Why Todd McKenney has given up on love, and Botox

Todd McKenny has certainly had a varied career. 

From dancing at the age of three to representing Australia in ballroom and Latin American dancing, musical theatre and lead roles in many shows including Boy from Oz, to being a judge on Dancing with the Stars, it seems the star never stops. 

Speaking to Starts at 60, the ever-youthful performer said there is one thing he had stopped though, and that was his search for love. 

“I’ve given up,” he revealed. “I don’t know whether I work as much as I do because I am single or I am single because I work so much. All I do is work, I love what I do.”

He does have a surprising passion, though.

“I’ve got my two greyhounds. My downtime is dog people. I have my showbiz life and I have this other kind of dog world life,” he said. “I think I’m happy. If somebody comes along, it will be out of the blue. I’ve stopped looking.”

He’s also stopped using Botox, saying he felt that it “trapped his face”.

“It looks okay in real life [but] it looks really weird on television. As a storyteller you don’t have the full range of physical payoff when you tell a story. I’m a real storyteller, especially on stage. I always got claustrophobia from Botox.”

That said, he hasn’t given up all treatments – he just focuses on other anti-ageing techniques, including Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) treatments that resurface the skin.

“I was a big fan of looking after my skin,” McKenney said. “Whenever I go to Perth, I have a dermal therapist, she’s fantastic … I also hydrate my skin a lot, lots of water. My look is natural. I’m ageing naturally. No-one ever says ‘what have you have had done?’.”

The 52-year-old said that staying fit and healthy was also key to keeping up the pace of his work.

“I go to the gym four or five times a week so I keep my body in decent shape,” he said. “I have a really fantastic team of people around me and I just love what I do, I’m still enthusiastic.  I am at a luxurious point in my life where I create my own work. I don’t sit around waiting for the phone to ring, I can remain creative and do what I want to do.”

McKenney acknowledges that he’s had an incredible career, from being the man inside the Fat Cat suit on children’s television to starring in a new live show of his own making, called Duets with Georgie Parker.

The performer has recently been busy touring with his Peter Allen show, with more to come later this year.

“Peter Allen put me on the map,” he said. “It was 20 years ago since the producers for Boy for Oz gave me the role. The Boy from Oz taught me my craft, to talk to my audience. It has been something I pick up and put down in between other jobs, so I’ve never got tired of it. We still sell out.”

McKenney has also started work on plans to help others create a similarly fabulous career. 

“I’ve ticked so many boxes for myself but what I want to try and do over the next three or four years is to get into promoting other artists,” he explained. “Give them my two cents worth on how to put a show together and how to market it, how to really get an idea off the ground. I know a lot now [and] I’d like to pass it on. It’s hard, there are a lot of sharks out there. I’d like them to avoid the sharks! 

“I’ve worked with kids who are so talented, they just don’t know what is out there. They need a product, otherwise they are going to finish the musical and sit and wait for [theatrical producer] John Frost to ring.”

Next up, though, McKeney will soon start touring Australia with Georgie Parker, who he first worked with 20 years ago in Crazy For You, and performed with at last year’s Carols in the Domain.

“We had much fun I said ‘why don’t we do our own whole concert’,” he recalled. “What will we do? Why don’t we do the worlds most famous duets. Her people don’t know she is a singer. She has a beautiful voice.”

Their show Duets is touring Australia in August and September.

“It’s a real cross-section of songs. The way we chose the songs is we both made a list of favourite duets, got back together again, then we got on to dear old Google, up comes a million songs and just chose our favourites. The only prerequisite was that the audience needs to know every single song, so they can sing along,” he explained.

He has one warning for fans , though – don’t buy tickets off re-sellers, he advised, after having seen tickets for his own shows sold at hugely inflated prices. 

“It’s a massive problem, getting bigger and bigger,” he said. “You can’t be guaranteed that your tickets are actually real. I guarantee you will be paying more than market price.”

What duet would you like to see Todd McKenney and Georgie Parker perform?