Cottoning on to Joe

Joe Cotton at work as part of More FM's new breakfast team. Photo / Herald on Sunday

Down in the subterranean studio that is the Transmission Room on Mayoral Drive in Auckland, Joe Cotton is the odd one out. It's the filming for comedy panel show 7 Days, and six male comedians are dissecting rogue Maori Party MP Hone Harawira.

Cotton, who achieved instant fame 10 years ago as the podgy member of TrueBliss on Popstars, one of New Zealand's first hit reality television shows, is flummoxed as to what Harawira has done to deserve front page headlines for a week.

"Wasn't he a wee bit racial in an email?" she inquires.

Her team member, and fellow radio host Jesse Mulligan, gently mocks the naivete that makes Cotton both endearing and frustrating: "That's why I love you Joe, you're probably the only person in the country who hasn't been following this story."

Cotton adds: "I generally don't read newspapers, but I do like to peruse them to come up with Christmas ideas."

During filming, a large chunk of crude sexual insults - most likely edited out before 7 Days airs - are thrown Cotton's way. Not that Cotton is letting the barbs come from only her co-stars. On the topic of the "prominent entertainer" who received permanent name suppression after being discharged without conviction after admitting an indecent act in an alleyway, Cotton finds an excuse to highlight her personal connection to the case: "I've made out with this entertainer before, and he never asked me to lick his balls. What's wrong with me?"

And, back to Harawira and his runaway train of apologies. Cotton concedes that she, too, has had to say sorry: "I did have to apologise to Aja Rock after I forwarded pictures of her in the nude to people in the media."

The unmissable, and occasionally outrageous, Cotton is New Zealand's answer to Jade Goody. Goody achieved fame and infamy in the United Kingdom as a serial reality-TV star, and subsequently leveraged her life - and even her death from cancer earlier this year - into a Truman Show-like career that earned millions of pounds and sold millions of newspapers. Of course, Cotton hasn't yet done a Goody and sparked an international diplomatic incident by using Big Brother to vent racist insults.

The mildly cruel comparison with Goody sparks Cotton into laughter. "I suppose there's some truth to that. Once you've done a certain amount of reality television, that's what defines you."

Earlier this year Cotton opened her wedding to Daniel Shields to TV cameras for an episode of Hitched. She was happy with the result.

"We got off pretty lightly, because we're not people who would come out drinking bourbon and cola saying 'I just peed on my dress'. Not that I'm passing judgment."

Her wedding wasn't just televised - it made women's magazines and was endlessly flogged on her radio show.

After Popstars, Celebrity Treasure Island, Pop's Ultimate Star and numerous product endorsements (Jenny Craig, Lindauer, amongst others) is there any limit to what she won't expose herself to? Like Goody, would even death be just another promotional opportunity for Brand Cotton?

Well, she doesn't entirely rule it out. "I get where Goody's coming from, but I haven't really entertained the idea, to be honest. I don't think I would unless I thought it was going to be helpful to people."

Her philosophy on self-promotion isn't quite shameless, but she does acknowledge it could be seen as naive."What you see is what you get from me. I don't think I'm a particularly heinous person, I don't mind being filmed."

And, because of this, she says she tries to live the mistake-apology-redemption cycle in public: "I have shame. There are things I've done that I'm mortified about, but I try to live with the belief - however naively - that I'm just like them, I'm flawed, and I f*** up. Sometimes I can right myself and come out on top and other times I'll do something really dumb, and I'll feel ashamed. And I have to try to work to get people's love back again.

"I guess maybe this is a naive assumption that that's what people see in me, because some people will think 'what a spinner'."

Her dress during an interview at the Viaduct's Portside restaurant is, like she says of her career, less calculation than happenstance. Wearing torn jeans, a faded white T-shirt and shocking pink heels and starfish earrings, she says she isn't going for a punk look. "No. It's the 'only-10-per cent-of-my-wardrobe-still-fits' look."

It's this weight loss and gain she's gone from chubby girl-next door in Popstars to slim socialite that has brought her the most attention from media in recent years. She made headlines earlier this year when she endorsed diet programme Jenny Craig after publicising Weight Watchers following her first downsizing. Now she's dieting again.

"Since I've started doing breakfast radio I've put on a stone. I'm fascinated by people who have managed to get some form of control over it."

Her fascination with the shifting size of others doesn't extend to Rodney Hide, but she's is gutted that she's not able to follow the ACT leader's clumsy footsteps and appear on Dancing With the Stars. "You can't not lose weight on that show. Frou-frou outfits, a bit of weight loss: What's not to like?" she says. "Sadly it's been canned."

But back before she become a version of Goody, and even before she became a popstar, her childhood career dream was for something more practical. "I wanted to be a firewoman." Cotton grew up abroad, the daughter of missionary Salvation Army parents who took her to Africa and Canada before returning to New Zealand.

And it was her father, Peter, that inadvertently set her career path by encouraging her to sing, and then in 1998 acting as her agent when the call for Popstars auditions went out. "I was working full-time and couldn't get to the audition, so my dad called the production crew and hounded them to try to get me in during my lunch break."

The rest, as they say, is history. Popstars enjoyed considerably more than 15 minutes of fame. The series debuted in New Zealand in 1999, and the group TrueBliss did a nationwide tour and their album reached number one in the charts.

But, like so many Kiwi ideas, Popstars never received the capital to became a genuine homegrown success. By the end of 1999 the fizz had disappeared, the band broke up and series creator Jonathan Dowling had flicked off the rights to the concept to an Australian production company for $8000. Later, after tweaking, the idea of reality-music television made Simon Cowell and the Idol franchise hundreds of millions of dollars.

The pittance Dowling got for the concept "seems like karma", says Cotton. TrueBliss themselves, a bunch of young muso wannabes, were caught in the media and industry headlights. Emerging from the glare to be famous and penniless still rankles, says Cotton. She says they were promised " a big pot" of money but it never happened.

Cotton still sings as a member of covers band Mermaids, but now knows that becoming a pop princess is probably out of her reach. Instead, post-Popstars, Cotton has found a way to work the limelight to her advantage. And work she does.

Last Thursday, before she appeared late evening for the filming of 7 Days, she began the day before dawn. As a member of More FM's new breakfast team, alongside Jeremy Corbett and Jesse Mulligan, she rises at 5am. The studio on Ponsonby Rd has sweeping views of the city, but at 8am Cotton is concentrating more on internet celebrity gossip sites Perez Hilton and TMZ.

Off-air, Corbett, a 16-year broadcasting veteran, munches on grapes and nuts as the team discusses the show for tomorrow during a meeting they call "focus time".

Cotton has taken product-placement of commercial radio to heart. "What crap are we selling tomorrow?" she asks producer Dermott Sweeney.

The producer, consulting a list, replies: "Just The Time Traveler's Wife at this stage and Michael Jackson."

After 10 minutes discussing pre-planned conversation topics ("What would you miss your wedding for?") and the logistics of broadcasting out-of-studio (the team are doing over a house in Beach Haven as a charity-act-cum-ratings-gimmick), the meeting comes to a close. "Is focus time over?" asks Cotton, already looking ahead to making national television in the evening. "Now it's time to focus on what we're wearing tonight!"

Her exposure - possibly over-exposure - has a certain method. Her shift to radio, where looks are less important than personality, is probably the extent of her strategic planning.

"I'm really aware you've only got a certain window of time to try to make a living in this industry," she says.

And there are small things she's done to try and prolong her shelf-life - albeit half-heartedly. She has turned 30, but her date of birth on Facebook has shaved a half-decade off her age. She knows the clock is ticking: "How long are people going to want to see my boobs - sorry, my face - on the front of a woman's magazine?"