He’s a Gold Logie winner and a long time fan favourite.
And now Grant Denyer is set to celebrate 25 years in television.
But the Deal or No Deal host has made a shocking confession about his early days on the job as a young reporter.
‘I realised pretty quickly that I was a terrible journalist,’ he said in a new interview with the Courier Mail on Friday.
He continued: ‘I didn’t know much about the world, and I remember going to a fatal car accident as one of my first stories.
‘It was all pretty graphic and pretty serious, you know, seeing your first ever deceased body, and I thought, “Hmm, I’m not sure I’m cut out for this.”‘
He’s a Gold Logie winner and a long time fan favourite. And now Grant Denyer (pictured) is set to celebrate 25 years in television
Elsewhere in the chat, Grant, who began his career at Prime TV in the NSW town of Wagga Wagga, said he felt like was ‘fake’ and a ‘pretender’ from his very day on the job.
Adding he was ‘terrified’ Grant explained: ‘You’re among a room full of proper journalists who’ve gone through university and I barely made it through high school.’
Grant, who hails from Gosford on the the Central Coast of NSW, eventually scored a high-profile gig as a weatherman on Seven’s Sunrise in 2006.
He scored one of TVs highest honours in 2018 when he won a Gold Logie Award for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television.
Currently the host of Channel 10’s reboot of game show Deal or No Deal, Grant won new fans after walking away the winner of Dancing with the Stars in 2007.
It comes after Grant recently broke down in tears as he bravely discussed his struggles with his mental health in a candid interview from last year.
He opened up about how he contemplated suicide after breaking his back and becoming addicted to painkillers in one of the darkest periods of his life.
Speaking to the Hit Network’s Carrie Bickmore and Tommy Little, the former Sunrise weatherman was overcome with emotion as he recalled his struggles.
But the Deal or No Deal host has made a shocking confession about his early days on the job as a young reporter
Telling the Courier Mail on Friday that he realised he was a ‘terrible’ journalist, Grant later landed a prized gig as the weatherman on Seven’s Sunrise in 2004 (pictured)
Grant – who shares daughters Sailor, 10, Scout, six, and Sunday, two, with his wife Chezzi – revealed his family were his only ‘purpose’ during the very difficult time.
His voice shaking with emotion, the Deal Or No Deal host bravely shared: ‘If I didn’t have a… uh… a child at that time, I didn’t really see much purpose in going on really.
‘I didn’t have much fight left or will to go on… so it was for her. I didn’t want [my daughter] to suffer the pain of not having a father around.’
Grant confessed he struggled with ‘low self-worth’ and didn’t like himself at the time, but loved his daughter enough to work through the very dark period.
‘Yeah… I could inflict pain on myself. I didn’t view myself very favourably. I wasn’t very kind. I had very low self-worth. I had no self-love. But I loved her enough to not want to hurt her,’ he shared.
‘If you just sort of put one foot in front of the other and just go bit by bit, just one rung at a time, you can kind of, you can get there.’
‘Having trouble with pain meds after a broken back was the darkest period in my life,’ he said during the Carrie and Tommy Show.
‘I was winning races in Supercars, I was hosting things like Australia’s Got Talent, Sunrise, and then bang – the handbrake gets pulled on your life and you have got to lie still for four months.
‘You go into your darkest worst nightmares everywhere every time you close your eyes. So just say your worst fear is either your wife leaving you or a home invasion, the moment you close your eyes, you go straight into those worst-case scenarios, every single night.
‘And when you wake up, you can’t tell the difference between reality and your dreams. You believe they’ve all happened.’
Grant often discusses his mental health publicly, telling how he became addicted to pain medication after breaking his back in a freak monster truck accident in 2008.
The crash left Grant with a vertebrae that was shattered in 11 pieces, and doctors feared he might never walk again.
In 2014, Grant attended a wellness centre in Thailand which specialises in the treatment of PTSD and exhaustion.
‘Going to Thailand was challenging, but it was the smartest thing [me and Chezzi] ever did,’ he previously shared.
If you or anyone you know needs immediate support, contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or via lifeline.org.au. In an emergency, call 000.
Grant shares daughters Sailor, 10, Scout, six, and Sunday, two, with his wife Chezzi (pictured)
