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‘Not super-smart’ Sophie Monk cracks Tom Gleeson on Hard Chat

Sophie Monk might be better at deadpan comedy than Tom Gleeson.

Sophie Monk might be better at deadpan comedy than Tom Gleeson. Photo: ABC

Comedian Tom Gleeson’s Hard Chat interview segment on ABC series The Weekly with Charlie Pickering is a notoriously difficult one to navigate, even for seasoned politicians.

Few could have predicted that the one person who could match Gleeson’s dry wit and deadpan delivery would be former reality TV star Sophie Monk, who found fame on 2000 talent show Popstars.

A stony-faced Gleeson typically grills his guests using a brutal line of questioning, ridiculing their career and personal life.

Previous guests like Bill Shorten, Kevin Rudd, and Karl Stefanovic have struggled to keep their composure in the face of Gleeson’s interrogation.

But Monk, 37, was unfazed by Gleeson’s line of questioning, which included references to her failed music career, her single relationship status and her work on The Kyle and Jackie O Show.

“When you’re at the airport and you go through immigration, under profession do you put ‘trying to be famous’?” Gleeson asked, kicking off the interview.

“I just put ‘entertainer’ … usually they think I’m a stripper,” Monk shot back.

But things got really interesting when Gleeson questioned Monk about her work on the controversial Kiis FM radio show alongside shock jock Kyle Sandilands.

“You work with Kyle and Jackie O … why?” he asked.

Monk countered that their ratings were huge and argued Gleeson wasn’t exactly the target audience for the pop-culture content of the show, given he probably likes “more smart things, like the news”.

“I don’t like learning really,” Monk admitted. “I’m not coming off super-smart am I?”

“Yeah it’s almost as if you’re not,” Gleeson responded.

It was at this point that the actress managed to crack Gleeson’s cultivated persona, sending him into fits of laughter with a story from her primary school days.

“People think I’m smart,” Monk began. “A teacher at school actually said I had a very high IQ and went and checked it. A few days later I asked her what my IQ was and she said, ‘No it was low’.”

Despite his best efforts, Gleeson immediately began shaking with laughter.

“Am I giving you the right s**t?” Monk asked.

“You are giving me great s**t,” Gleeson responded through giggles, before saying to an off-camera producer: “I don’t laugh during all of them do I?”

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