Surprising Sarah Harris will be the difference on The Project

Sarah Harris will put the difference back into ‘news delivered differently’ when she joins the program, tips close friend Joe Hildebrand.

Sarah Harris hasn’t even started at The Project but already she has given the show the one thing it desperately needs – I just don’t know what it is.

And that is precisely the point. When Sarah opens her mouth to say something on any given issue, you never know what’s going to come out. And that is something The Project has been missing for a long time.

Sarah Harris will join Waleed Aly as hosts of The Project next year. Picture: Network 10

The Ten program’s slogan is “news delivered differently”, and it certainly is different to the mainstream news offerings on Seven and Nine, which is what made it so refreshing at first.

But as the years have worn on, The Project has not really delivered the news very differently within itself. While the hosts have changed, you could pretty much set your watch to whatever they were going to say about any particular topic.

But Sarah is different. Having co-hosted a four-hour show (Studio 10) with her for seven years, I never once second-guessed where she would land on any topic – I couldn’t.

Off camera, she is one of my best friends and I reckon I know her as well as anyone on the planet. We talk about pretty much everything and everyone almost every day. And yet, even then, Sarah will always surprise me with her take on an issue or person.

Joe Hildebrand with Sarah Harris during their time on Studio 10. Picture: Jonathan Ng

This is what makes her so fascinating and so much fun, and it’s a quality I have found in very few humans, let alone TV presenters. She is impossible to pigeonhole politically because she is impossible to pigeonhole at all. This is something that confuses ideologues on both the left and the right, which is why Sarah is just the tonic to shake things up on the panel.

There will no doubt be some stunned silences. But that’s OK because Sarah also knows a lot of jokes. Just don’t ask her to tell you the one about the nuts.

Trust me, it doesn’t end well …