"Yes, I was doing lots of copy write and trademark disputes, which was great fun because you were dealing with creative's. So one day I would be working for a computer software programmer who thought that some company had ripped off his program, the next day you would be working for a band that was having a dispute with another band whose song they thought sounded too similar. It was good fun, it felt very LA Law. Our wardrobe wasn't half as good obviously. The people I worked for were intelligent, motivated, by and large, ethical people. So you can imagine my shock when I got in to television to discover that only two of those things applied," Andrew laughs.

Which ones?

"I'm not saying, I'll leave that up to your imagination. Having litigated a fair bit, I know the concept of slander back to front," he added.

Now you have moved in to television, do you moonlight in law?

"I think it is considered unethical to moonlight in law. If friends approach me at a BBQ I'm happy to dispense advice over a potato salad and a glass of red wine. But charging for that may lead me in to hot water with the law society. We've just bought a new house so I don't want to spend my weekends at Silverwater," Andrew said.

You started out doing law reviews at university, is that how you became interested in entertaining?

"That's how I ended up tripping over the entertainment industry and falling in to it. I was happily working away as a solicitor at my desk when out of the blue one of my old law review buddies called me to tell me he was working in television, which came as a surprise to me as I hadn't seen him in years. I think the last time I'd heard from him he was an associate to a high court judge, he was a really clever lawyer. But he'd pitched a comedy show and the network had gone for it. He wanted some like-minded people and gave me a buzz. So I took a year's leave from law and here I am. I'm still here. So that's going to be my escape plan in case it all goes horribly wrong, I'll just turn back up at work and say I think my leaves over now," he said.

How did the sketch comedy show go?

"We made one series of it, it was called Big Bite. It was really good. It was nominated for an AFI Award and it launched the career of Chris Lilley who went on to do ‘We Can Be Heroes'. It had some really good writers and performers and I think in hindsight the network's sorry it only ran for a series. It runs on Foxtel these days and people still enjoy it. It was a great job, you'd turn up at 9'oclock in the morning as Andrew O'Keefe and by 10 o'clock you'd be Alexander Downer, Eddie McGuire, or a terrorist bomber roaming the streets of Melbourne scaring people."

You won the Improvisation World Championships in Montreal, can you tell us about that?

"I did a lot of moonlighting in Impro Comedy when I was at uni or when I was soliciting (I often try not to use the term soliciting but it often feels like that with some of the clients you have to deal with), anyway we went to the ‘Just For Laughs' comedy festival in Montreal and took part in the world championships. It was a fascinating endeavour because they had this English speaking and French speaking competition running side by side, and occasionally we would have these little demonstration matches where an English team would play a French speaking team. And despite the fact that we didn't have the slightest idea what each other were talking about it still made sense. I guess when you are miming the milking of a cow and your friend is the cow, you don't really need language for that," Andrew laughs.

You are described as the King of Gameshows? Do you love hosting shows like Deal or No Deal and the Rich List?

"I think being described as the ‘King of Game Shows' is kind of like being described as the King of Roller Doors, it's probably not the greatest honour in the world, having said that it is a lot of fun and I do enjoy it immensely," he said.

"I've got a couple of game shows, the Deal and the Rich List. I get a different kick out of each of them. With the Deal the show is extensively opening 26 cases every day which we have now done for 920 episodes, so it's essentially a glorified guessing game which has the potential of becoming quite repetitive after all those eps. So I created the challenge for myself of making that show not about the money or the cases or the girls or the cars or whatever, but about the contestants. If you frame each show around that contestant and let their story drive it and colour it, then every show is different because every contestant is. I enjoy creating those little narratives on the Deal."

"With the Rich List I enjoy being able to sit back a bit and talk to the home audience much more because the contestants are creating all the drama you need. If you get two people who've never met each other and lock them in an airless box together, and one of them is wearing Brut 33 and thinks she knows everything and the other is a glamorous young advertising exec, you are bound to get interesting psychological studies occurring," he said.

"It is an innately appealing concept, because as human beings we intuitively understand the concept of making lists. We do it all the time, you hear girls on the bus talking about the top 10 biggest spunks in Hollywood, believe it or not I've got some friends who are stockbrokers and I heard them talking about the Top 10 all time Blue Chip investments. You can go to the supermarket and get 20 different varieties of sausages and you've got to decide which ones you like the best because you've only got a limited budget. We're always making lists because it's such a huge, chaotic and diverse world so we need to in order to manage it and make sense of it. So the idea of making lists is one that comes naturally to most people, so therefore it is something they can easily participate in."

It was a great episode in Deal or No Deal when Anh Do won the $200,000 for his home viewer. How did it feel for you to be a part of that?

"It was absolutely wonderful. He came on the show and was entirely convinced he was going to win. I hear that story many times from contestants. We have had many people entirely convinced they are the chosen one. So to have Do come on and do it so freakishly and with such a sparkling sense of fun AND on behalf of the home viewer, it was extraordinary," he said.

"We took the cheque out to the home viewer who had won it. And this is kind of what deal is all about - these people needed the money you know, they were expecting their second child and neither of them were working because one was ill and the other was the carer. And all of a sudden Anh Do turned up with a $200,000 cheque for them. You know every now and again you get those little moments of magic which is really gratifying."

Anh said he had a dream, do you believe he had a dream?

"Oh yes, he literally had a dream, absolutely. Anh's dream came true. He dreamt that his father told him to take that case. And he's always had a great deal of respect for his father, because his father took his family out of Vietnam at a tough time and ensured their survival, so he thought he couldn't possibly ditch his father's advice," Andrew said.

You said to Anh during that episode that he had moved over from a successful career as a lawyer in to comedy and that he had backed himself and it paid off. You are like that as well, you have followed a different path than first anticipated, and you have been very successful at it.

"Yes indeed. I didn't expect it to work out in a major way, but I knew if I didn't give it a crack I'd be deeply disappointed in myself. I guess it's just a combination of luck and confidence really, and a belief in yourself. I think it's one of those things I've spent a long time training to do without even recognising it. When you are at school and uni you spend much more time than you should taking part in plays, playing in bands and debating, you leave yourself wide open to take advantage of any opportunities when they come along. So in a way when television came along I kind of felt qualified enough to do it," he said.

What about the Rich List? How hard is it to come up with these lists?

"It's a pretty arduous process. You can come up with a million and one lists in your own head or with your friends down at the pub, you know the best Led Zeplin song ever, or lesbian winners at Wimbledon... but on the show every list has to be verifiable, cause if you get it wrong you can get a barrage of angry viewers and contestants calling and writing. So you have to be able to verify those lists. We have a team of about ten kids in the office whose job it is to originate and verify those lists."

And that's the other thing we are getting increasingly... suggestions from viewers which is fantastic, that's why I felt pretty confident the show would come back this year because in the off season we received a stack of letters from viewers with their suggested lists so I knew it must have struck a cord," he said.

"On raw ratings alone it's more popular than Deal or No Deal. Deal in its own way has been more of a phenomenon. The Deal really changed the landscape of non-prime time television. When it came along it was such a juggernaut, it changed all the indicators of success in the non-prime time slot. It really captured people's imaginations. The Rich List has probably not been as much of a phenomenon but it certainly rates very well and people enjoy it.

You do a lot of work with charities. You are the chairman of the white Ribbon Foundation. Why that charity?

"I had a friend who was involved in a pretty destructive relationship, and like most people I didn't know what to do about that or what actions to take to extract her. So when a friend of mine asked me to become involved it seemed like a really natural and worthwhile thing to do. You know I'm still learning, I've been involved for four years and still have a lot more I have to learn. It's one of those issues - violence against women - we feel we know nothing about and we feel helpless, so we never start on the process of doing something about it. We never get around to taking the first, simple, easy steps really, which is what the whole foundation is about..... which is a) changing people's attitudes about it, and getting people to see it's a serious problem that affects us all, and b) getting people to do something about it," he said.

"Our charity concentrates on changing men, changing their attitudes, motivating them to change their own behaviour and behaviour of friends. We concentrate on changing the behaviour of men to prevent the problem in the future rather than patching it up later."

You haven't received a Logie yet for the Best Presenter but you've been nominated three times.

The day a 36-year old slightly overweight, ex lawyer wins a popularity contest for fifteen year old girls you know the world's gone crazy," Andrew laughs.

We had a poll on our website called ‘Hunks on TV'. Did you know that you did very well on that?

"I didn't know that. You know I really begin to doubt people's judgements when I hear things like that. I use to think we were a nation of taste and grace, but obviously not," he jokes.

"There's no accounting is there," he said.