Paul 'Pauly' Fenech, the man famous for tapping into bogan culture with comedies like Fat Pizza and Housos, is an unlikely television legend.

In the 1980s, when he entered the industry, he didn't look like anyone else on Australian TV.

He was an ex-boxer with a busted nose. He wasn't blonde enough. And later in his career even his dad discouraged him, telling his son his work was "too rude".

Fenech's difference was a heavy weight to bear.

"I never really felt part of the industry," he tells RN's This Working Life.

But he didn't let that stop him.

He says his unorthodox path into the television industry, via boxing and the Army Reserves, taught him "you can go further than you think you can in life".

And the Logie-winner has done just that — not in spite of his unconventional path, but because of it.

Fat Pizza stars Paul Fenech, Maria Venuti and Johnny Boxer arrive at the Logies in 2006. ( Getty: Kristian Dowling )

A drive to change the faces on TV

Fenech — who got his big TV break with a job as a stagehand at the ABC — isn't keen to knock shows he started out working on, like Playschool, Mr Squiggle or Mother and Son.

"I don't want to be disparaging, because I had the best time looking at all the different productions," he says.

But, while he was learning the ropes, he was also learning he wanted to be involved in creating something different.

"I used to look at things like Mother and Son ... it just took so long and they over-rehearsed it and there were so many people and it made the comedy so stale," he says.

"I swore to myself that this is not the way to make stuff."

When Fenech placed third at short film festival Tropfest in 1995, with the film Pizza Man, it kicked off his screen comedy career.

"I never thought I would have a hope in hell of winning," Fenech says.

Five years later his iconic comedy series Fat Pizza aired on SBS.

The show developed a cult following and proved such a success that the green-light was given for its spin-off, Housos, which parodies families living in low-income government housing.

But not before a sleepless night or two for TV executives.

"Everyone was really scared of it," Fenech says.

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But viewers soon quashed that, and tuned in to watch in impressive numbers.

"It turns out the great, vast majority of Australians relate to it," Fenech says.

The show won the 2014 Logie for Most Outstanding Light Entertainment — a win that "shocked" Fenech.

Housos stars Kevin Taumata and Paul Fenech after winning their Logie in 2014 ( Getty: Graham Denholm )

He had been so confident of not winning that he'd polished off a bottle of tequila during the ceremony.

If there was an award for Logies speeches Fenech might've be a contender for that too.

But thong-throwing aside, he delivered an important message.

"We've done comedy for the real battlers, for the real people, all these years," Fenech told the crowd.

"This is a great win for the true people in Australia. Not the fake stuff that is out there, but the real battlers."

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'I did feel validated'

Fenech is proud of his 20-year run working in television, and of putting "real Aussies" on our screens.

"For a stooge like me — a humble, stupid kid from Stanmore who was just an idiot — I reckon [that's] pretty good."

Fenech, who is now taking his comedy to the road in Deadly Down Under, has made a career from shows that sits outside the mainstream.

"My stuff is always a little bit different," he says.

Achieving popular recognition highlighted how lonely that can be.

"People use that word validation and it sounds a bit, it's a corny word, [but] I did feel validated," Fenech says of his Logie win.

It helped him feel accepted by the industry he had long been a part of.

"It's just a Logie, but it really felt like all the hard work was respected," he says.

"It was just a stamp of approval, which made me feel like, wow, I'm actually in television. I am actually part of this industry. I'm in it."