Like peas in a pod
Costa Georgiadis tells Lisa Woolford his prized Logie is never far away
MOST people would win a Logie and put it straight in the poolroom, to quote The Castle patriarch Darryl Kerrigan.
Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiadis carries his Best Presenter gong with him everywhere. Seriously, the shiny silver Logie has traversed the length and breadth of our nation, wrapped in a flannelette pillowcase in Costa’s bag.
“I said I’d take it with me everywhere I go,” Costa says.
“People reel back when I say, ‘Yeah I’ve got it, it’s here in my bag’. It’s done thousands and thousands and thousands of kilometres. It’s got bumps and bruises and that’s how it’s going to be, always on the road. It’s nice for people to see it.”
And to prove his point, the gregarious garden guru asks: “Have you got FaceTime? I’ll show you. It’s right here next to me.”
Within minutes, he’s popped up on screen, and pulled his silver shiny prize from its rather ripped pillowcase – the mark of a dog on location who tried to use it as a chew toy.
“It gets a flannel polish every time I get it out,” Costa enthuses, beaming with pride.
The 56-year-old admits he never expected to win, lapping up the nomination process and the opportunity to showcase GA, as he affectionately abbreviates his show, to a broader audience. GA also took home the Most Popular Lifestyle Program on its third nomination.
“For the show to win the Logie in its 30th year, that is a bit of a fairy tale,” he says. “I was absolutely over the moon about it. When I got nominated for Best Presenter … I was, ‘Well, that’s so wonderful. I’m up against the biggest names of TV, I’m happy to be in the mix. But you’ve got your Carries (Bickmore) and your Amandas (Keller) and your Waleeds (Aly) and your Toms (Gleeson), I thought whatever. I was just pumped that there was so much talk about gardens.”
So when they called out his name, Costa remembers, “I was just like, ‘Wow, this is just so good for all of those groups, all of this stuff I do, everything we look at, whether that’s Landcare, Indigenous rangers, orchid lovers or market gardeners, community growers and the school gardens’. I just thought, ‘Wow. We’re up there with the top shelf of TV’.”
His famous joie de vivre and that gloriously hirsute face are both on display as we stay on FaceTime chatting ahead of the latest season of the much-loved ABC gardening show.
Sharing his passion and seeing the joy that comes from gardening is “the biggest volume in the fuel tank”.
He’s faced the challenges of 2020 with his usual positivity.
“Even though there’s a bombardment of negatives and it’s easy to get caught up in that corkscrew, if you step out of it, you see so many people not just start with gardening, but they’ve actually had enough time at it to allow it to cast its spell,” he says. GARDENING AUSTRALIA 7.30PM, FRIDAY, ABC + IVIEW