Review: Robert "Millsy" Mills

Oh Millsy, Millsy, Millsy.

What are we to do with you?

It’s hard to take anyone who came to fame through Australian Idol seriously. Now, I know, and I assume you know, that he was already reasonably well known around the traps in Melbourne for playing in a band that had a moderate following.

But somehow it seems that despite his existing in the Melbourne music scene outside of Australian Idol, we’ll always know him as the somewhat lame everyman of the first season of Australian Idol – you know, the only series that anyone ever watched. He wasn’t disturbingly Christian, like Guy Sebastian, he wasn’t a whipper-snipper on helium ocker, like Shannon Noll, he was just the dude you’d probably have a few beers with at the pub. You know, he'd probably be a bit of a dickhead, but you’d still hang out with him, because he’d turn up every week.

But then he slept with Paris Hilton.

Suddenly, Millsy became the archetypal little engine that could. How does a F-grade celebrity who was consistently middling in the show that brought him to fame land a multi-million dollar heiress with her own (admittedly very boring) porno?

We shook our heads. We slapped him imaginary high fives. We cursed him under our breath. But the boy had done well.

And he continues to do well. I have it on good authority that he is particularly good as Fiyero in the Melbourne production of Wicked (sorry, I'm not buying an exorbitantly priced ticket just to find out if the advice was correct), and while he did his time on midnight TV, he seems to be hitting his stride as a consistent middle-of-the-road performer.

Maybe Millsy is the archetypal Melbournian musician. He bursts onto the scene in a brash way that will eventually grow to be embarrassing, latches onto this fame to sleep around town, drinking the free drinks while the going is good, only to settle into some honest work that requires him to drop his personality, live within his means, and become a 9-5 artist.

The single greatest thing about Robert “Millsy” Mills is that he’s essentially the glue of the Melbourne social scene. Everyone in Melbourne is only two degrees from the man. It’s true. Think about it. You know someone who knows him, even if tangentially. So, even if the real Millsy is just a man, slowly settling into years of plugging away as a professional musician as a professional musical theatre actor, he’s still the glue of the Melbourne scene that birthed him.

3/5