I think there shuld be mandatory sentencing for television staions. Airing a mind-numbingly shit show like "Family Matters" is far, far worse than stealing a packet of biscuits or a few textas. Airing "Family Matters" is worse than Snowtown or Ivan Milat or the image of John Howard nude, except for a leather g-string and riding crop, singing "I've got a lovely bunch of coconuts".

And the sentencing should be retrospective. Whoever was responsible for scarring this wide brown land of ours with the devils own spawn called "Medivac" still has not been brought to justice. There are some very sick and twisted individuals out there and they're dangerous I tells ya, dangerous. Who else but the devil himself would have unleashed the horror of "Full House" onto the world? Those were evil, poltergeisty-looking little things and nightmares of Kimmy, the freakish high pitched rat-girl that lived next door still haunt me to this day. She was all teeth and knee joints and bad clothing that girl. She was like a cross between Punky Brewster and Chucky from "Childs Play".

Television is bad, well not all of it. "Buffy" is OK. I like "Buffy". Well, I liked it when Angel was in it anyway. Angel was better in "Buffy" than in his own show. Now he just mopes around, whingeing and whining and looking like someone just asked him to give Kim Beazley a sponge bath. Sure, all he did in "Buffy" was mope around as well, but he tended to get his shirt off more often back then. The producers of "Angel" got it all wrong. He shoudn't have been a detective vampire, he should have been a stripper vampire. With nipple tassles. People would watch that. Mind you, I'd also watch "Sports Tonight" if Tim Webster was replaced by a singing tortoise, so I may not be a very good judge of these things.

I just want some decent television viewing, at all hours of every day of every week. Is that too much to ask? Well probably, but I'm bloody well asking anyway. I don't want to turn on my TV and watch a show called "The Mole". Mind you, if they'd called it "The Scrag" instead, I might reconsider. I'm getting desperate. If someone doesn't fix this situation soon, I'll be forced to turn the telly off and get a life. And that would be crap.

June 1999, Catherine Caines, Juice.
Roller Girl

How did you got into comedy?
Someone told me that they didn't think I could do it, so I proved them wrong.

Describe your comic style.
Occasionally musical. Narrative. Personal. I think it's more social therapy than social commentary.

Are comedians the rock stars of the '90s?
The men would like to think they are more than the women. I certainly don't have groupies asking for my autograph, but the boys get asked all the time. Young girls are nutty for boys doing comedy because comedians are more accessible (than rock stars).

Can comedians be funny and attractive?
When you're on stage and you have an audience really pumping, you're in control and I think that knowledge of being in control is alluring. But you don't have to be good looking and I'm sure it's a hindrance in some ways. It's certainly not mportant to me. If somebody didn't laugh at me one night I wouldn't go, "I need a boob job!"

If you were Kerry Packer how would you change comedy on television?
I'd put myself on the telly, on every station, on every hour, just me.

Are there any taboos left to be broken?
People can't be shocked any more. That's the new taboo - somebody getting up and going, "Oh I'm not going to do anything shocking, I'm just going to be normal."

Can anyone do the job of a comedian?
You have to have a sense of humour and I don't think everyone has one.

Is there a difference between comedy and lite entertainment?
Lite entertainment doesn't tell you a fucking thing, whereas a good comedian will give a point of view that changes the way you look at things.

What's your ideal gig?
When everyone laughs and the audience loves it.

How does it feel to be a member of Australia's new comic generation?
There definitely is a new wave of people coming through. Now there is an identifable group and there is more work.

What is the funniest joke you've ever heard?
I can only remember the last joke I heard. But it's an Irish joke for Irish people. I don't think anyone will get it.

Despite her aptitude for stand-up she zeroes in on the rituals of pub life in her festival act, What's a Nice Girl Like You...? Grant hasn't lost her passion for acting, appearing recently in A Midsummer Night's Dream in Melbourne's Botanic Gardens. And it seems that while stage fright is no longer a problem, stage frights are harder to avoid. "It was great except for the bats peeing on me."

When Grant, Rove McManus and Peter Helliar were shooting the pilot for the comedy show Rove on channel 9, Corinne was wearing a pair of trousers that didn't quite fit anymore. She went to the wardrobe department, to see if they had any in her size. "When they didn't, I went 'Yeah! I'm the first normal-sized woman they've had on television!'.

Historically, life has been hard for women in comedy. As Judith Lucy, Linda Gibson and Denise Scott aptly observed at the 1999 Melbourne Comedy Festival, 'Comedy is not pretty'. A inspired smile crosses Corinne's face when we talk of this, "(They) are I'd say, my biggest heroines. It's really inspiring to see female comedians make it," she says of the three stars of last year's hit.

"A women's voice onstage is really fantastic," Corinne continues. Seeing female comedians onstage talking about, not necessarily women's issues, but what's important to them. Pioneers like the Not Pretty trio, Wendy Harmer and Jean Kittson have certainly made comedy "a hell of a lot easier for people like me," Corrine says. "They were the ones who found it hard."

Of course, "you're still up against the whole body image thing...which is quite bizarre," she frowns. "I think comedians have it slightly easier in that respect - if you're funny, it can override how you look."

Now, no-one's saying Corinne's ugly, but she certainly hasn't built her reputation on glamour-pussy roles. "I'm much happier being a dickhead than I am being cool," she says in her broad Australian accent. There's so many people doing cool, but you've probably got dickhead all sewn up, I suggest. "That's my niche market", she laughs.

Perhaps all this dorkiness started when Corinne was growing up in the sleepy Alpine town of Corryong. "When I was at school, we weren't groovy at all," she says. Now when she visits home, she notices "all the kids have got the latest fashions on, and look like they're going out to nightclubs," wryly blaming this change on the Internet. But "there's nowhere to go in Corryong except, you know, a paddock".

Certainly her genuine personality, even in the face of moderate media attention, speaks of the country or how we'd like to imagine it to be. In spite of her fancy French name, there's nothing pretentious about 'Our Corinne'.

Grant got a real buzz from touring regional Victoria as part of last year's Comedy Festival. "I get a bit toey if I'm in the city for too long, so it was nice to breathe a bit of fresh air. In the city, people can see just about anything, so they're a lot harder to impress. In the country... the people really wanted to come." And there they would have met Doreen Starr. A stalker who wants to marry Mike Munro, Doreen's dress sense was even more piteous than her state of mind. Thanks to the Moosehead award, which Corinne received in 1998, she was able to fund a show "that normally wouldn't get produced by anyone else. It was a great burst for me creatively," she says. After that she played Helena in a Midsummer Night's Dream opposite Greg Fleet as Demetrius. Helena is the character that so ardently pursues her unrequited love that she exclaims 'let me be your spaniel!' at a key moment. Did Grant watch the recent Hollywood take on the classic to get some tips off Calista Flockhart? "I can't stand Calista Flockhart, so I refused to watch it," she laughs.

In between, of course was Rove. Corinne is one of the sprawl of comedians around host Rove McManus, her old pal from community TV days. And no, the future of the show is still up in the air. On Rove, Corinne was reinvented by stylists. Wearing boutique clothes, and sporting a Chinese fan hairdo, Doreen Starr seemed a long way away. Yet, no matter how glamorous she may look, Grant's material tends to explore life's little fuckups.

In "What's a Nice Girl like You...? she scratches bars and nightclubs on their dark underbelly to come up with the dirt. The expectations you have of a night out, and what actually happens. Waking up in a stranger's bed with a pool of vomit on the floor. A hen's night and subsequent pub-crawl Corinne went to a few years ago loosely binds the collection of material. "It might get defamatory," she laughs when I ask her to name names. "But you might be able to recognise the establishments if you listen closely."

The most inventive heckle she's ever heard? "I don't think I've ever got a very inventive heckle" Corinne muses, almost in disappointment. "I actually did have someone say 'show us yer tits!' one night, and I was so shocked. I didn't think people said that...There was nothing I could do except say 'well, they're right here. I guess if you can't see them, I guess they're too small'. If you want to cheer her up, a vodka and tonic might do the trick.