Lee Lin Chin’s unlikely path to Gold Logie glory

VIRAL comedy skits and a parody Twitter account: Lee Lin Chin’s surge in popularity is due to just about everything but her day job.

WITH the 2016 Logie nominations announced in Melbourne yesterday, one name stood out a mile among this year’s crop of Gold Nominees.

Among the slew of commercial TV presenters up for Gold, veteran SBS newsreader Lee Lin Chin was a surprise nominee, recognised for her work on both SBS World News and The Feed.

This year’s Gold Logie nominees: Carrie Bickmore, Essie Davis, Grant Denyer, Scott Cam, Lee Lin Chin and Waleed Aly. We don’t mean to spoil the illusion but they weren’t actually all in the same room for this photo.

Chin has been a cult favourite among SBS viewers for decades now, beloved for her eye-catching fashion choices (the Facebook page ‘Lee Lin Chin’s Asymmetrical Outfits’ has more than 38,000 fans) and authoratitive newsreading style. Until recent years, though, viewers were only afforded occasional glimpses of her sparkling personality — like the 2010 flub in which she was caught on camera thirsting after a dashing foreign correspondent:

Chin’s involvement in the SBS2 program The Feed has been key to her new-found popularity as a comedy figured beloved by viewers half her age.

Since its 2013 debut, the news and pop culture program — watched by a handful of viewers when compared to commercial TV counterparts like The Project — has employed Chin for regular skits and segments, allowing her to flex her considerable comedy muscle.

She’s faced off with fellow newsreaders Sandra Sully and Natalie Barr in a hilarious Real Housewives parody dubbed ‘Real Newsreaders of Sydney.’

In another skit produced for The Feed, she feuded with TV chef Maggie Beer in a kickarse kitchen fight:

Throughout, Chin’s persona has been that of an over-it TV veteran barely enduring her younger colleagues on The Feed — she’s frequently joked that her appearances on the show are contractual obligations. She even took part in the ‘celebs read mean tweets’ craze — the only difference is, Chin reads her own nasty tweets rather than those written about her:

Chin’s hilarious, take-no-prisoners Twitter account has been a key part of elevating her cult status. More than 76,000 people follow her on Twitter, lapping up surprisingly caustic tweets like ‘Just because #ValentinesDay is over doesn’t mean I’m going to let you forget that love isn’t real and that you’ll die alone’.

But as the Sydney Morning Herald reported last year, Chin doesn’t actually write her tweets herself. They are in fact penned by comedian Chris Leben, who appears alongside her on The Feed. At the time, an SBS spokesman insisted that Chin “has to see everything that goes out in her name … She’s not a puppet or anything like that.”

Looks like I'm getting my just deserts and by that I mean nominations for best presenter AND the gold #tvweeklogies pic.twitter.com/7eSS9u0WRf

— Lee Lin Chin (@LeeLinChinSBS) April 3, 2016

Despite her ever-growing cult popularity, it remains to be seen whether Chin will be able to take out the Gold Logie — she’s certainly considered an underdog at this point compared to past winners Scott Cam and Carrie Bickmore, both of whom are nominated again.

We can at least be assured of one thing: with such a big nomination, Chin is going to BRING IT on the red carpet. Let’s see if she can top last year’s ‘funereal apiarist’ look:

YAAAAS LEE LIN. Picture: Getty

Originally published as Lee Lin Chin’s unlikely path to Gold Logie glory