“As we were chatting, she said something that resonated: ‘Sometimes in life people just need a bit of help you know? Just a bit of help,'” Webster says. The story is but one of the many heart-warming tales that makes the kindness files of the Facebook group that has grown around the two ABC broadcasters to publicise their podcast and their live shows across regional and metropolitan Australia. Chat 10 Looks 3 is a gathering that includes Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s wife Jenny, Coca-Cola chief executive Alison Watkins, and performer Virginia Gay. The group is a cross section: CWA stalwart meets city sophisticate, where they gather to discuss everything from books to baking (or memorably how to deal when you are thrown out of your knitting club). Annabel Crabb (left) and Leigh Sales on stage having a chat at the Australian National University in Canberra. Credit:Stephen Blake Some other random acts of kindness carried out by the group include Christmas gift delivery from Canberra to Melbourne by a “chatter” when one left their presents at home by mistake. Purchasing products at a garage sale when a woman was evicted by her landlord who promptly sold her possessions. The successful search for a lost pair of glasses in Broome, and an invitation to the Samoyeds of Sydney Christmas party for a little girl who desperately wanted a dog for Christmas but couldn’t have one. And last week a post from the hairdresser in drought-affected Dirranbandi in rural Queensland, about a local business called The Linen Cupboard that was struggling, until hundreds of chatters ordered Christmas gifts online, overwhelming the owner with business from their goodwill.

The group members are mainly women (80 per cent aged between 25-45) who one would assume, publicly appear like Sales and Crabb: with well-ordered minds and well-ordered homes. But scratch the surface, and it appears many in the group are privately like the two 45-year-old television stars who front it: stressed-beyond-belief mothers juggling families, careers and caring, who simply want to be in a community. Some joke the Facebook group is a “cult of kindness” which even has its own language (see glossary). “People see the polished us on TV and I think what they also like is to see actually we are not really like that - that is artifice to a degree. That’s an hour and a half of make up. But in reality we are just slopping around just like everybody else and trying to juggle all of our responsibilities,” says Sales. “And failing,” quips Crabb. “It might just be the intimacy of a conversation that isn’t very structured and where you are clearly having fun in the other person’s company. People feel they are in the conversation just listening to the podcast and often tell us they just join in the conversation at home,” Crabb adds. A trio from a mothers group, at a show in Canberra last Sunday are typical “chatters”: all three were young professional women, mothers of 18-month-old children who became acquainted with the podcast driving their children around Canberra in their cars trying to get their newborns to sleep. One told the others and the word spread and last Sunday they left their husbands at home with their children to see the podcast recorded live in Canberra. The handful of men who attended the show all said they did not need much convincing, as they admired the pair’s political knowledge and were keen to see them in action.

Best mates, Annabel and Leigh have a dream 'other' job. Credit:Sahlan Hayes It is this friendship between the two polished political reporters that in 2014 they parlayed into a podcast, Chats 10 Looks 3 (named for the Dance: 10, Looks: 3 song from the musical A Chorus Line). The tone is informal and fun, a seemingly casual chat between girlfriends (of course they work hard behind the scenes to make it appear unscripted but it is to some degree – Sales after all, as Crabb jokes has a spreadsheet of clothes in her wardrobe). It's their differences, and the tongue-in-cheek way they tease each other about them, like Oscar and Felix in The Odd Couple, that provides the comic relief. Sales loves show tunes, Crabb hates them. Crabb loves wildlife like fairy wrens (the group mascot), Sales doesn’t notice it. In the vein of friends Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, and Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders’ Eddie and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous it works: it has been consistently named throughout the industry as one of the most popular podcasts. “People say when they listen to us it gives them the same buzz as if they’d just caught up with their girlfriends but they haven’t actually caught up with their girlfriends. I think that’s why people are actually really warm to us and why they feel like we’re their friends and they bring us gifts and things that they’ve cooked for us,” says Sales. The natural synergy between the two, is enhanced by the fact that their own close-knit community of friends and family are also the wind between their wings, as they turn it into a business.

They set up the Facebook group because they realised many people they spoke to had no way of talking to each other but through them. As the ABC has strict guidelines and a charter, the two broadcasters wrote to their employer to explain their podcast had become a business. But it had grown so quickly and so organically, they had to outsource it, and so they pay friends to manage it as well as donate money to their favourite charities, so it adheres to the ABC guidelines. Loading Behind the scenes a close-knit circle of friends, many of them mothers and neighbours in their inner west neighbourhoods provide support. Cathy Beale, who is a researcher at the ABC, knew Sales from assisting her with library research starting from her time as Washington correspondent. “When she announced she was pregnant in 2011, I was also pregnant,” says Beale. “We both lived in the inner west and it ended up our boys were born two weeks apart. We got to know each other well during that period,” says Beale, who was known by her pseudonym “Brenda” on the Facebook group until recently, when a Melbourne chatter Bec Sharkey took the reins.

Another friend from Crabb’s university days, “Murph” Miranda Murphy, former digital journalist at The Australian, writes the newsletter, and Crabb’s former neighbour Gwen Blake, who runs a design studio, has designed all the merchandise from the website to the tea towels. In the decade since Crabb cold-called Sales to ask about what it was like working at the ABC, the two have become friends. “She said we haven’t met but I know a lot of people you know so I feel like I know you, and I’m thinking of taking this job at the ABC what’s it like working there and most importantly, where should I sit?” recalls Sales, now host of the flagship current affairs program 7.30. The first time they met for morning tea, Crabb, like a nervous new school girl bought a cake she’d baked and they stayed talking until around 4pm. “I was due on the radio at 4.30pm, it was like an eight-hour podcast,” says Crabb who has since gone on to roles as varied as hosting Kitchen Cabinet, covering election night and the royal wedding earlier this year.

As luck would have it, when she began working at the ABC Sydney’s Ultimo office as an online political writer, Crabb sat next to Sales. They have been talking, mocking and laughing together pretty much ever since. But it is their warmth and kindness to each other, and others, those in the group say is appealing. Their commitment to taking shows to regional Australia is part of their popularity too; borne from their own experience of growing up outside major cities, Crabb in regional south Australia, and Sales from Brisbane. This year they recorded in Orange, next year they will go to Hobart. Mates ... Annabel Crabb and Leigh Sales. Credit:ABC “Because the group gathers under our name, we couldn’t take the risk it would become a place where there would be political debates,” says Crabb. So it is a politics-free zone. Only kindness, which Sales says they try to model in their relationship with each other when not taking the piss. Whether it’s taking the washing in for each other, packing treats for their children, or being there when Sales’ father died earlier this year, it’s clear the two have a deep affection for each other. “I like we have a space where it says you know what it is OK to be in life? Smart, well read and a nice person,” says Sales.

“Because I think for women the messages that you get elsewhere are usually not that. The messages you get are it's good to be skinny, to not have wrinkles and to look amazing. And we never talk about any shit like that. We don’t care about that." Crabb says she has been surprised at how eager “chatters” have been to enter into a “politics-free” zone away from the “Canberra bubble”. Annabel absolutely trusts Leigh...we think. Credit:Stephen Blake “We are the least likely people on TV to get Botox, because we just don’t care about that. One of the things I deep down love about Sales, is we will take a picture together and both of us just look terrible. And I’ve never ever heard her say don’t put that up I look horrible. “We both get asked a lot how do you find the time to read and juggle your life and I don’t know. It is full on a lot of the time. But the podcast and the Facebook group always seems like a lovely little island of kindness and fun,” says Crabb. “It’s authentic.”

“Everyone’s life is hard from time to time. The thing that gets you through is your friends. I presume for listeners when some one is having a hard time, if they spend half an hour with us it makes them feel a bit better and they can have a bit of a laugh. Just like we do,” says Sales. The Chat 10 Looks 3 glossary Americans, The: a show which Leigh is obsessed with and tried to convince Annabel to watch about Russian spies living in America. Annabel’s boyfriend/the mutual boyfriend/ the boyfriend/Yotam Ottolenghi: The Middle-Eastern chef she is obsessed with. Boob Cabbage: A cool relief for painful breasts. A chatter Jacqui Ann who has breast cancer, put a call out for someone to deliver her some cabbage to her rural hospital. Twenty-three minutes after the request being posted, a chatter, Clare, delivered one along with a bunch of flowers. The next day another chatter, Kim, provided her with coffee and took her washing home.

Brenda: A nom de plume for Cathy Beale (Brenda 1.0) who does the show notes on the website and the uploading of the podcasts and Bec Sharkey (Brenda 2.0) who moderates the Facebook group. Brendalings: A collective noun for the other moderators of the Facebook group. Chat 10 Looks 3: A play on the song Dance 10 Looks 3 from A Chorus Line. Chatters/chatterati/chatterinos: A collective noun for fans of the podcast and Facebook group. Clang: Name dropping.

Crack: A slice consisting of saladas, caramel and melted chocolate. Fairy Wren: A blue bird that hung around Leigh’s old house. Annabel loves them, Leigh does not. Official bird/mascot of Chat 10. There are stick pins now to spot chatters in the wild. Frump Nightie: Incredibly unattractive albeit comfortable nightwear. Kenny’s organisational flow chart: Described by Leigh as the Chatters First Family. Last Christmas Pee Wee Lewis uploaded a very detailed chart outlining the tasks that each family member has to do for Christmas and has subsequently become folklore amongst the chatters. Smug Bundt: The smug feeling you get when the bundt cake you have baked perfectly dismounts from its tin.

Crabb/Sales picks for their favourite things from 2018 Fiction books. Crabb: Min Jin Lee, Pachinko. Sales: The Museum of Modern Love, Heather Rose Non-fiction books. Crabb: The Trauma Cleaner, Sarah Krasnostein. Sales: No Spin, Shane Warne TV. Crabb: Wild, Wild Country. Sales: Final episode of The Americans Film. Crabb: I Tonya. Sales: I Tonya, Darkest Hour, A Star is Born