Mia: "Kochie came into the office to smoke the peace pipe with me."

A few weeks ago, Kochie agreed to come into the Mamamia Womens Network office to smoke the peace pipe with me after our rather public fight last year over Strippergate (which you can read about here).

It was awkward at first:

And then we sat down and I interviewed him for my new video and podcast series calledNo Filter. 

And that looked like this:

No, I wasn't being restrained although it looks like it. Check out Kochie's face. The guy behind me is Darren, our sound engineer on most of our MMTV shoots who has now seen my bra more times than my husband (sound guys have the little known job perk of securing radio mikes up the shirts and onto the bra straps of women).

There is a strange asexuality about the way you behave when a sound guy is rooting around under your clothes trying to find the best place to attach their microphone. Both the 'talent' (as you're called when you're in front of the camera) and the sound guy act like it's perfectly normal for them to be touching your underwear. [fun fact: Darren's fiance is the director of this video, Shelly Horton who is the producer of our MMTV videos and is the one standing in the foreground in the shot above with her back to camera, totally unperturbed].

It never occurred to me how odd this might look until one time a few years ago when my daughter came with me to the set of the Today Show and I noticed her eyes widen as some man she'd never seen before stood behind me as I hiked my shirt up so he could hook the microphone pack to the back of my bra.

"This man is just doing his job," I reassured her. "It's OK that he's touching mummy's bra because mummy gave her consent." She blinked. I powered on. "If I hadn't said it was OK, that would not have been OK."

She didn't look convinced. She looked confused.

"He's a very nice man," I continued. "I'm not sure what his name is but I'm sure he's very good at his job."

Blink. Blink.

Anyway.

Things were tense at times with me and Kochie. He was clearly still pissed about Strippergate and I was pissed that he had unleashed the hounds onto members of my team who subsequently got death threats. It was heated at times. I pushed, he pushed back. At one point I said "Kochie, why did you agree to do this interview?" and his answer was not what I expected. At all.

Here's the interview - we ended as friends:

We smoked the peace pipe (not to be confused with smoking a bong on the toilet, which we decided against). And we're having lunch together next week. I'm not sure who's paying. Awks.

Here's how things ended:

See how neatly I fit under Kochie's chin?

Thanks for everyone who asked if I was okay after my sad little email last week by the way. I was in a bit of a dark place. Strung out and stressed and sad. But this week the sun is out in every way and I'm back feeling like myself again. Happier.

This is an extract from Mia's weekly newsletter which you can subscribe to here. 

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