Emotional Carrie Bickmore prepares for Project farewell

Funny the things you discover when you have to clean out your desk after 13 years in the same job – as Carrie Bickmore is discovering.

Longtime Project host Carrie Bickmore has given fans an emotional look behind the scenes as she prepares to say goodbye to the show after 13 years.

Bickmore, The Project’s sole remaining original host, will farewell viewers during Wednesday’s episode, having announced in early October that she was quitting the show.

And in her most recent post to Instagram, Bickmore could be seen cleaning out 13 years worth of stuff from her desk as she struggled to contain her emotions.

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Carrie Bickmore clears out her desk …

… and cuddles up to a colleague.

“Cleaning out my Project desk – I’m not crying, you are. Going to miss this wonderful woman,” she said, pulling a colleague in for a hug.

“It’s so weird, all my life packed up in a box.”

And she shared a few of her discoveries from the clear-out with her followers. Among them, a photo of her now-teenage son Ollie as a little boy, back when she first started the show in 2007. There was also an old packet of a pregnancy multivitamin – “A few babies along the way,” said the mum-of-three – and some vintage photos of Project cast members.

She was also seen packing up an Esky full of wine bottles – surely more ammo for colleague Peter Helliar’s long-running on-air jokes about Bickmore enjoying a glass or three of wine.

Don’t forget the wine-filled Esky!

One of the show’s more infamous relics.

And, incredibly, a Project relic that provided one of the show’s most infamous moments had resurfaced after eight years: A sheet of Bickmore’s script that she held up to the camera during a 2014 episode, apparently unaware that someone had scrawled a giant penis on the back.

And leave it to The Project jokester Tommy Little to cut through the sentimentality with a comment under Bickmore’s video. “Don’t forget the bong in your bottom drawer,” he wrote.

Bickmore’s departure comes amid a “mass exodus” of The Project’s on-air talent, with fellow host Lisa Wilkinson abruptly quitting the show after five years earlier this month.

In contrast to Bickmore, who gave viewers seven weeks’ warning of her intention to leave the show, Wilkinson announced in the closing minutes of The Sunday Project’s November 20 episode that she’d be quitting – effective immediately.

She blamed “relentless, targeted toxicity” from some sections of the media for her decision to step back from the role.

It’s going to be an emotional episode as Bickmore farewells The Project tonight. Picture: Channel 10

And another of the show’s longest-running panellists, Peter Helliar, will depart after more than a decade next week. He’ll finish up on Wednesday, December 7, and plans to devote more time to other career opportunities.

Last week, Bickmore and Helliar opened up about their respective departures during an interview on her radio show, with Bickmore teasing her colleague about his blunt reaction when she told him privately she was leaving.

“I do remember the words you said,” she told Helliar. “You said something so quickly: ‘The show will be fine!’”

They dissolved into laughter before Bickmore clarified that Helliar texted her later to explain the blunt reaction, attributing it to shock.

Amid all that staff churn, at least one new appointment has been announced for The Project’s 2023 season: Longtime Studio 10 host Sarah Harris will make the move to evenings, joining Waleed Aly on hosting duties on the desk.