Hello Mel Doyle, is that really you?

Melissa Doyle had a mini-makeover for her photoshoot with Sunday Style magazine. Source: Sunday Style Source: Sunday Style

MELISSA Doyle loved Sunrise.

As if to assauge any doubt, she says it over and over again. She loved the variety, the stories, the interviews, the viewers, the crew, her colleagues, Kochie …

Yes, she admits, getting up at 4am for 14 years left her perpetually jet-lagged, and the kids/work juggle, combined with a 7pm bedtime, gave her little room for anything else.

And, yes, the exhaustion could make her crabby, took its toll on her weight and fitness, and left her constantly fantasising about a night in a hotel room with blacked-out windows.

In fact, the more she talks about breakfast TV, the more awful it sounds. Like sleep torture with cameras.

"I wouldn't have swapped it," says the 44-year-old. "Never for a second did I not want to do it."

Yet those who know Doyle say her departure from her beloved show — which she insists was voluntary, although others say it was forced — has given her a new lease on life.

She's clear-eyed. There's a spring in her step. She's shed 10kg and grown her hair (though we helped it along with extensions for this shoot).

"I saw her on the 4pm news a few weeks ago, and I said, 'Take a look at how good she looks,'" says Adam Boland, one-time executive producer of Sunrise. "She's looking fantastic. She looks happy."

Sunrise newsreader and long-time friend Natalie Barr agrees: "Every time we talk, she seems to be really relaxed and really well rested."

Mel Doyle with Sunrise's newsreader Natalie Barr. Source: Supplied

"She has her life back again, and that's exactly why she made the decision. She wanted that energy," agrees Kochie.

If, as the rumours suggest, Seven Network executives decided to force Doyle out to make room for Samantha Armytage, they may well have done her a favour.

And if it was her decision to leave, it seems to have been a good one. The breakfast hosting gig may be one of the most sought-after in television, but it's a killer.

"I'm not tired all the time; work doesn't dominate every waking thought," she says.

Doyle and Armytage had similar paths to the Sunrise chair. Both studied at Charles Sturt University and worked in newsrooms in Canberra before becoming political reporters. Armytage is only eight years younger than Doyle. Both are blonde and curvy.

Smouldering...a good sleep in has helped Mel get her life back.

Actually, if you looked at a Sunrise poster without your glasses on, you could be forgiven for getting them confused.

The difference is in their marketing: Doyle is the sweet, likeable mother of two; Armytage is the single, self-confessed party girl.

"My persona is much drier than Mel's," she said last year. "Mel is so nice. She's like that in real life. I call a spade a bloody spade."

When Doyle and David Koch began working together on a revamped Sunrise in 2002, something clicked. They quickly became king and queen of breakfast TV.

Mel and Kochie, back in the early days of Sunrise. Source: Supplied

The key, says Boland, was their shared conventionality: "Television doesn't lie. Viewers very quickly expose a fake. Mel and Kochie had to be genuinely them, and part of that was that they were different to other TV-type people. They were relatable. They were normal."

Doyle sat in the Sunrise chair for 14 years (she hosted the original Sunrise from 1997 to 1999, and returned when the show was relaunched in 2002).

Over that time, she had two children, and began the exhausting work/home juggle that she discussed openly.

Then Sunrise faced a challenge from a resurgent Today. Ratings in some states got shaky. And executives got nervous.

Mel lost ten kilograms and had time for herself again. Source: Sunday Style

According to one account, Doyle's likeability scores began to drop, and (male) network executives worried she was too 'mumsy' (others say she was as popular as ever, but the executives worried about the mumsy tag regardless).

When they replaced Doyle with Armytage, many loyal viewers were left wondering if the network had just dumped their favourite gal pal for a younger model.

All that, says Doyle, is rubbish. It was her decision to go, having been offered a new opportunity (the 4pm news bulletin on Seven and co-hosting the 7pm bulletin on 7TWO).

She's denied the rumours of her axing repeatedly, and denied them again to me: "I figured no amount of jumping up and down on my behalf would have changed anyone's mind. I was ready for a change. I am happy. I love it."

Doyle at the Oscars in LA earlier this month. Photo: Instagram Source: Instagram

Nonetheless, there was much discussion about Doyle's alleged mumsiness in the media.

No one ever accuses Koch of being 'dadsy', even though he's famous for his daggy dad jokes. So how does Doyle feel about being mumsy?

"I didn't know what it meant, it was the first I'd heard of it when it was written," she says.

"But you know what? I am a mother. I have two children. It doesn't mean I can't rock a pair of high heels as well as any other chick out there, and enjoy life.

"There are so many labels that seem to come with motherhood. Beyoncé is a mum, but she's not called mumsy. I don't know where it comes from, but I know who I am, I know what I do, I'm OK."

Mel's sexy makeover.

Kochie's take on the mumsy controversy is supportive: "I have two views on this. Some can see it as derogatory, if they undervalue the role of motherhood — which is outrageous. In this day and age, women have a choice about what they want to do. If some want to be mothers, they're to be admired, and it's the right decision for them.

"Others who don't are to be admired, too, because that's what's right for them. And the word mumsy is derogatory. Mothers play such a critical role in our society on a mind-boggling array of levels — in terms of balancing their lives, their relationships with partners, and the responsibility of nurturing and moulding future Australians."

Whatever really happened behind the scenes, viewers can be reassured that the Koch-Doyle friendship is still thriving.

Asked if he misses her, Kochie explains, "I still see her. She's still a mate of mine. We're having dinner on Thursday night; we have dinner once a month and we take turns paying. I don't [miss her] particularly because we are still very much part of each other's lives."

Doyle has even devoted a chapter of her new book, Alphabet Soup: My Life On and Off the Screen, to Koch.

"David has always taught me a lot about family," she writes. "He showed me how to prioritise. He has always put his family needs first. He told me to give them my time, outsource if I had to in order to have more hours with my kids. If a measure of any man is the family around him, then David is a success." Dadsy indeed.

Melissa Doyle at Moonlight Cinema's screening of Anchorman 2. Source: Supplied

Melissa Doyle is — I'm afraid there's no other word for this — nice. Very nice. Almost suspiciously nice. "Yes, it's hard to believe that in the television world someone can be as genuinely nice as Melissa Doyle," says Boland. "I have no vested interest to confirm that. She

is what you see and what you hear.

"That's one of the reasons she was so successful on Sunrise for so long. She was on air for three hours a day — live — with very few scripts. She had to give what was in her. She's a mum, she's warm, she has enormous empathy. She's the one that would bring in chicken soup if anyone on staff were sick. She is as warm and as nice as she seems."

In the female TV presenter world, Doyle's story is comparatively vanilla.

There's no stalker, like Sandra Sully's. No postnatal depression, like Jessica Rowe's. No marriage breakup, like Juanita Phillips's. She hasn't been trolled, like Lisa Wilkinson. \She's just a Sydney girl who dreamed of becoming a journalist, who married at 25, and who had two children, Nick and Talia, in her early thirties.

Alphabet Soup, a memoir of sorts, is quintessential Doyle. There's not a mean word in 270 pages. Anyone reading it for a glimpse into network politics will be disappointed.

But for an insight into how to juggle one of the toughest gigs in TV with two kids, look no further.

There was the time she frantically expressed milk backstage before hosting a lunch for 500 women. "Moments before it began, I was hidden away in a storage room, perched on the edge of a container, expressing milk and trying not to splash my silk blouse," she writes.

Or the time she had to stop off at the cricket field en route to the all-important annual Seven Network showcase, to drop off her son.

She kicked off her impractical high heels and lugged the enormous cricket bag onto the pitch "taking small delicate steps because my figure-hugging party frock was not made for big strides down a hill".

Doyle during a recent trip to Syria. Source: Supplied

The book aims to reassure every mum who's ever left the nappies at home or forgotten to pack their kids' lunch that they're not alone.

"I go home and the cat has peed on the kitchen floor," she says.

"There's nothing about my life that's different from anyone else's, it's just that my job happens to have a public profile."

Doyle is lucky to have a supportive husband in John, whose surname she doesn't disclose to preserve what's left of his privacy.

"I couldn't do it without him," she says. "He always got up in the middle of the night when they were babies — he said it didn't matter how he looked the next day for work. I remember waiting for him to get home and saying, 'Please bath them. I just need to sit here

for five minutes and have peace.'"

Nevertheless, she feels the dreaded mother guilt, although she tries not to dwell on it. "Guilt can be such a wasted emotion," she says.

"I've made a choice; this is what I choose to do. You do it, embrace it, make sure you're happy and live with your choices. Having said that, yeah, there are times when I feel really sad that I missed things. I miss my kids terribly when I'm not with them."

Melissa Doyle. Source: News Limited

Doyle had early lessons in the work/life juggle from her dad, with whom she lived as a teenager after her mother moved to the country.

"My dad always said to me the best thing he could give me was himself. Now that I'm a parent, I get it. When I'm at work, I'm at work and focused on what I'm doing, and when I'm at home, I'm with the kids and I'm focused on them."

The only time Doyle becomes flustered is when I ask her how her children feel about their family life being laid bare in her book.

"I grappled with that," she says, bringing her hands to her cheeks anxiously. "I'm really nervous at this point. I've put a lot of stuff in there. I'm worried it's too personal.

"There's nothing viewers don't know about me. They've seen pregnancies. They knew when I had children and they know their names. I tried really hard not to write anything that would embarrass them. I hope I haven't."

She may be optimistic; it will be difficult for 12-year-old son Nick's mates to resist trawling through the book for little gems such as his mother has "only just recently let Nick go to the men's room alone".

But in the fullness of time, Nick and Talia will treasure the musings and memories of a warm, kind, hardworking woman who loves them more than anything else.

Mel Doyle at a Telethon in 2013. Source: News Limited

Melissa Doyle's book, Alphabet Soup: My Life On and Off the Screen (Allen & Unwin, $29.95), is out next month.