebrity Apprentice Australia has returned to Australian screens on its home station of Channel Nine for a bumper new season in 2021.
One of the contestants taking to the boardroom this year is Michael ‘Wippa’ Wipfli, one half of Nova FM’s Fitzy & Wippa.
Mediaweek spoke to Wippa about his time on Celebrity Apprentice, balancing two shows, and broadcasting during Covid.
The Cooper Rice-Brading Foundation
A central part of the Celebrity Apprentice brand has always been the money that the celebs have raised for charity. Wippa says that representing his chosen charity – The Cooper Rice-Brading Foundation – was a huge honour.
“Cooper had osteosarcoma. It’s often a young person’s cancer and it’s a very complicated cancer. If you do happen to get it, there’s often an individual treatment required for the person because there’s variants that need to be addressed.
“Cooper was a fan of the show, he was also keen on getting into the media and I got to know him through talking shop with him really and just hanging out and becoming mates. When he launched the foundation he invited me to come and see, he launched the foundation in the hope that other kids didn’t have to go through what he was facing at that moment in time.
“It felt like the greatest of honours, now that Cooper has left us, to continue the legacy and build on the foundation of what he put in place for the other sarcoma families and the sarcoma communities out there.”
Celebrity Apprentice Castmates
On Celebrity Apprentice the contestants start out working in two teams, and Wippa says that he got more than he bargained for with his teammates.
“I got caught out in a team with Camilla and Martha, and the two of them together were dangerous. They love each other, they fight, they’re amazing. But they found it very entertaining to try and choose a ridiculous outfit for me to wear in challenges. There’s some pap shots that were getting around of me down at Bondi at one stage looking far more exposed than I should have ever been. It turned into this running joke of trying to get this slightly overweight, hairy guy into whatever there was, and quite often it resulted in that wrapped ham look.”
For keen-eyed viewers, Wippa says that it’s worth watching out for gags left by another contestant.
“Ross Noble is just hilarious. He wanted to build in his own personal jokes, so what you need to look out for on the show is price tags on clothing items in the boardroom.
“There’s a scene where we get out of a car, we’re in a hurry, we’re at a market, and Blues Brothers style Ross rolls across the bonnet of the car and dents it. So the sponsored car has got a big dent in the bonnet.
“Then there was a moment where he decided to tell the makeup artist to make his face as orange as possible. He looked like an oompa-loompa! Then they came over to me because they knew that Ross and I got on well, and said ‘hey, what’s going on with Ross’ face?’, and I said ‘oh it’s a skin condition, don’t bring it up, he’s very sensitive about it.”
Balancing Shows
Wippa says it was a difficult balancing act working on Celebrity Apprentice as well as Nova’s breakfast show, but there was one person more than any who helped him through it.
“It killed me. We’d get our radio show done, sometimes we were pre-recording the end of the radio show so I could get out of there. Sometimes filming would end at 11 o’clock at night.
“There needed to be flexibility on behalf of Nova, but the Hero Award goes to my wife with three kids at home. Francesca was under one year old back then when we were filming. You know that old-school home life of the man who works hard and puts his suit on before the kids get up in the morning, then he leaves work, drinks with his mates and comes home after the kids are in bed? It turned into that feeling. Lisa rang me one day and said ‘Jack wants to speak to you, he’s crying’, and it was ‘when am I going to see Daddy?’. Oh my god.
“She was a superstar. She was the captain of our ship, she carried the whole thing.”
The Future of Fitzy & Wippa
Having now worked together for 10 years, Wippa says he and co-host Ryan ‘Fitzy’ Fitzgerald are still as excited to go to work as they ever were.
“We love each other. We have a very similar sense of humour, we love the ridiculousness, he’s a pain in the ass but it works well.
“Plans for the future would just be to continue doing what we’re doing. It’s amazing that the energy hasn’t died and the excitement when the microphone comes on still exists. We’re very lucky that all the days are different, but the process of what we’re trying to achieve is the same. So I’m amazed that excitement and that energy is still there like it was the first week.”
Working Local
While the best of the Fitzy & Wippa show goes national across the Nova network from 6pm-7pm, Wippa says he loves being able to speak about what is happening locally in Sydney.
“There’s something special about radio being in the city. There’s something very powerful about waking up in the city and talking to the people about where they live. You talk about national shows, sure they can work in a drive slot, but in breakfast the local is power. So that’s your currency, being in the same city.
“Being able to come in after a weekend and say ‘oh my god, that sky writing’ or whatever it may be, it’s real. You want to keep it real.”
Wippa says this sense of locality was especially important throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
“You look at the show through Covid, and I loved how real it was. I’m sitting there, I say to Fitzy ‘what’s going on in Balmain?’, ‘Matty DeGroot, I can hear a garbage truck pulling up, is that you buddy?’, he says ‘yeah, that’s me in Cronulla, sorry guys’. Sarah McGilvray is in Turramurra. Tommy Ivey has an apartment with two kids in it, he has to get in his car and drive it somewhere near the bridge so he can get reception, cause he doesn’t want to wake up the kids at home. Everyone was doing things differently and it made it so real.”