Former Big Brother voice-over star Mike Goldman faced horror on Friday morning when he woke to find his Brisbane home engulfed in flames.
Goldman and his wife Bianca Zouppas-Goldman were sleeping in their bed with their one-year-old son Jagger when their fire alarm went off at around 4am.
Goldman, 52, woke to discover his two-storey Bulimba house was on fire and quickly helped his partner and their baby escape to the street.
‘Luckily our son was in bed with us and as you can see, his room had gone up in smoke. It was raging downstairs,’ he told The Courier Mail of the terrifying ordeal.
‘I’m feeling a lot of relief. If we didn’t have smoke alarms, it would be a very different story.’
Goldman said he initially thought the alarm had gone off because of faulty batteries, but was stunned to find a blaze rapidly spreading through the family home.
Mike Goldman, 52, and his wife Bianca Zouppas-Goldman, 32, were sleeping in their bed with their son Jagger, one, when their fire alarm in their Brisbane home went off at around 4am
He and his wife, 32, grabbed their child and fled through the smoke to get to the front yard, before Goldman turned and ran back inside to rescue his dog.
‘We got in to save the dog. I burnt my hair though. Got a singe on the front. He used to be white but now he’s very grey,’ Goldman said.
Queensland Fire and Emergency Services got the fire under control by 6.15am, with a spokesman saying seven crews were called to the Wordsworth St scene.
‘The house was well involved in flames, everyone was accounted for. There is significant structural damage and it was contained to one house,’ they said.
Fire investigators will attend the scene later in the day with Queensland Police and Queensland Ambulance both on standby.
Just hours after his house went up in flames, Goldman gave an emotional account of the shocking moment on KIIS 97.3’s Robin, Kip & Corey Oates.
He revealed his son’s room is ‘totally gone now’ and speculated the blaze may have begun in the garage where the family keeps all their sentimental memorabilia.
‘The garage is underneath his [Jagger’s] room and there’s a fuse box there. And maybe it could have been the solar from like 12 years ago or something,’ he said.
Goldman woke to discover his two-storey Bulimba house was on fire and quickly helped his partner and their baby escape to the street
‘Forensics are having a look at it right now but it’s pretty scary,’ he continued.
‘The fire alarm went off in the middle of the night and I thought it was just to replace the battery or something.
‘I saw the smoke and realised, got Bianca and Jagger up and just ran outside. And then the dog hadn’t followed me, and I’ve run back in looking for the dog.
‘Oh man, that was probably the scariest ten minutes of my life to find the bloody dog.
‘The fire brigade showed up, they put it out and probably, I mean, the house is gone. I don’t think it’s salvageable, but it’s just really shocking, man.’
Goldman, who is the son of Grant Goldman and Erica Hammond, shot to fame in the early 2000s when he became the famous narrator of Big Brother Australia.
He worked on the show from 2001-2014, narrating the program, hosting his own spin-off series Up Late, and assisting with live evictions.
Since pulling the pin on Big Brother, he has appeared in the Tiger King-inspired Stan Original series Joe vs. Carole and NBC Universal’s Young Rock.
Goldman and his wife grabbed their child and fled through the smoke to get to the front yard, before Goldman turned and ran back inside to rescue his dog
While he hasn’t reprised his role as the voice of Big Brother since it was axed in 2014, he has been offered plenty of voice-over work since leaving the show.
He has worked on Discovery and National Geographic documentaries, and also appeared in adverts for Rebel, Telstra and Coles.
Mike is the son of late television and radio personality Grant Goldman and former Channel Seven weather presenter Erica Hammond.
Goldman met his wife in an acting class in 2016, with the pair tying the knot in 2019 and welcoming their first child, Jagger via in-vitro fertilisation in May 2024.
