Sometimes a media professional has to throw insulting questions at people she clearly despises while wearing a short skirt and sexy heels. It’s not always pretty, but that’s journalism and no one does it as well as virtuoso tabloid journalist Victoria Dynamite, on ABC1’s Hungry Beast.
Victoria took a few moments off from practicing her "concerned" expression while filming overweight people at the mall to answer 20 questions for us:
1. What’s the headline you’d most like to see on the front page of a daily newspaper?
President Obama refuses to leave Australia until he’s been through Victoria.
2. If you could oblige everyone in Australia to click through to one webpage, which one would it be?
Twitter’s a great source of reliable news and an excellent way to quote unsuspecting victims out of context.
3. What is one thing you’ve always wondered about economics but were too afraid to ask?
If there are only 60 seconds in a minute, why should there be 100 cents in a dollar? It doesn’t make sense.
4. When did you last eat a meat pie?
Please — you think I want to end up squeezed in between Britney’s thighs and Su-Bo’s chin in a New Idea celebrity obesity special?
5. What’s the oldest thing in your fridge?
My fridge is borderline bare. The only food I keep is for my cat, Walkley. I work late nights at the office and have the sound and camera operators order in food for me.
6. Has anyone got a climate change policy you agree with? Who?
Dr Larry Maldorf is a little-known scientist whose ideas about climate change solutions are incredibly ground-breaking. He believes the only way to combat our sea levels rising are to remove the entire contents of the ocean. An exclusive report on Dr Maldorf’s work will feature this Wednesday night on Hungry Beast 9pm ABC1.
7. When was the first time you changed your mind on something important?
A lot of the important decisions I have to make in my work are ethical ones. I have to ask myself — Am I right to be belittling asylum seekers? Is it okay to tease intellectually disabled people if the viewer won’t know any different? The answer is almost always Yes.
8. What’s the household chore you relish the most?
I don’t do housework. I live alone. For the rare occasions I have guests around, I call my Chinese cleaner Lin. She does an okay job, I pay her as much as I think she deserves and she complains very little.
9. What sort of shoes do you wear to work?
I wear simple black heels. A woman’s shoes can communicate so much about what she represents. Mine say "I’m professional, but I’d f*#k you for an exclusive."
10. What campaigning tactic do you most want to see in this year’s federal election?
Personally, I want to see more scare campaigns. The more "gate" scandals the better. Nobody cares about climate change, education and health care systems. They’re just silly distractions from the things that really do influence people at voting time.
11. Nominate a new public holiday.
I think an entire national week of mourning should mark the tragic break-up between Lara Bingle and Michael Clarke.
12. If you could go tomorrow anywhere in Australia for a holiday, where would you go?
I would travel to the nation’s poorest suburbs. Mainly because nobody holidays there anymore, and also because it could double as a working holiday. Underprivileged people say the darndest things.
13. What’s your favourite YouTube video?
I have such a weakness for demonising stories about asylum seekers.
14. If you were given $5 million, what would you spend it on?
I’d self-fund a morning show called "Victoria Dynamite Wakes You Up with a Bang". Karl Stefanovic would be my co-host.
15. Who would you most like to sit next to on a long haul flight?
Hands down, Naomi Robson. Can you imagine the kind of dating and relationship advice that girl could offer on a one-way flight!
16. What trivia question/topic will you beat everyone else in the pub to the buzzer on?
I’m particularly knowledgeable when it comes to celebrity botox regimes and the diversity of hats worn by Dame Judy Dench.
17. Complete this sentence. I’d like to hear Kevin Rudd say "…"
He’d sleep with me. That would be the sort of career move that could make all my Christmases come at once.
18. Name someone in Australian public life who deserves a promotion.
Miranda Devine. That woman knows her shit. I’m for serious. We sat together at a corporate lunch and got on like a house on fire. I was like "I’m a culturally insensitive neo-right wing hero" and she was like "Whatthe? So am I!"
19. In 10 words or less, summarise your food philosophy.
Eat till your body can take no more. Have it sucked out of you and injected into your lips. That way, your food goes full circle and you get more bang for your buck.
20. What question should we ask our next interviewee?
If you were on the edge of starvation and your mother told you she had miraculously regained the ability to lactate, would you, as an adult, drink milk from your mother’s breast?
BONUS QUESTION from our last interviewee:
What are your most and least favourite technological developments of the last 500 years?
Webcams are both my favourite and least favourite. I once had a relationship with a Fox News reporter I’d met at a conference in Brisbane. He and I shared an intimate long-distance webcam relationship. It wasn’t until we’d broken up that I realised Skype can be recorded. Some advice to anyone who’s thinking of skyping themselves topless: don’t.
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