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What's the key to flustering Paul McDermott? Physical intimidation.
What's overrated? New-fashioned lean pork.
What's underrated? Front Up, on SBS.
Have you ever been lost for words? We were speaking about dugongs once and I said they were the only animal that made love face-to-face. Mark Trevorrow turned to me and said: "Speak for yourself, Mikey"
Favourite three songs? Heroes (David Bowie), London Calling (The Clash), Some Girls Will (Racey).
What question are you most commonly asked? Is that padding?
What's the most ridiculous news item you've seen? Chicken of Death. A Saudi family lost a chicken down a well and one by one they went down to rescue it. They ended up retrieving six dead people and one live chicken.
What are you passionate about? The butchering of rugby league.
If you could ask God just one question, what would it be? Who's going to win this year's Melbourne Cup?
What annoys the hell out of you? People who take pride in ignorance. What's wrong with having an education and being curious about life? That's not being elitist, it's being the best you can be.
What's hiding in your fridge? Several containers of low-fat yoghurt way past their use-by-date. My wife keeps buying them in hope.
Do you think we should be toasting the Queen? Only over hot coals. I've got nothing against the woman but she is irrelevant.
What are you going to watch at the Olympics? I'll watch my rent go up.
What were you in a previous life? Thinner.
What was Paul McDermott? Edith Piaf.
Sunglasses
When you work on breakfast radio you end up with half a baggage carousel under your eyes. I go for really cheap ones because I lose them a lot.
My couch
I love it. I spend as much time on my couch as I possibly can. I haven't really seen it for a long time as it's covered in cushions and blankets. If I remember correctly it's a nice cream colour, but it's been so long.
A sense of direction
No explanation needed!
Paul McDermott
Having him around reminds me of that constant battle that we in the public eye have to undertake between pursuing a regular life on the straight and narrow and giving into the temptation of fame. Paul continues to struggle with his demons - having him around keeps me sane.
My dressing gown
I like a dressing gown that doesn't quite fit because, that way, when Mormons knock on the door, there's a 50/50 chance that it might just fall open. That will make them run.
My tie collection
I've got a huge collection. People send them to me. I don't know how many, but I've got five coathangers full of them. I buy some but I get sent a lot by people who make ties, which is nice. Strangely enough, they think if I wear them, other people might too. It's very wrong but it's nice of them to try. The great thing about having a tie is that it's the only decision you have to make when it comes to dressing yourself. Once you've got the suit and the shirt on, all you have to do is pick out a tie.
The magazine rack next to the toilet
Enough said.
My second fridge
I fully realised that I'd become a grown up when I could actually have a second fridge with beer in it. To me, this was always a sign that you were staying at someone else's parent's house because they always had that second fridge full of beer. Having the second fridge is one of the most important things in my life. To have a superfluous whitegood is a sign of maturity.
My extensive collection of antique Japanese porcelain
(This may or may not be true).
"The show business saying is ‘never leave the chair’," Mikey joked. "Now after a 5 year run with Good News Week and a contract to work with Channel 10 again next year, I can finally wake up without thinking, ‘My God, my life’s a typing error and I’m about to be kicked out’."
Despite the uncertainty of show business, Mikey has wanted to do comedy since he began giving impromptu performances in a bar in the University’s Shortland Union in the early ‘80s. He and a few friends would entertain the lunchtime crowd of students and staff with sketches and stand up comedy.
"That was where I first got the bug. There was a whole bunch of us – John Doyle (Rampaging Roy Slaven), Steve Abbott (The Sandman) and Tony Squires among them – who were products of the Drama Department.
Following his graduation in 1984, Robins acted in local productions, winning a CONDA Award for his performance in Are You Lonesome Tonight. He joined the famous Castanet Club cabaret group, where he pursued his love of comedy from 1985 until the group folded in 1988.
"Stand-up comedy is terrifying," he said. "People often ask me why Newcastle comedians are so quick-witted but you have to be quick. You only get a few minutes to make the crowd love you and once they’ve tasted blood you’ve had it."
The first night he did stand-up at the Castanet Club, Mikey was booed off the stage. Undeterred, Mikey booked himself back in the following week. When the Castanet Club closed, Robins, who had done a double English/Drama major for his Bachelor of Arts degree, began a Diploma of Education at the University in 1989 but only attended one lecture.
"Teaching is a serious business and teachers are underpaid and underrated. I decided that if I became one of those people who did teaching as something to fall back on, I wouldn’t be doing justice to myself or the profession."
So Mikey went to Sydney as a dishwasher until he got a job doing skits on Saturday Morning Live with Jonathon Coleman. When he and the other sketch writer/performer on the show were axed, he went to Triple J as a sketch writer before landing the breakfast slot with Helen Razor.
"Breakfast DJ’s age in dog years," Mikey quipped of his seven years of getting up at 5am. "I love radio because it’s so intimate but it reached the point when Triple J went national and there were over a million people listening that it became a job."
"I knew it was time to leave when I lived through my third ska music revival," Mikey jokes. He describes his work as a regular panellist on the satrical quiz show, Good News Week (GNW), hosted by Paul McDermott, as a dream job.
"I’ve done more than 100 TV shows in the past two years, which is a whole career for some," Mikey said. "We will do one big last show of Good News Week at the Capitol Theatre to farewell a good five years."
Robins is making another series on Australian pubs, with the new series including watering holes in Hobart, Longreach in Queensland and Uluru.
Mikey attributes much of his success to working with friends, particularly Steve Abbott and more recently Paul McDermott and the GNW team.
"Steve Abbott and I liken it to the 10-man charge up to the RSL at midnight," he said. "A couple of you might get caught by the bouncers but most of you will get in. In a business that doesn’t know a lot about loyalty, we confuse them."
Mikey and the GNW team will be back at Ten next year with a new show.
Robins, 38, airs what Abbott cals his "super-intelligent and gross humour" in a variety of media gigs He has been a panellist on the satirical news show Good News Week for four years and this week, Network 10 screens his blokey documentary Pubs and Beer Nuts. He writes a weekly column for a Sydney giveaway newspaper and is developing a sit-com with Tony Squires (host of ABC-TV's The Fat). And in April, Triple M announced he would soon be returning to do guest spots on the national radio network. "I love the telly, I really do, but there is a spontaneity about radio. It's a lot of fun," says Robins, who co-hosted Triple J's breakfast show from 1991 unti 1998 when he quit because "the early morning's ground me down" and he wantd to focus on the person whose laughter matters to him the most, his wife Laura.
Robins reckons the best thing about him is his marriage. "I married my best friend," he says.. he recalls the night in 1995 when he and Laura, now 38, who was born in Sydney and raised in Hong Kong where her father, John, was an airline pilot, met at a Republican fundraiser in Sydney. Five minutes after their first hello, he asked her to go away with him for the weekend. "He was cheeky, sort of confident and arrogant," says Laura, "which made me think I would probably never go out with him." (She had just returned from England where she was a financial marketer and didn't know who Robins was.) What changed her mind? "He chased me," says Laura. "He made me laugh. And still does. What you see is what you get. There's none of this sad clown thing going on." Last August the couple exchanged vows at a simple ceremony in Sydney.
Life for the pair wasn't always a laugh. Before Laura tamed him, Robins was enjoying "my first rush of fame and I was a wild lad. I had the reputation of being a bit of a drinker. I was drinking way too much ad that can affect your behaviour. Laura was fantastic person to meet." She now manages most aspects of her husband's life ("I get pocket money," he quips). "He needed to slow down a bit," she says. "He's an extremely intelligent man and he knows when to pull back." Since their marriage, says Abbott, "Mikey has become quite stable." Parenthood is also a possibility, too. "We'd like to have children," Laura says, "although I'm no spring chicken."
Robins still likes a drink - on the weekends - but these days counts food as his only real vice. "Laura and I are pretty much homebodies," he says. Saturday nights are spent in the kitchen of their modest rented home in Sydney, which is crammed with memorabilia of the South Sydney rugby league team. He whips up "excellent pasta dishes, soups and roasts," says Laura. "He's a very, very good cook."
And a good eater! "I lost 20kg last year," Robins boasts. "I trimmed down for the wedding. That photo is going to be on the mantelpiece for the rest of my life!" But now, thanks to his "shithouse metabolism," he says he has stacked "most of the weight" back on. "He loves ice-cream and dairy products," says Laura, who runs about four times a week and worries about her husband's health.
Leila, Robins's mother, decided her son shoud lose weight at the age of 10 and sent him to Weight Watchers. He's never forgotten the experience. "You're 10 and everyone else in the room is a fat woman in her 40s. It's amazing how I got through it." Abbott believes that being an overweight child led Robins to become a comedian: "When he was young, comedy was a defence mechanism."
Mikel Maxam Robins spent his childhood at The Junction, a Newcastle suburb, as the only son of housewife Leila and salesman Bill Robins (who died in 1972). He studied for a BA, majoring in drama and English, at Newcastle University. To help pay the rent, he performed "really rough sketch comedy in bars," he says, and in 1985 joined the Castanet Club, a cabaret troupe whose members included future TV entertainers Abbott and his now wife, Angela Moore, and Glenn Butcher. 
Robins, who "played percussion in an Elvis suit which stunk," was in the Castanets for four years, earning about $150 a week. On quitting, he settled in Sydney where he "washed dishes and did stand-up. That led to a job writing sketch comedy for Triple J's breakfast show." After lying that he could work the control panel, he was given a chance behind the microphone. "I took the station off the air five times, apparently a record."
Robins's comic talent eclipsed his technical fumblings. As the Sydney station became a national network, Robins's star rose too and he joined ABC-TV's comedy-variety show Live and Sweaty and then Good News Week.
Although he has been successful, Robins says he is motivated by fear of failing. "I have no other skills apart from the fact that sometimes in front of a microphone or a TV camera I can come up with a good one-liner," he says. "The only difference between me and the guy in a pub is that I have a camera in front of me."
Robins insists he's "never had an act." Rather than tell jokes, he says, when he is in front of the camera or behind the mike, he simply aims to be himself: a rugby league-loving "yobbo" who does not shy from his working-class roots. "I've always tried to keep my comedy as close to myself as possible, which is fine and, besides, I get a lot of blokes in pubs buying me drinks."
"There's nothing signed on the dotted line yet, but we're looking at me popping in as soon as possible," he says. "Basically, I'll be there and if people want me they can grab me. We're not talking about me doing a shift or being groomed for anything."
Would he ever return to presenting breakfast?
"Not at the moment. I had seven years of gettng up before sunrise. I've never worked in commercial radio and they've never worked with me so we're going to take our time and see if we get on this year."
Robins says he has already shot one TV documentary for the GNW production team "and I still have another one or two to do. They're like the Clive James "Postcards". The first was a look at the pub culture in Australia, which I enjoyed doing, but it was flat out work for a very intense period. I'm doing other docos for Ten which we're still figuring out; I'm doing "Good News Week" and I'll be contributing to the Triple M network so I hink that might [be] enough for one person for a while."
Mikey Robins is holding court at his local, the Waverley Bowling and Recreation Club in Sydney. He's popped out for a chat, while his wife of nine months, Laura, stays at home and does battle with their crashing computer.
How's the change from doing two shows a week to one?
Fantastic. I think everyone could tell we were spreading our resources a bit thin as it was. This gives us a chance to do the things we care most about, which is live music and live comedy, and also political satire. It fits quite nicely into a 90-minute package.
What part of the show do you enjoy most?
Probably the stuff that doesn't go to air, like the warm-up, goofing up with the audience. I really enjoy playing with a large studio audience, that's fun.
How many newspapers and magazines do you read each week?
Three papers a day. Then, during the day, I have CNN, Sky News and BBC World Service on all day.
Don't you find that tiring?
No, I'd have it on anyway. I just wander around the house and they're on. Then, at five o'clock, I put on the Channel Ten news, then The 7:30 Report. Some nights I cheat and watch Just Shoot Me!.
You've just finished filming a doco about people and their favourite pubs. How'd you enjoy doing that?
It was fun, a learning curve. The only tedious thing about it was that I was doing three or four interviews a day in pubs, so I had to drink a lot of light shandies. I went out on the first day, and halfway through the second interview- you have to keep replacing the beer for continuity- I was getting slowly tanked.
Your worst on-air moment?
Brisbane. There were 2,500 in the audience and a storm hit. We had to fill until all the computer equipment got going again. And then there was Bronwyn Bishop walking out five minutes before taping- that was fun. (BB walked out in 1998 after Paul McDermott made a series of jokes about John Howard.)
Have you ever had to stop yourself from saying anything inappropriate on air?
Never. After years of radio experience, you learn. It's amazing how you can be incredibly foul-mouthed until the camera goes on. In seven years of radio, I've dropped the magic word once or twice.
You've been called the "Thinking Man's Yobbo". How do you feel about that?
(Laughs) I'd prefer to be regarded as the thinking woman's yobbo! I find the use of the word yobbo quite amusing. Just because I like sitting in the pub with my mates and enjoy watching football. Well, I used to follow football but not anymore, since South got gutted.
You've sworn off football?
I've not watched Rugby League since Souths were cut from the competition, and I will never watch Rugby League again.
Do you miss it?
Yes.
Do you watch GNW on TV?
Depends if my wife's been in the audience. If she didn't see the taping, then we'll watch it. There isn't much else on since The Bill became a soap opera. I used to be a fan, but I don't get it anymore.
What's next for you?
I don't know, I've never had a career plan. I often feel like my life is a typing error, and there's a guy called Marty Rubins who should have had my life. I'm very lucky. I don't have to work seven days a week- I work hard a couple of days a week- I work with my friends and I do a job I love. I'm not rich, but I'm doing okay. I pulled into a service station the other night and the guy serving said, 'I thought you'd have a better car than that.' We were in a cab so I said, 'What, the cab?' and he said, 'No, the little silver Honda I see you and your wife in all the time.'
How old's your car?
Five years. People make the assumption that because you're on television that you're rich. It's very funny to have some pimply 17-year-old tell you that your car is shit. Most times, when people come up to you, they're very nice, but sometimes it's like, 'Oh mate, what are you doing with your hair like that?'. Or my favourite is on a Saturday morning, when I go round to the shop to pick up the papers- 'Big night last night?'. It's a small price to pay- and it's very funny.