Life is beautiful, take their advice

By ELEANOR BLACK

If you were hoping the reality TV craze was starting to abate, you were wrong. Sorry. But if you like the idea of watching an assortment of famous people trying to solve regular folks' deepest personal problems in the time it takes to boil an egg, then you're going to love this.

How's Life? is the newest incarnation of the share-your-pain-with-strangers genre, a chat show based loosely on Selwyn Toogood's panel programme Beauty and the Beast, but younger and more risque.

Former model Charlotte Dawson — a New Zealander who has spent the past 17 years on catwalks in New York and Milan, as well as presenting various television programmes in Australia — is the glamorous agony aunt fronting the daily TV One show, which starts on Monday and replaces Today Live.

With help from 13 celebrity panellists, she will address viewers' problems, everything from extramarital dalliances to gambling addiction and gardening queries. Those with problems will not appear on camera — this is not Kiwi Oprah — but their deepest secrets will be laid bare all the same.

Four or five problems will be discussed during each 30-minute programme.

Offering their two cents worth are former Women's Refuge director Merepeka Raukawa-Tait, actor Robyn Malcolm, television presenter Jude Dobson, TV and radio personality Kerre Woodham, private investigator Julia Hartley-Moore, presenter Marcus Lush, comedian Mark Wright, writer Colin Hogg, super saleswoman Suzanne Paul, retailer Cindy Gibbons, foodie Peta Mathias, dumped Winz boss Christine Rankin and radio host Martin Crump, the son of "keen bloke" Barry Crump.

There will also be a guest panellist once a week, an expert in the field being discussed, who will chime in on problems too heavy for the panel to address.

"I think the strength of this show will lie with the calibre of the panel," says Dawson. "We have managed to snare some amazing people."

She says watching the show will be like sitting down for a face-to-face chat with the panellists. The viewers asking questions will obviously share something of their lives, but the celebs will respond by revealing a few little secrets of their own.

The 35-year-old, who spent five years as a panellist on the Australian version of Beauty and the Beast alongside the notoriously abrasive Stan Zemanek, will act as a devil's advocate and provide a wrap-up at the end, a la Jerry Springer minus the shouting.

From Auckland, Dawson returned home at Christmas to visit family but decided to stay when programme producer Wendyl Nissen, former Woman's Day editor, offered her the weekday presenting role.

"I'm so happy to be here, I can't tell you. I haven't spent enough time with my family [in the past 17 years]."

While she plans to settle in Auckland long-term, she will return to Australia once a month to fulfil commitments to Good Morning Australia, for which she is a fashion commentator. And there is the chance that a sitcom she co-wrote last year for Australian TV will be picked up for the new season.

But her priority will be making How's Life? a success. Facing the camera daily will be a challenge for Dawson, who has previously presented occasional segments for Money, Today, The Footy Show and acted in Australian stage productions of Girls' Night Out and The Vagina Monologues.

Having been part of a series of ensemble projects, it seems she is keen to stamp How's Life? with her own, larger-than-life personality. After all, she is known as one of Australia's most dedicated party girls and for being a regular in gossip columns when her marriage to Olympic swimmer Scott Miller ended abruptly in 2000.

"[The programme is] going to be really modern. My suggestion was three girls and a bottle of wine and we'll be roaring. They said, no, take away the bottle of wine and add a bloke ... I'm joking."

In any case, Dawson has promised the programme will not degenerate into a man-bagging session and that it will be as much about having a laugh as offering insights to people with tricky problems they don't know how tackle.

"It's not all femi-Nazis ... and we're not going to alienate people by being too clever."