Just after 7am and Melbourne is still waking up. On the drive from the western suburbs to East Brunswick, hot air balloons waft like dandelion seeds across a baking yellow sky. Only the most pious runners and sleepy dog-walkers are out when Claire Hooper arrives, only a few minutes late but apologising after negotiating a mess of Ubers and school runs. Over the next hour as we walk against a growing flow of commuters on the banks of Merri Creek, no one seems to spot her aside from one small boy on a bike who stares a little too long. Despite being a mainstay of Australia’s panel shows for 20 years, a much-loved comedian and podcaster, and a former host on Great Australian Bake Off she is rarely recognised, which she likes.
“It’s a beautiful thing to have someone go ‘I love you on Bake Off’, but it is even more beautiful to be able to just turn up to school drop-off looking like shit and have no one care about you,” she says. “I think you assume if being a little bit famous is good, being really famous must be better. But it’s not.”
