Libbi Gorr was at Sydney airport earlier this year when she saw Mark "Chopper" Read and decided to settle an old score. She strode up to the confessed killer and told him he had ruined her life.
Read was contrite. "He said, 'I know, I'm sorry,'" says Gorr. "He was patting his suit looking for a hanky for me. He was concerned because I was making a scene."
Gorr punctuates the story with laughter, but it's clear the encounter was important to her - a chance to heal the wounds inflicted by Read's drunk and disorderly appearance on her live television show in 1998. Lubricated by free beer from the green room, Read gave a colourful account of feeding a man into a cement mixer that outraged hundreds of viewers and was rumoured to have prompted the ABC to curtail the McFeast Live series.
At the airport, Gorr told Read he owed her an apology because she had been nice to him. She had given him a chance because he had done his time in prison and she believes passionately in rehabilitation.
"He apologised," says Gorr. "It was very important to me and probably important to him, too. We got closure at the airport. I cried all the way home and it was done."
Gorr, 39, sinks into the sofa, subject closed. Her lips, as voluptuous as the rest of her, settle into a smile.
Libbi Gorr is still known to many Australians as Elle McFeast, the brazen, footy-loving uber-chick who came to prominence on the ABC series Live and Sweaty. But Gorr hasn't been McFeast for a while now. When she took a break from a full-time television career four years ago, she stepped away from the alter ego that made her famous. Nowadays she's Libbi Gorr: movie scriptwriter, stand-up comedian, student of philosophy and partner of Stuart Birchmore, a man she refers to as "my sweet adventure man".
"McFeast is still a vibrant part of my life which I live with every day," says the Melbourne-born law graduate. "I haven't been on television regularly for four years, but people still say 'Hi Elle'. But it's been great to do non-McFeasty things and mix with non-McFeasty people."
Birchmore and the artist formerly known as Elle live in Sydney's eastern suburbs "within cooee of the new chocolate fountain in Bondi Junction". He has two children from a previous relationship and Gorr is enjoying being part of a blended family.
"Carol Brady I'm not," she says. "But I'm an influence. A very honest influence. I say to Angel [not her real name - Gorr is fiercely protective of her family] 'we're in this together. Lots of kids are in this situation - just be grateful I'm not dull.'"
Few people would accuse her of that, surely. Bouncing on the sofa for the photographer, she demonstrates the Delta Goodrem pose and ponders the singer's resemblance to Pauline Hanson. She hopes fervently the resulting pictures won't show any "spillage" - the nightmare of every full-figured woman.
Gorr has spent much of this year working on her movie script. She began studying screenwriting at Melbourne's RMIT in 2001. Six months later, she became a student at Sydney's feature film development centre, Tropnest. The first fruits of her study is a "girls' action-adventure cautionary tale" called Boxing Girl. She's working with Keith Thompson, an experienced script editor whose credits include films such as Love Serenade and La Spagnola, and the ABC television series Changi.
Gorr is reluctant to say too much about the script. She even hesitates to call it a comedy, aware, no doubt, that the term "Australian comedy" is in danger of becoming an oxymoron.
"The humour comes from people and relationships, not that ethos of Aussie Aussie Aussie, oi oi oi," she says. "Scripts are never finished, but it's going really well."
The title Boxing Girl is derived from another of her other new passions: philosophy. She's been attending Saturday lectures at the Art Gallery of NSW and found the words of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer "resonated with what I was doing with my script".
"Schopenhauer said life is a miserable experience," says Gorr. "Every time you step outside your front door it's a boxing match of wills. Me against you."
All these new passions and pursuits - she calls them "the new McFeast issues" - will be discussed and dissected in Add Libbi, her new stand-up comedy show that opens at the Opera House next week.
Along with blended family and philosophy, you can expect Gorr's unique perspective on freezing eggs, ageing parents and psychotherapy (she's all for it, basically).
She's also come up with an alternative to the Ten Commandments, which she's called the Ten Suggestions.
Here, then, is the word according to Libbi - or the top four at least; you'll have to see the show to hear the rest.
No. 1: Make sure whatever you do, somebody else can fix it.
No. 2: Give good greeting cards.
No 3: Have sex at least once with someone that you shouldn't and at least twice with someone you should.
No. 4: Eat cake on special occasions.
Is food important to you? I interject. "Oh, what do you reckon?" she says cackling with laughter.
"I'm a gutless bulimic. I couldn't throw up after a meal if I tried."
Gorr says Add Libbi is like "Oprah on crack." "It's about thinking, feeling and human relationships, but with less earnestness."
She pauses to adjust one of the fluorescent pink thongs dangling from her foot. "I'm not entirely sure how you're going to express that in a way that sells tickets."
Gorr has performed at the Opera House before. In March last year, she unveiled a show that mixed stand-up comedy, songs and her videotaped interview with "royal rat" James Hewitt. Critics saw Sweet Dirty Cherry on Top! as part of her bid to re-establish herself as an entertainer post-Elle McFeast. There was lukewarm praise for her singing and some open hostility towards her schtick. The Herald's Stephen Dunne accused her of serving up "tired patter" and described a "woman not coping with the recession of celebrity". The Australian's John McCallum called most of her comic material "rather lame".
Gorr acknowledges she wasn't exactly showered with rose petals and is honest enough to admit it hurt. "You take a chance," she says. "It's never particularly pleasant to read something bad about yourself or your work. But the bottom line is that you do have to say f-- 'em, because [if the show wasn't good] people wouldn't come."
Is it hard to be less famous than you once were, as Dunne suggested? "No!" she exclaims. "The fame thing is done now, there's no going back. And fame is a commercial venture. It's not who you are."
The point, Gorr says, is that she's never been afraid of taking a chance, trying something new or polarising people. Her philosophy is "go hard or go home" and if she's given it her best shot that's all she can do. She would certainly consider returning to television if it was a show she absolutely loved, but there's little chance of a McFeast resurrection.
"You just change. What happened with Elle was a beautiful stroke of luck. Being accepted and encouraged in that [ABC] camp was a gift. I'm just grateful I had a long, wild ride."
She's a little nervous about returning to the Opera House stage, but she's always ready to "go again".
"How will I go doing straight stand-up?" she says. "We'll see. It's another leap of faith and life is sweetened by a bit of risk. I'll let you know if I think I should have been a bit more careful."