Down in the subterranean studio that is the Transmission Room on Mayoral Drive in Auckland, Joe Cotton is the odd one out. It's the filming for comedy panel show 7 Days, and six male comedians are dissecting rogue Maori Party MP Hone Harawira.
Cotton, who achieved instant fame 10 years ago as the podgy member of TrueBliss on Popstars, one of New Zealand's first hit reality television shows, is flummoxed as to what Harawira has done to deserve front page headlines for a week.
"Wasn't he a wee bit racial in an email?" she inquires.
Her team member, and fellow radio host Jesse Mulligan, gently mocks the naivete that makes Cotton both endearing and frustrating: "That's why I love you Joe, you're probably the only person in the country who hasn't been following this story."
Cotton adds: "I generally don't read newspapers, but I do like to peruse them to come up with Christmas ideas."
During filming, a large chunk of crude sexual insults - most likely edited out before 7 Days airs - are thrown Cotton's way. Not that Cotton is letting the barbs come from only her co-stars. On the topic of the "prominent entertainer" who received permanent name suppression after being discharged without conviction after admitting an indecent act in an alleyway, Cotton finds an excuse to highlight her personal connection to the case: "I've made out with this entertainer before, and he never asked me to lick his balls.
What's wrong with me?"
And, back to Harawira and his runaway train of apologies. Cotton concedes that she, too, has had to say sorry: "I did have to apologise to Aja Rock after I forwarded pictures of her in the nude to people in the media."
The unmissable, and occasionally outrageous, Cotton is New Zealand's answer to Jade Goody. Goody achieved fame and infamy in the United Kingdom as a serial reality-TV star, and subsequently leveraged her life - and even her death from cancer earlier this year - into a Truman Show-like career that earned millions of pounds and sold millions of newspapers. Of course, Cotton hasn't yet done a Goody and sparked an international diplomatic incident by using Big Brother to vent racist insults.
The mildly cruel comparison with Goody sparks Cotton into laughter. "I suppose there's some truth to that. Once you've done a certain amount of reality television, that's what defines you."
Earlier this year Cotton opened her wedding to Daniel Shields to TV cameras for an episode of Hitched. She was happy with the result.
"We got off pretty lightly, because we're not people who would come out drinking bourbon and cola saying 'I just peed on my dress'. Not that I'm passing judgment."
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