Shaun Micallef a sobering thought

Shaun Micallef is shining a light on the dark side of drinking. Now, for the first time, he tells Susan Horsburgh about the tragedy that inspired him.

- Susan Horsburgh

Shaun Micallef has had a chequered history with alcohol. The TV comedian and father of three hasn’t touched a drop for more than three decades – ever since he stood up his then-fiancée, and she (and her mother) subsequently found him asleep outside an Adelaide bar.

The one-time two-pot-screamer says he just “wasn’t very good at it”, and perhaps it’s genetic: his great-great-grandfather hit the headlines a century ago after accidentally setting himself alight on the way home from the pub.

So when his sons – Joseph, 22, Gabriel, 20, and Elias, 17 – started to edge towards legal drinking age, Shaun felt an increasing need to understand Australia’s seeming obsession with alcohol. It’s what he has publicly credited as inspiration for his new ABC documentary series, Shaun Micallef’s On the Sauce.

But the true impetus for the passion project, he now exclusively reveals to The Weekly, is even more personal. Just on a year ago, Shaun’s sister-in-law, Julianne – the older sister of his wife, Leandra – died of organ failure at the age of 57, after struggling with alcoholism for two decades. And for her heartbroken family, she left a devastating trail of what-ifs in her wake.

“The stated reason for doing the doco, and it was true, was because I didn’t have any advice for the boys, but I think the petrol for the entire thing was probably [Julianne’s passing],” says Shaun. “It was always in the back of my head during the making of it.”