Full circle moments, music mayhem and a riot of laughs: RocKwiz Live in 2025 continues a lively legacy

From their Esplanade Hotel home to stages across the country, RocKwiz has a 20 year history that continues to grow.

It’s a Kwiz show like no other, one that has won over Australian audiences continuously for two decades and in several formats.

Decking out the Gershwin Room of the Esplanade Hotel (The Espy) in St Kilda, RocKwiz rolled production in 2005 televised on SBS, switching off the camera in 2016 and collecting one hundred and eighty episodes, four golden Logies, nine compilation albums, three ARIA Music Award nominations, a Christmas list worth of namedrop guests, and an encyclopaedia of music knowledge along the way. The music quiz show with comedy roots and a rocking on-stage band has become ingrained in Australia’s music identity in several ways. Whether you tuned in to watch Normie Rowe, Kate Ceberano, Jimmy Barnes, James Reyne, or the late Chrissy Amphlett and Renee Geyer, or you wanted to test your niche music knowledge, RocKwiz was a world of entertainment that had families tuned in every Saturday night.

The winning combination of the charismatic Julia Zemiro and comedic timing of Brian Nankervis as presenters, their roadie/human scoreboard Dugal McAndrew, and the legendary RocKwiz OrKestra consisting of A-game players and artists from Australia’s music tapestry including Peter “Lucky” Luscombe, Mark Ferrie and frequent guest vocalist powerhouse sisters Linda and Vika Bull made RocKwiz feel as comfortable as home. When they decided to take that home on the road in 2010, moulding into a moving format as a touring live show, RocKwiz took on a new life.

RocKwiz Live 2025- VIC Dates

WED 5 NOV – FRANKSTON PERFORMING ARTS CENTRE, FRANKSTON

THU 6 NOV – COSTA HALL GEELONG

FRI 7 NOV – HER MAJESTY’S THEATRE BALLARAT

SAT 8 NOV – BUNJIL PLACE NARRE WARREN

SUN 9 NOV – ULUMBARRA THEATRE BENDIGO

FRI 21 NOV – LIVE AT THE GARDENS, ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS MELBOURNE

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Though easy to translate into another pub or theatre setting, the live show actually started out in the open.

Brain Nankervis explains, “We’ve been doing it for 20 years. When we started we did the first few years we just did the TV shows at the Espy Hotel and then probably about three years after we started we did a show on the Yarra River for Moomba. I can remember feeling slightly nervous about, you know, would it work in an outdoor environment with a couple of thousand people, and it did. In fact it worked really well and so we really haven’t stopped doing live shows ever since.”

Channelling Dugal’s tallying skills, RocKwiz Live hit over 200 live shows at the end of last year, presented across theatres, entertainment centres, wineries, and festivals across the country. That includes their Really Really Good Friday event, raising money for the Good Friday Appeal annually.

“We did I think we did 39 shows last year including everywhere from Sydney to Tasmania and a bunch of places in between. We just didn’t get to Perth but we will next year,” says Nankervis.

Now the team are gearing up for another slew of shows across the country – fifteen shows in fact – with an added Tamworth Country Music Festival appearance to kick off 2026. The tour starts next week in state-of-the-art theatres across Victoria, kicking off in Frankston and heading around to Geelong, Ballarat, Narre Warren and Bendigo. The team frequent these spots, prioritising regional audiences for the live shows. The beauty of RocKwiz Live is that you won’t get a recycled performance or set – whilst the vetting process of audience turn quiz contestant, and the on-stage fail-safe format remains the same, every show is different. Navigating the awkward starts to the starstruck, to the masterminds of music and the unexpected story, each show lends itself to the audience.

 

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“I remember last year we had a guy on the side and Julia said “oh what are you do” and he said “oh well I’m blah” and she asked the regular questions, “What was your first record?” “What was your first concert?” and then he said “You really should be talking to my girlfriend. She was backing vocals for Rod Stewart.” Julia said “Oh wow, she’s not in the house, is she”, and he said “yeah there she is” and she was sitting in the third row. So of course we got a microphone down and we talked to her and then at interval he and I were chatting he said “oh the funny thing is she didn’t just sing backup vocals for Rod Stewart, she also used to go out with a member of Mott the Hoople”. I’m thinking you’re in for a treat! It really was one of those ‘wow’ moments that shaped the show,” he recalls.

“Of course those things don’t always happen, but I think that we try and create an atmosphere where maybe those things are more likely to happen because people are excited or because Julia is curious or because I’m sitting with people during interval rather than just going into the dressing room to have a cup of tea. I try to hang out and talk to the contestants and that’s when you find these little great bits of information.”

It’s not just the stories that make the shows entertaining but the wealth of knowledge housed inside the minds of contestants and guest musicians. After many iterations of the live and TV shows, the art of question making has become a well oiled machine, treading the line between tricky and accessible.

“I remember when we started we realised pretty quickly that the questions had to have a degree of difficulty because if you make them too easy it’s just sort of boring. It feels like you’re being condescending or patronising but if you make them too hard, people start to get little frustrated and they feel like you’re showing them up. It gets boring because nothing gets answered. Then again, if you don’t have a few hard ones in, those absolute super freaks that we like to get on the show, they don’t get a chance to shine. Our audiences over the years do relish in seeing people answer seemingly very difficult questions so absolutely it’s a real it’s a fine line.”

 

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In the middle of their touring, RocKwiz will make a return to the outdoor arena, just down the road from their first live location. The crew will take to the picturesque outdoor setting of Melbourne’s Royal Botanic Gardens for a special headline show for Live At The Gardens. Taking over the stage on Friday 21 November, the show will be a spectacular night of song.

“It’s a real full circle moment to be a couple of hundred metres from where we did this first Moomba show. We’ve done the zoo, we’ve done a few festivals – Bluesfest – so we’re pretty comfortable being outside, but we’ve never done the Botanic Gardens. Because it’s a big show we’ve gone extra. It’ll be great and I mean I’ve grown up in Melbourne so the Botanic Gardens are part of my lifestyle. I used to love walking through there and I worked for a season on a outdoor theatre show there and I used to run through there and had friends live nearby. It’s a really big moment for our show.”

Tickets are still available for both Live At The Gardens and the RocKwiz Live 2025 dates. You can pick them up here.