Breakfast's best and most brutal gags

Sending breakfast television reporters into embarrassing/uncomfortable/terrifying situations is a tradition dear to viewers' hearts.

Because, in between the news and interviews of the day, who doesn't want to watch a reporter going very much outside their comfort zone on live TV?

TVNZ's Breakfast show particularly enjoys throwing their presenters and reporters in the deep end, especially when compared to the competition over at MediaWorks, where the AM Show talent is kept largely in the studio.

So what funny (or just plain mean) things have Breakfast's stars been subjected to of late?

Leo, don't leave me!

Auckland's Sky Tower turned 20 years old last week, so what better opportunity to make a couple of TV stars face their fear of heights?

Breakfast's weather presenter Matty McLean found himself snapped into a harness and completing the tower's famous SkyWalk over the course of the show that day. And, accompanied by his trusty guide Leo, McLean treated the stroll on a narrow platform at 192 metres up in the air like a walk in the park.

We kid, we kid.

What ensued was a couple of minutes of dialogue that largely just repeated the following: "Oh, Leo! This is crazy! Oh my God! Leo! I can't let go, I can't let go! Leo!"

McLean's co-star, sports presenter Brodie Kane, was heard cackling supportively during her colleague's SkyWalk, however she wasn't laughing in the minutes leading up to her own death-defying SkyJump stunt.

As Kane reluctantly shuffled forward to leap off the side of the Sky Tower, muttering "oh no, this is dumb," her main concern was not swearing on early morning television.

And despite an almost F-bomb, she succeeded.

Stink, bro

McLean and Kane may have been terrified atop the Sky Tower, but it was probably still preferable to the stunt inflicted on them a week earlier at the NZ Hospitality Championships.

Again at the mercy of their producer's bidding, the duo ended up sampling durian, a fruit so rotten-smelling, it's banned from public spaces in some parts of the world.

Cue dry heaving on national television.

And we thought McLean might have learned his lesson after agreeing to take a bite out of the world's second hottest chili on the show back in 2010...

An older, wiser Matty?

Who can forget the morning a baby-faced Matty McLean got talked into jumping the fence at Premier House while covering a story for Breakfast seven years ago?

McLean has said himself he's susceptible to peer pressure and it's a character trait former Breakfast host Paul Henry frequently liked to exploit.

When Henry said "jump", McLean did. Literally. And was rewarded with a stern telling-off by a police officer while on air. McLean apologised profusely before turning to camera to say: "Paul Henry, you're going to get me arrested!"

And in April this year, current Breakfast presenters Hilary Barry and Jack Tame tried to convince him to do the same again at Premier House.

But has McLean grown resistant to peer pressure over time?

An all-round champ

In her role as sports presenter, Brodie Kane has been sent out to take on a few of the nation's sporting elite in their own domain - with varying results.

We especially enjoyed her attempt to keep up with some of New Zealand's best gymnasts recently. She gets a 10 out of 10 for her forward roll and trampoline efforts.

And what better time to show off Kane's "flexibility like concrete" than on International Yoga Day?

To mark the occasion, Kane and stand-in weather presenter Chris Chang headed off to the yoga studio to practice a few asana and "enjoy" a turmeric latte.

"I love my job, I love my job..."

Of course, one of the hazards of presenting the weather is when major storms arrive and your bosses decide to send you out into the elements.

On one such occasion in May, Matty McLean repeated the mantra "I love my job, I love my job," as he battled with the wind and rain on camera.

"It's wonderful for everyone to see just how bad it is outside," Hilary Barry told McLean from the warmth of her TV studio.

"Because they can't just look outside their own windows and see for themselves," he replied, only a tad bitterly.

"Oh God, why do I do these things?"

But even within the warm, dry confines of the Breakfast set, McLean still isn’t safe from his colleagues' devious schemes.

Whilst presenting the weather in front of the requisite green screen, the intrepid weather presenter was told to put on a skintight, green body suit (or "full body condom" as Jack Tame described it).

The effect was not unlike watching a grown man being birthed out of a TV screen.

"I don’t know why I blindly agree to do these things," McLean mused at one point.

"[But] you gotta have bit of fun when you wake up this early in the morning, don’t you?”

This article was first published on Spy and is republished here with permission.