Lisa Wilkinson recalls Karl Stefanovic drunk on Today show: 'My god!'

Former Today show host Lisa Wilkinson has confessed what went through her head when Karl Stefanovic appeared on the show still drunk, after the 2009 Logie Awards.

Chatting to Gus Worland on the podcast Not an Overnight Success, the TV host mentioned Karl was late and she believed she would have to host the show by herself.

When he finally arrived, Lisa didn’t know at the time that he was still drunk from the night before.

“The funny thing over time is, without looking at Karl, each of us could tell who was going to speak.

“We could just feel each other in our peripheral vision and I could feel he was breathing in,” she explained.

The host went on to explain that she thought Karl was going to say a simple good morning, but instead he slurred his morning greeting.

“I thought ‘Oh my god!’” she laughed.

Lisa mentioned that she had to quickly assess the situation, and wondered how drunk Karl really was.

“Is he still on his way up the mountain, or are we coming down the other side now? Or are we sitting at the summit?

“I had no clue, and it was only through him, sadly, continuing to try to talk, that I could get a reading on where he was. And I think quite literally at that point, we were just a couple metres from the summit, and then for the rest of the three-and-a-half hours, we were coming down the other side.”

She noted that Karl wouldn’t stop calling her beautiful, and that she found him very funny.

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Karl previously left the show after being axed in 2018 after Lisa left and the media began focusing on his divorce and subsequent marriage to now-wife Jasmine Yarbrough.

Details of a private conversation between Karl and his brother Peter Stefanovic also made headlines, and is believed to have led to his sacking.

During the call, Karl and Peter spoke unfavourably of their Channel Nine colleagues.

New Idea published an interview with an Uber driver who claimed to have heard their entire 45-minute speaker-phone conversation when Peter sat in the backseat.

As well as allegedly accusing his then-co-host Georgie Gardner of ‘sitting on the fence’, the driver claimed that Karl had criticised her for not having enough opinions.

However, after Karl left the show, ratings began to fall and he was later rehired in 2020 and began working with his current co-host Allison Langdon.

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