Chris Bath joins The Project after leaving Sunday Night

THERE’S been plenty of hype about what Chris Bath’s next big gig would be after her much-discussed exit from Seven last year. Has she found a new home?

Is this Chris Bath’s new TV gig?

SPORTING a coral-red jacket matching the cast on her busted right wrist, TV presenter Chris Bath stepped back into the spotlight last night as part of what she’s terming her new job — fly in, fly out worker.

Bath packed a punch standing in for Carrie Bickmore on the The Project on Channel 10, but couldn’t knock off her husband, Seven sports presenter Jim Wilson, in the ratings as the pair went head to head on rival networks.

In Sydney, where Wilson reads on Seven, the second half-hour of Seven’s bulletin attracted 247,000 viewers to The Project’s 171,000.

But Bath reckons she won the sledging, joining the social media chat around her appearance by tweeting she’d try to “steal some Sydney viewers from the gibberer @JimWilsonTV around 6.45pmish”.

The week-long stint on The Project is Bath’s longest single stint on air since she sensationally quit Seven last June after 20 years with the network.

Walking away from her gig as weekend news presenter and host of Sunday Night, Bath’s departure was all the more surprising because she had no job to go to.

Shrugging off rumours she’d left because of tensions behind the scenes, she it was time to “see what’s next”.

Chris Bath has her cast cut so she can fly.

Chris shows her cast after her hand was broken.

The offending cast, which is now a lovely shade of red.

“What’s next” in the past six months has included holidays, a few appearances as a panellist on The Project, a guest hosting spot on Studio Ten, a couple of radio newsreading slots with Fitzy and Wippa on Nova, continuing her work as an ambassador for the Stroke Foundation, and travelling to East Timor as part of her Red Cross ambassador duties.

Seven West media chairman Kerry Stokes made clear on Bath’s departure he preferred to see her exit as “just a sojourn” and there has also been rumoured interest from overseas broadcast networks, but Bath yesterday remained adamant FIFO (fly in, fly out) is pretty much her job description at the moment.

“I haven’t signed with Ten, I’m just filling in for Carrie, with the training wheels back on,” she said.

“It’s different sitting on the panel (on The Project) to being in the driver’s seat — and that’s what Waleed (Aly) and Carrie do — so it was more care and responsibility than previously when I’d been on.

“Career-wise at the moment, I’m FIFO — fly in, fly out.

“I’m working everywhere, but nowhere, and it’s fun.”

Bath’s busted wrist is an unwanted gift she received on Christmas Eve with the family in Queenstown, when she slipped while boarding a boat on Lake Wakitipu.

“I executed an unintentional triple Barani (somersault with a twist) into the hull of a steel-sided boat while boarding, put my hands out to save myself and failed,” she said.

“There was no ten from the Russian judge.

“A drink may have been taken, but not enough to be able to blame it for the slip. The only thing to blame is my own clumsiness.

“The boys roared with laughter, not realising I’d actually hurt myself.

“I heard the crack, looked at Jim and said: ‘I’ve done something.”

After a 40-minute trip back across the lake in choppy conditions, Bath dispatched the rest of the family “for a lovely three-course meal at Botswana Butchery (well, we’d booked it ages in advance)”. At Queenstown’s Lake District Hospital, x-rays revealed two breaks.

“They gave me a couple of Panadol to start with, but then I saw them looking at the x-ray and next thing this lovely bloke called Tom comes back with a plate full of pills, so I knew I’d done a good job of it,” Bath said.

“He put the cast on but I didn’t get really worried until he came back with a circular saw.

“Turned out he had to split it or I wouldn’t have been allowed to fly home, because it can swell on the plane.”

Last night’s “colour-matched” on-air outfit was a happy accident rather than an attempt to conceal the cast.

A fresh cast was put on last week, with Bath choosing red because the other options — blue or green — would have disappeared on certain backgrounds in the lights of a TV studio.

Bath will go head-to-head with Wilson all week, but yesterday happily conceded he’d drawn first blood — although she ventured a minute-by-minute breakdown might narrow the margin.

“You need 6.45pm minute by minute — that’s when I would have beaten him,” she laughed.

“But I’ll give the first round to the husband. Game on, Jimmy.”

Originally published as Chris Bath joins The Project after leaving Sunday Night