The following was transcribed by (and thanks to!) Patti

ROVE: Ok, time to say hello to our next guest.  He's an Oscar winning performer who's going to don his musician's hat as he tours with his band Thirty Odd Foot of Grunts.  They've got a new CD out, it's Other Ways of Speaking. The tour starts tomorrow night in Hobart, then Melbourne at Mercury Lounge on Friday, Perth on Saturday, Brisbane next week, then ????  and the final gig at Sydney's Metro Saturday, the 11th of October.  Tickets on sale
now.  Welcoming back to the show Russell Crowe.

ROVE: You look fantastic. How are you going??

Russell:  Pretty good actually.  Yeah. I'm having a really nice time of it.  This tour is actually been going for about three months, but the last couple of weeks have been quite easy. We've sort of backed off a little bit. Save some energy for these next few weeks.

ROVE: This was to be your year off, or that just a year off acting?

RC:  Um, yeah, I was always going to tour this year with the band.  It comes around in cycles, sort of every 24 months or so.  It was mainly about, taking a year off was mainly about not going away for six months.  'Cause that's what
I do.  I go off to make a film and it's really, literally you're away for six months.  And you can't like take a weekend off and come home when you're shooting in Morocco, it's a little difficult to get the connecting flights.

(Laughter)

ROVE: I haven't seen you since the big wedding in April.  How's everything going?

RC:  Everything is going SPLENDIDLY!!! (Big smile!)  

ROVE: Excellent. I'm so glad.

(Russell smiles, the crowd laughs)

ROVE: What? What? I am! Why wouldn't I be?

RC:  And we're pregnant now, of course.  

ROVE: Yes, way to go.

RC:  It happened rather quickly. That wasn't necessarily an absolute plan. But it was a broad plan, get married have kids, I didn't know it was going to be within a week of each other.  

(Laughter)

RC:  Ooops!  But I suppose, 'cause we, we, we um hid ourselves away from each other for a few months before the wedding.

ROVE: Did you really?  'Cause there's rumors that Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck were doing that.

RC:  I have no idea and I have no comment,

(A lot of laughter.)

RC:  Sorry, I can't help you with the lives of J-Lo and B-Lo.  

(A lot of laughter. Russell makes faces!)

ROVE & RC:  B-Lo.

RC:  That's a really bad name, isn't it?

ROVE: They usually get thrown together -- a Bennifer.  Everyone just calls the two of them 'Bennifer.'

RC:  Let's move on.

ROVE: Forget about them.  

RC:  We'd spent a bit of time apart in terms of, obviously we got together to, and organized the wedding stuff, in terms of not sharing the same bed, Rove.  

ROVE: And what was the reason for that?

RC:  So, um, there would be a large amount of pent up energy.  (Russell smiles)

(Laughter)

RC:  I didn't want to be one of my mates, you know (sounding drunk) 'On my wedding night I was too pissed.'  I mean that's just horrible, you know. You've gone to all this effort to get married, I think you should consummate the marriage, so to speak.  

ROVE: That's nice. I like that.  

(Russell giggles and rolls his eyes at Rove. Crowd laughs)

RC:  He's trying to be genuine.

ROVE: I AM being genuine.

RC:  He's being genuine.
'ROVE: Are you getting 'clucky' as a Dad?

RC:  Um, yeah, well he's still a fetus and everything so the communication stuff is a little . . .

ROVE: You're saying he -- definitely a boy?

RC:   . . . one way at the moment . . .

ROVE: It's definitely a boy though?

RC:  . . . he's not answering me back.  He's definitely a boy, yes it is a boy, we've seen the photographs, he has a scrotum.  

ROVE: Excellent.  Good news. I'm very genuine about that. And how is Danielle going? Is she radiant?

RC:  Yeah, she is.  The first three months she was kind of woozy most of the time. But now she's exercising again and really quite enjoying it, you know. So, obviously I'm not going though it, in such a direct thing, but I think a lot of the stuff, it's more like getting used to stuff rather than it ever stops or is easier.She just gets sort of used to it and some days are harder than others.  

ROVE: Are people doing, you probably do it yourself, you're the father so it's ok.  Are people coming up and touching her belly?

RC: Yeah, I was actually just talking about that with her the other night, because I do that all the time. I see a pregnant lady that I'm introduced or whatever I got to (he starts talking to Rove's belly).  I was actually doing to a friend of mine's wife, this guy called Brian Grazer, his wife Gigi is pregnant, their having another baby.  And apparently, when she was pregnant before, it was all the way through the A Beautiful Mind campaign, so I was continuously talking to her stomach on a regular basis.  So she asked me to talk again. And as I was halfway through the conversation, in front of her
husband, she said "can you do that a bit lower."

(Laughter, Russell makes a face and pulls away).  

I better stop this now.   You know it's funny, cause I know everybody is gonna do it, and I just gotta be sort of cool about it.   It's not really my territory, I suppose you must allow people to say G'day in their own way.

ROVE: And how's the band going? All going well with the boys?

RC:  Fantastic, man. The shows we did in Chicago were great. We actually did a show in Winnipeg in Canada. Which is a place I did a movie in, er...12 years ago, something like that. And, the director and I have kept in loose contact over the years and he heard that we were going to be in Chicago for such a long time so he kind of rang me up and he put the guilt trip on me. So we slipped up to Canada.  We were actually booked into this one little theater, which was going to be cool, called the [???] but then they moved it. They moved it to the Winnipeg Cultural Entertainment Center thing, where everyone sits in red velvet seats.  Which is unusual, because we play in sort of bars, at least where alcohol is available. And, we kind of came out and there was kind of a different vibe in the air, everybody sitting in their velvet seats and stuff. But we ended up having a fun time. It went off.  

Much of the shows on the tour have been fantastic.  We're really looking forward to, we've never been to Hobart so that should be fun. We're going to rock in Tasmania, man. Tomorrow night, at this time, when you're here doing your show and everything, I am going to be rocking Tasmania.  

ROVE: Rocking Tassie to it's very heart.  Now your clip to Never Be Alone the scenes with you and Chrissie Hynde in it, your scenes, was that shot on the farm in Nana Glen?

RC:  Yeah, getting lazy (laughs).  I know how to do the location scouts, don't I?  We'll go back by the creek.  

ROVE: There's a great shot here where you've got a, you're sitting around the campfire, looks like you've got  a Crocodile Hunter mug.

RC:  I've got a Crocodile Hunter mug. Yeah.

ROVE: Was that intentional?

RC:  Absolutely

ROVE: Was that a little subliminal message Steve.

RC:  It was just a little G'day to him, but also, sort of because the setting of the clip is so Australian because it's all about working the cattle and riding horses and all that sort of stuff. But the main thing, the idea behind the clip is the contrast. Chrissie said that she was available at a certain time, so we sent a crew to England to shoot her section. I just knew that if we shot her going about her business on day, and then we shot me going about my business on the farm, and we put the two together, it would have the same contrast, the same different opinion , two different perspectives of the same situation as the song has. It worked very nicely.

ROVE: Well the single is, of course, on the album, Other Ways of Speaking, which is out now. Ladies and gentlemen, Russell Crowe.  

(Thanks to Patti)