HE’S renowned for loving a lager and says a joint with friends is “just great fun”, but Karl Stefanovic is putting his wild days behind him.

Fearing alcohol was turning him into the sort of “pain in the a--e” who talked about himself incessantly, he has decided­ to rein in the drinking.

And while he’s making confessions, Stefanovic admits he’s “never had a drama with people smoking marijuana”.



“Obviously the jury’s still out on the long-term medical effects of it, but a joint with friends, I’ve always thought, is just great fun,’’ he said.

SUNDAY STYLE: KARL’S CRUSADE TO BRING MASCULINITY BACK

Stefanovic is an unabashed fan of the great Aussie male but he wants to bring back the much-loved “bloke”.

“If I see another shaved chest I’m gonna flip out,” he tells Sunday Style this week.

media_camera Karl Stefanovic has opened up on boozing, drugs and blokes.

At 40, Stefanovic says age has caught up with him and these days he prefers to drink his beers “responsibly”.

“I have fun up to the point I have too much,” he says.

“I’m a pain in the a--e and just talk and talk and talk and talk about myself. It’s almost like being at confession. But as you get older there’s a certain amount of navel-gazing that goes on, so I don’t drink as much as I used to. I don’t like losing control.”

Although the Today host maintains he has never been a problem drinker, his notoriety as a booze hound came after his giggly post-Logies performance in 2009.

Stefanovic weathered criticism from rival networks following his on-air high jinks and found an unlikely ally in Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The pair recently locked horns, with the TV host boldly telling the PM that “no one’s buying what you’re selling”.

But Stefanovic has revealed Mr Abbott phoned him after the fallout from that morning-after incident on Today .

“No one knows this but Tony rang me and said, ‘Maaate, as someone who recently got into trouble for being a little bit tipsy at a work function, I just want you to know that I sympathise with you’,” he says.

siobhan.duck@news.com.au

Originally published as Karl putting his wild days behind him