Most of that, however, was due to the original concept show spinning off a hybrid, which did more to confuse fans than titilate them.

It also put a great strain on the core cast of Paul McDermott, Mikey Robins and McCrossin, who were stretched creatively and physically.

McCrossin told Insider she was so wired well into her Christmas holidays she found herself still buying and reading three or four daily papers.

But now Ten has cut back to the original one-show concept, returned the emphasis to the week's news, and slotted the show into Saturday night, it has given the GNW team renewed enthusiasm. "I feel we can add an explosive bacchanalian feel to the end of the week," she says.

Speaking of bacchanalian, McCrossin doubles up this week, as co-host with Amanda Keller of Ten's coverage of the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.

McCrossin recently released a book, Love, Lust & Latex, on how to pursue a safe and happy sex life, which contains interviews and hints from celebrities such as Robyn Archer, Adam Spencer, Senator Natasha Stott-Despoja and Judith Lucy.

"It's really a thinly disguised sexual survival guide that I've put together in conjunction with a number of Government Family Services departments," she says. "I'm certainly not aware of another book where famous Australians are talking about their private sex lives."

One pealer from Love, Lust & Latex concerns ABC comedian and TV host Peter Berner relating how he thought he was the only kid in school who had not lost his virginity, so he went and paid for a prostitute, only to have the most awful experience.

Another "fabulous performer" who will be to the fore, and to the left and right, during the Sydney Mardi Gras, is that inimitable, and tasteless, song-and-dance man Bob Downe.

Downe is still gushing over his recent win at the theatrical Green Room Awards, where he picked up the gong for Best Cabaret Artiste in Australia.

The award adds enormous credibility to the Downe theatrical profile, of which he is acutely aware. "It puts me up there with Barry Crocker and Bernard King," he says.

There is a good chance Downe will upstage many of the gay costumes and performers during the Mardi Gras. He will be doing celebrity interviews down on the street, dressed in his trademark retro gaud.

"I've picked up some wonderful new outfits from a rather tasteless shop in New York," he says. "Lots of checks, denim and major tastelessness."

McCrossin was the virtual stranger to most viewers when she started on Good News Week.

"I'd only been on radio, mainly on Radio National, which of course has a loyal but not large listenership."

If only she had that loyal audience now.

But Channel 10, after buying Good News Week two years ago from the ABC, has opted this year to bury the show in a dead timeslot and has proceeded to ignore it.

McCrossin, being a good talker, brings up the subject of the new timeslot first.

As she should: Good News Week was starting to build a solid audience last year in its Monday night spot and even its poor relation, GNW Night Lite was showing signs of life on Thursdays.

"I suppose firstly I think that changing the time slots has been a real bummer," McCrossin says.

"In that really competitive television market I still think it's better to sit still, to be perfectly honest."

Right now, I think hardly anyone knows we're back on the air, let alone that it's Saturday night. It's a real bugger, it's a terrible bugger."

But she's a jolly sort of girl, so she's keeping a positive spin on things.

"Look, this is only our second year and last year they invested on publicity and advertising and we had a strong audience.I think our re-entry to 2000 requires some more publicity. And my understand so they're getting onto it."

Hence the interview during McCrossin is, bad luck for her, babysitting a friend's children without the aid of a television.

The repair man is there fixing the television as we speak. None of this fazes McCrossin though, who chats away happily. "To be honest with you, when I first got to Channel 10 what I loved most was the publicity. If you don't rate you disappear and they took the publicity side really seriously.

"That wasn't always the case at the ABC."

Good News Week was a hit for the ABC, but its high hip factor always made it a target for commercial TV. McCrossin says a large part of her radio audience followed her onto TV.

"But we lost a lot of them because Ten goes for the youth demographic."

At 45 McCrossin is no longer in that demographic. Neither is Amanda Vanstone, who McCrossin singles out as a good guest.

"I have to admit that while my political views are somewhat different to Amanda Vanstone's and we've clashed on air about things, I really like her style," she says.

"She will block interruption and interrupt when she wants to. It's unpredictable who's going to shine and who isn't.

"I think the key to the program is that it's so intensely competitive, to a degree that until you're up there as one of the guests you don't actually realise that you're in a situation where people are showing you absolutely no quarter whatsoever.

"That's what's both so thrilling and challenging. People have to find within themselves the capacity to interject and also, if interrupted, to keep going.

"And not everyone can do that."

LOTL: Do you regret airing your "strong personal preference" about including men in the rearing of children at the time the Prime Minister proposed to amend the Sex Discrimination Act?
Julie: I don't regret it at all. I am acutely aware that many single women and lesbian women are fantastic parents. But what I've had a concern about is this relatively new development - the active marketing of assisted fertility services to single women and lesbian women. For many years I've had some ethical concerns about this: that we've had insufficient community debate with the gay, lesbian and transgender community but also generally about that relatively small percentage of kids who are being born as the result of assisted fertility services or 'do it yourself' at home where there is no identifiable father.

LOTL: You have an ethical problem with that?
Julie: I really do because I believe there's evidence from the history of adoption, from the history of children who've been separated from their family because of child protection issues, also within the context of the stolen generations with indigenous people; there's plenty of evidence now that a proportion of the kids who lose contact with their father at some time in their life seek to meet that person and sometimes they want to have a relationship with them. At the moment in NSW if you go to a fertility clinic and you do not have a male marital or de facto partner to consent to the procedure and you have a child as a result of sperm or other help, that child has no legal father, and there is no legal requirement that the identity of that donor can be made known to that child at some stage in their life. And I'm concerned about that.

LOTL: In the light of these comments in what way are you not agreeing with the Prime Minister?
Julie: I was horrified at that headline because I do not agree with the Prime Minister. Number one: I do not support an amendment to the Federal Sex Discrimination Act of any kind. Secondly, I absolutely reject the manner in which he intervened and raised this issue nationally. What I do applaud is the fact there is a media debate. The sad thing is we've had this raised finally by the Prime Minister, not by voices within our own gay and lesbian community. I think we need a national debate about what should be the minimum protection for children who are born as the result of assisted fertility services. I mean by that access at some point in their life to information about their donor just as we do about adoption. What are the arguments for and against having an active father figure, not necessarily living at home? And what are the arguments for and against offering a girl and a boy growing up an ongoing relationship with both a man and a woman? We need to discuss these issues.

LOTL: What do you say to a lesbian couple who want to raise a child with no male influence?
Julie: There are scores of lesbian women who, because of their desire to have a baby, have had more to do with men in the last ten years than they ever expected to have! Because they are like me, they do think they have an ethical responsibility in the best interests of the child to offer them a regular male role model who is identifiable as the sperm donor and who may even be called Dad.

LOTL: On these issues perhaps you do have more in common with the PM than you do with a certain percentage of lesbians.
Julie: There is a complex range of considerations and to polarise it between are you for the Prime Minister of for a lesbian separatist household is to trivialise the complex ethical concerns. But the key point I want to make is: I don't think this is a women's rights issue. I don't believe women have a right to have a child. I think it's a misuse of the term 'right'. However, when it comes to the rights of a child to have a mother and a father and some level of contact and support from a mother and a father I think you can say that the UN Convention on the rights of the child does specify that right - there is a source of that right. There is no automatic right of access to fertility services. What we're discussing here is what the guidelines for access should be. I do support a community debate. I think we should have initiated it long ago. And I've tried. People were essentially saying, "We can't talk about that Jule, because we'll upset the women who've used two or three different sperm donors in a 48 hour periods do achieve a child, trying to hide the identity of the dad."

LOTL: And you're opposed to that.
Julie: I think it's ethically questionable.