A tough Rowe

An anchorman voice, an everyman demeanor, ruggedly handsome looks, a quick wit—and, perhaps most important, a willingness to look the fool in front of millions of viewers: For four seasons, Mike Rowe has brought this distinct package to Dirty Jobs. On Discovery’s reality show, Rowe tries his hand at the manual-labor jobs that—as he says in the show’s tag line—“make civilized life possible for the rest of us.”

Time Out Chicago: I understand you’re in a small town in Colorado—what took you there?
Mike Rowe: I did a job on a device in waste-water treatment called a muffin monster, and it’s, uh, it’s hideous. It’s on the front line of raw sewage, and it extracts the moisture [Laughs] from the solids.

TOC: Speaking of: It seems a lot of your jobs deal with shit.
Mike Rowe: You can’t do a show called Dirty Jobs without some homage to shit. Early on, I found a couple of all-star plumbers—who, by the way, I really believe to be the unsung heroes of the modern age: the electricians and plumbers. If the lights don’t come on when you flick the switch and the shit doesn’t go away when you flush the toilet, we’re two days from riots in the streets. So I’ve always felt passionate about giving those guys their due.

TOC: But doesn’t the show also treat other people’s hardships as entertainment? How do you reconcile that?
Mike Rowe: That’s a good question, and TV has certainly failed at accurately portraying the working person. I don’t want to over-glamorize anybody’s career and I certainly don’t want to make fun of it—although when you’re castrating sheep with guys who still use their mouths in a key part of the process, it’s hard not to acknowledge you’re a little off the grid.

TOC: Do you ever come across people who are like, This job is dirty and it sucks and I’d much rather be sitting behind a desk somewhere?
Mike Rowe: Absolutely. And we’ve shown those. But the real lesson I’ve learned is that the media and Madison Avenue sucked the nobility out of manual labor. We replaced the necessity of it with a drudgery so—forgive me but I was just writing a letter to McCain and Obama when you called. [Laughs] Enrollments are down in trade schools because we’re not portraying laborers as enviable.

TOC: Is it just about how they’re portrayed or is it about real work conditions like salary, benefits?
Mike Rowe: It’s both. It’s both, but it’s about the infrastructure.

TOC: What are you writing Obama and McCain?
Mike Rowe: It’s simply to say the infrastructure’s a disaster. We need to get the country rebuilt. I’m talking about roads and railroads and potholes, all of it. We’re not gonna do it. And even if we did, the tradesmen necessary are so depleted.…Sure, my job is to get something entertaining on the air, but after 200 of these things? The themes are real.

TOC: And the theme here is we don’t value these jobs anymore?
Mike Rowe: The thing we do right before we devalue them is ignore them, and that’s what we’ve done.… If [Jobs isn’t] paying tribute to these people, then I’m just another schmuck looking for an easy gag at the expense of the working guy.

TOC: You used to be an opera singer, then a QVC host. On Dirty Jobs, you still go from one gig to the next. Do you have a fear of commitment?
Mike Rowe: Historically? Absolutely. But look, Dirty Jobs called all my bluffs. I mean, to be castrating sheep tomorrow—I grew up on a farm. Farmers and fishermen are my family; that’s what I ran from. And to be doing it with people who depend on it for their livelihood, it’s humbling—and fun because I still get to leave.

TOC: What would your girlfriend say about that?
Mike Rowe: She’s more bemused than anything to watch this. But aside from forbidding me to bring my clothes home after a job, she’s been amazingly cool.

TOC: What does she think about Mike Rowe the sex symbol?
Mike Rowe: [Laughs] I’ll go back to bemused. I think she got over me a few years ago and she’s like, “Jesus, dude, you’re 46 years old.” I’ve never looked worse—torn T-shirts, ripped jeans, other people’s shit on me. And I have stacks of photos from women in various stages of whatever.

TOC: You’ve said your grossest job was roadkill remover. Anything else?
Mike Rowe: Removing a lift pump from a waste-water treatment plant: Four-ton motor at the bottom of a five-story shaft. Motor breaks. Shaft fills with shit. Men go in and swim to the broken pump.

TOC: Swim in shit.
Mike Rowe: Swim in the shit, condoms and Kotex. And the sound it makes when it breaks the seal of shit will haunt your dreams.

Dirty Jobs airs on Discovery Channel.