The first thing Luke McGregor does when we meet at Abbotsford's Yorkshire Hotel is apologise.
"I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the column. I don't read much news. I mostly read video game review websites," he offers.
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Sneak peek: Luke Warm Sex
Luke Warm Sex, A new show on ABC staring Luke McGregor takes the audience through one man's awkward journey to get better at sex.
The pub was his suggestion but he confesses he panicked and used restaurant finder app Zomato.
"I'm also bad at not researching before I do an interview with someone like yourself," he says, although the onus for pre-interview research is on me.
"But it's always nice when someone knows your work. I still appreciate that you're interviewing me."
He recounts walking the red carpet at the Logies and seeing all the photographers drop their cameras down as he arrived.
"It's so brutal! I had Ricky Martin on one side of me and someone else on the other and it was awful – he was getting lots of photos taken, so I just had to stand there, hating it."
His unfamiliarity with this column is nowhere near as harrowing as that sounds.
"I still apologise. My girlfriend reads the column regularly though, and she was excited."
Anyone who cringed their way through McGregor's recent documentary series Luke Warm Sex – in which he took part in a sex bootcamp inspired by his stand-up confessions of having only had sex twice in his life – might quietly thrill to hear the word "girlfriend".
McGregor met Marie at a wedding just weeks before the show aired.
"I had to say 'alright, I've made a show about sex ... I need you to watch it now before we get too close, because if you do want to leave, I don't want to be too upset'."
(He sat in his bedroom with his iPad while she watched it in another room.) Nine months later, they're living together.
"She's a cardiac nurse so if I come home and say, 'oh man, the extra's phone kept going off today', she'll go 'someone died at work'. It puts my job in perspective," he says. "If we were on a desert island trying to survive, we probably wouldn't need a comedian, but Marie would be highly valued."
McGregor's awkward, apologetic demeanour in Luke Warm Sex was not affected at all – the doco was excruciating viewing, but the 33-year-old maintains it was more excruciating to do.
"But I didn't have a sex life – the worst case scenario was nobody wants to have sex with me, but nobody's having sex with me now, so it doesn't matter. There were no stakes involved."
And doing it all in front of the cameras, he says, gave him a bit of bravery. "Here's a class I wouldn't go to normally, but because someone's filming it for a 'doco' I can do it."
After sussing out if the other is up for it, we both order white wine.
The Yorkshire has a new chef and owner Greg is keen for us to try the new dishes, inducing hardcore menu anxiety for McGregor.
We initially order the calamari entree, then cancel it when McGregor spots the smoky babaganoush with haloumi ("What is babaganoush?" he asks when we're halfway through it). Then there's further agony deciding on a main, compounded by the fact we both want the fish and chips.
"I do love fish and chips. But I love burgers too. But if your fish and chips are good, it's going to over-ride anything I get so … I have to get fish and chips. It's the only way we can guarantee neither of us has food envy."
Mercifully, the chef sends out some Korean beef and a fish cake as well.
"Now this is the best interview I've ever had: four meals, wine...," he says. "I'm going to order another main and tell you about my primary school years."
The week we meet his new comedy Rosehaven, co-created with friend and co-star Celia Pacquola, is in its second week. (Watch it from the beginning on ABC iview).
"I was more nervous about that going out than Luke Warm Sex," he says.
Really?
"That was just my sexual problems; people were probably aware of those. But Rosehaven is like, 'here's something we made that we really want you to like'."
He and Pacquola became great mates working on Utopia and spent the past couple of years writing Rosehaven.
McGregor plays Daniel, who returns to his rural hometown – the fictional Rosehaven – to help his mum (the formidable Kris McQuade) in the family real estate business, despite being a rather crap estate agent himself. Luckily his best mate Emma (Pacquola) turns up at his door having fled her new husband – while still on honeymoon – and the pair have each other to help navigate small-town life. For Daniel that means ghosts – and bullies – from his teenage years in a town where time has stood still, and for Emma, a newfound anonymity.
"Basically, we wanted to do something where Celia and I just talk rubbish most of the time," he says.
As much as the series focuses on the eccentricities of rural life, at its heart, Rosehaven is about the friendship between Emma and Daniel.
"Initially we didn't know what world to base it around. We're not well versed in the news, it was our first time, we just wanted to make something we'd enjoy watching. Or at least enjoy filming – even if it was a terrible show."
Which of course, it's not. Rosehaven has had rave reviews – plus one person in the street told McGregor he loved it – and there are tentative hopes for a second series.
Daniel doesn't seem a million miles away from McGregor: nervous demeanour, quick wit, unplaceable accent and parents who are real estate agents.
But it's not, he says, autobiographical.
"It's based on us as people but the story is fictional. We want to explore ideas of coming back home; Celia's character is running away and trying to stay a child and Daniel is trying to grow up," he says. "I used to get bullied growing up but when I go back to Tassie none of my bullies are around any more. But with Daniel, when he goes back to a small town, they're all there. Everything he ran away from is still there. And Celia is the only one who sees him not as that loser growing up."
But Daniel is "pretty much me if I didn't discover comedy, if I was still trying to do corporate".
Just a few years ago, McGregor, who has a Bachelor of Economics, was working in the superannuation industry, trying, he says "to get to the top."
"I was serious – I was on LinkedIn and trying to get promotions," he says.
He'd always "been funny", though.
"Humour was a thing I could do well. It gave me self-worth – if you're not attractive, you don't have sex, you're not good at sports, you don't do extremely well at school … Helps if you can make the bullies laugh."
But it wasn't until a mate was taking part in an open mic gig that he tried it out on stage. Someone had pulled out at the last minute and McGregor decided to give it a go. Unprepared.
What made him do that?
"Alcohol. I thought, 'I'm funny. How hard can it be?'. It was pretty hard."
The first two minutes were great. "And the last 10 were awful," he says. "But as soon as I said the first thing and people laughed, I got a buzz like I'd never had – and I've been chasing that buzz ever since."
He spent a few years juggling stand-up and corporate life, before quitting his job just three years ago. "For six to 12 months I thought I'd made the worst decision of my life! Utopia had come up but it wasn't enough to live off – and nowhere near what I was getting paid in superannuation!"
(Utopia was filmed in a building opposite McGregor's old workplace and after telling his colleagues he'd quit to do comedy, he'd regularly see them while he was filming – wearing a suit and a lanyard. "Everyone was like, you just work in another job! And I'd go 'no, I'm filming a TV show. Really'.")
He knows now that performers need to plan: "You get paid a chunk of money for one thing that you have to stretch out – and hope that the chunk you got doesn't ruin chances of getting future chunks."
He's about to head off on a new stand-up tour, and it seems likely Rosehaven will get a second season. Then there are plans for other TV projects.
"I still worry about money, but it's not at the front of my mind any more," he says.
"Although my CV has crossed over now – I've got some superannuation jokes but I'm not sure they're still good. I don't even know what version they use of Excel any more."
Rosehaven is on ABC, Wednesdays, 9pm. Watch the full series on ABC iview.
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THE YORKSHIRE HOTEL
48 Hoddle St, Abbotsford, 9417 3088.
Mon-Thu, 11AM-11PM; Fri, Sat, 11AM-1AM; Sun, 11AM-10PM.