I know what you're thinking; you're thinking: "How hard can line dancing be?" Hard. And that's all I'm saying.

As for Kate Fischer, you would think it would be fairly easy to dislike the former Dolly cover-girl winner. Not for any one reason. For lots and lots of reasons. Like the fact that she's naturally gorgeous. Able to effortlessly drop zinging one-liners which leave you simultaneously laughing out loud and fairly bitter with jealousy.

Then there's the fact that she spends much of the year travelling the world. And she can talk about politics and religion as easily as she can talk about the cool jeans she's wearing.

So when it comes to loathing Fischer, it should be pretty easy. I mean, there's lots of material to work with. But it's not easy disliking her. And I should know. Because I really, really tried.

I approached our meeting prepared to spend much of the time eating the free biscuits (there's always free biscuits) and rolling my eyes at the 31-year-old when she wasn't looking.

The problem is Fischer is too damn likeable.

Last month Fischer came back to Australia for a whirlwind promotional trip for AMP Shopping Centres (think Pacific Fair and Mt Ommaney in Queensland). At a time when most retail chains and department stores are still using models who look like X-rays with lipstick, AMP boldly chose Fischer - a curvy size 12-14. And someone who looks like she'd actually eat at the AMP shopping centre food courts. Unsurprisingly, she's proven popular with the public.

"Research indicated that 86 per cent of AMP shopping centre customers believe Kate to be very appealing and an appropriate fashion mentor," says national marketing manager Shaun Swanger.

Sure. But what's more interesting is that research also revealed Fischer is perceived as "down to earth", a "survivor" and "able to laugh at herself". Hardly qualities you usually associate with a model.

But then Fischer has always been that little bit different. Take that Leggos commercial. What celebrity - other than Fischer - would be prepared to poke fun at their suddenly single status during a commercial for pasta sauce?

"We made that commercial maybe five years ago and they played it for about three years. People loved that ad," Fischer says with a laugh. "But I wasn't living here then. I had actually already been away for a year when I came back to make the Leggos commerical."

"Away" for Fischer is Los Angeles. After a very public break-up with James Packer in 1998, she packed her bags and headed for Hollywood. Seven years later, she's still there. But these days acting is "definitely on the backburner" for the woman who made her mark in the film Sirens and the Bryan Brown mini-series Twisted Tales.

We talk about how she has changed and grown during those seven years. And how her focus has shifted away from acting. "I liked it," she says about acting. "But I don't like it as much as this other stuff I'm doing now."

That "other stuff" is teaching transcendental meditation and making documentaries about women from other cultures. "I lived in India when I was a child...before I turned 10 I had started studying different religions and philosophies and I kept looking until I found something that suited me."

What suited Fischer was transcendental meditation. After five years of intensive study, and having spent a few months in an ashram last year, she is now a fully qualified transcendental meditation teacher and hopes to open her own school in LA.

As for her burgeoning doco career, Fischer filmed a pilot in Russia last year and is in negotiations with TV networks. She says her passion for making documentaries was "inevitable in some ways" considering her mum is renowned journalist and Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward.

"Mum comes from the day of tape, so I've grown up watching her edit her own radio stories on those spools - cutting and pasting. And every night at the dinner table we didn't sit in front of the television, we had to have a conversation and it was usually about politics. Mum asks a lot of questions and if we have an opinion she says, 'Why do you think that?' And she expects us to back it up. I came from that sort of environment."

My chat with Fischer goes on for 40 minutes. We talk about broken romances, books, her family, spiritual beliefs and pasta sauce. During our final few minutes she says she's happy in LA but misses Australia.

So what does she miss the most?