KEY POINTS:
Alison Mau brushes aside breakfast TV's detractors.
"People moan on about it being all lightweight and no substance, but it is an incredibly difficult form of broadcasting," she says.
Mau, currently filling in for Suzy Clarkson as 5.30pm newsreader on Prime, spent two years on Breakfast. She's one of the seven anchors who've sat on the Breakfast couch. The others: Mike Hosking and Susan Wood, Kate Hawkesby, Liz Gunn, and now Kay Gregory and Paul Henry.
Says Mau: "It was my very favourite television show ever.
"I loved it - working in a team in a relaxed form of broadcasting, the breadth of subjects you get to cover, the amount of freedom you have in an interview subject. But the hours just kill you, and that was the only reason I gave it up."
The 3am starts, the social-life obliterating afternoon naps, weekend exhaustion and early nights - "If I wasn't in bed and going to sleep by nine I'd start to panic".
Knackering, but exhilarating, too. "It's incredibly fast-paced and very intense. It also has a lot of light and shade: there's a lot of hard news stuff, at 7.10am you're interviewing the Prime Minister, then at 8.20pm you might be interviewing a group of actors."
Breakfast TV has distinct personality roles - the joker, the straight guy. "You take the one which fits most comfortably," says Mau. "For me to try to out-caustic Paul - although I did enjoy mocking him - but it made sense for me to take the straight role, because I was the news person."
The rapport is also different with the audience, she says - more matey. Though "matey" is hardly the word that springs to mind when you watch Henry wheeling off on his tangents or mercilessly ribbing Gregory, while she plays the exasperated side-kick. "I'm a bit more of a giggler than Kay is, and I'm probably a bit more willing to flow along with the joke," says Mau.
"I was exactly like Kay in the sense that there has to be one person that drives the programme on. Paul is the one in the pairing who will spin out a joke and he's very funny, very clever.
"But eventually there has to be somebody who's there to slap him down and say: 'Naughty boy, that's enough from you.' There's absolutely no point in trying to battle against that and saying: 'No, I want to be the quirky one."'
She had her share of pratfalls. "It's such a loose format, and you can be yourself so liberally, that you do end up making a real dick of yourself quite often.
"To be a good breakfast host you have to be unafraid of that.
"You have to realise these moments may give everyone at home a wonderful laugh, but they're fleeting, and to beat yourself up about it is really quite stupid. So I just let them go."
Mau doesn't expect TV3 will take much more than its moniker from its Aussie namesake.
"They'd be sensible to go their own way. Because the charm of Sunrise in Australia is [hosts] Mel and Kochie, if you don't have that unique blend of personalities then you're going to struggle to create anything similar."
And the cheesy, glossy American model, followed across the Tasman, wouldn't work here. "We're just a bit more relaxed here, a bit less worried about big hair and perfect teeth and more willing to allow somebody who's a bit quirky and different to run with it."
Should TV One be afraid of Sunrise?
"Viewership hasn't built that much in recent years, it's stayed stable. So they would have to be doing something very different, something that really appeals to viewers to get them to switch from their normal viewing habits."
