TV

Watch Sophie Monk Navigate An Especially Brutal Episode Of ‘Hard Chat’

"I'm not coming off as super smart, am I?"

by Tom Clift  6 April 2017

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Tom Gleeson’s ‘Hard Chat’ segment on The Weekly has delivered some pretty tough to watch moments over the years.

There was the time he asked Mamamia founder Mia Freedman why she named her website “after a shit movie”. There was the time he told Karl Stefanovic he smelled like “alcohol stress sweat”. And who could forget the time when, without any prompting whatsoever, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd started talking about killing people, cutting them into pieces and feasting on their sweet fleshy remains.

Still, for my money, it’s this week’s episode that might be the most cringingly entertaining yet. Gleeson’s guest was actor, former Bardot member and misc. media personality Sophie Monk, who he introduced by asking, “When you’re at the airport and you go through immigration, under profession to do you put ‘trying to be famous’?” Ooft.

Over the four minutes that followed, Gleeson mocked Monk for her short-lived solo music career, her time working with Kyle and Jackie O, and all but called her an idiot to her face. “I’m not coming off as super smart, am I?” asked Monk mid-interview. “Yeah, it’s almost as if you’re not” Gleeson replied.

But Monk, to her credit, was more than game, cracking as many jokes at her own expense as Gleeson did. When asked what reality show she’d next like to appear on next, she name-checked The Bachelorette without hesitation, explaining that she was “very single.” She even managed to make Gleeson break his composure with a particularly tragic story from her school days.

And look, if nothing else, at least she’s not George Christensen. She’ll always have that going for her.