[3] Their first interviews featured Clarke as British royal Prince Charles and American actress Meryl Streep.

[1] In February 1989,[4] with the support of host Jana Wendt, Clarke and Dawe made its television debut as part of A Current Affair on the Nine Network, where the program would continue to air for eight years, until 1996.

[2][5] One of their episodes from this period, The Front Fell Off, featuring Clarke as Australian politician Bob Collins on the topic of a 1991 oil spill off the Australian coast, garnered widespread attention years later, when the video was circulated by some on the internet as real, eventually prompting fact-checking website Snopes to debunk it.

[8] In 2012, plans emerged to scrap the interview format and instead feature comedian Chas Licciardello, but the program ultimately remained.

The episode features Clarke as Richard Shinnery, a fictional consultant for Australia's National Broadband Network.