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Nowadays, Tony Abbott calls the ABC's Q&A a "lefty lynch mob" and has instructed his cabinet ministers to boycott the program.
On Tuesday the Prime Minister said he held Q&A in such contempt for inviting a former terror suspect on air that he doesn't want to "advertise" the program by commenting on it.
It wasn't always this way.
Long before Malcolm Turnbull electrified Twitter by appearing on Q&A in a leather jacket, Abbott was the program's go-to Coalition MP. He loved the show and the show loved him. Abbott starred in the Q&A pilot and featured in eight episodes during the program's first three seasons - more than any other panelist.
"He was willing to go on just about every week and we seriously considered whether he should go on every week," an ABC heavy from the time recalls.
"Abbott's appearances on Q&A really changed people's perceptions of him and helped lift him to the leadership."
When Q&A's pilot was filmed in 2008, the set was still under construction. Not broadcast on television, it was watched by a small number of viewers streaming the show online.
Kevin Rudd was flying high in the polls; the Coalition was in a funk. Abbott was the shadow minister for families and community services, looking for a way to re-build his profile.
From the beginning, he was an ideal panelist: honest, humorous, charming the audience one minute, infuriating them the next. A former Rhodes scholar, trainee priest and journalist, Abbott revelled in the hurly burly of debate. At times, reviewing old episodes, it's possible to see flashes of the student politician who enjoyed goading left-wingers at student council meetings.
At the time of the pilot, Western Australian Liberal leader Troy Buswell was in the headlines for sniffing a female staffer's chair.
While the other panelists predictably condemned Buswell, Abbott took a different tack by asking whether it wasn't worse for Bill Clinton to have an affair with Monica Lewinsky.
The audience howled in opposition but Abbott pressed on. It was great telly.
"Everyone is human, everyone has their foibles," he said.
"Have the people in this audience never done anything they are ashamed of?"
Abbott also has Q&A to thank for his political manifesto, Battlelines. It was while sitting with Abbott in the show's green room that publisher Louise Adler had the idea he should write a book.
"It was consummated on the Q&A couch - in the most chaste way" Adler recalls.
During his Q&A appearances, many of the questions directed to Abbott focussed on his religion.
This allowed him to show his self-deprecating sense of humour - such as reflecting on one of his daughters calling him a "lame, gay churchy loser" or his attempt at celibacy ("A brief one, I saw the dark").
When host Tony Jones asked the crowd, "Does anyone out there think Tony Abbott is a wowser?"
Abbott responded, to much laughter, "Jeez, as many people that think you are a sex symbol Tony."
At times, however, Abbott's frustration at being cast as the program's conservative Catholic shone through.
When questioned about the Church's handling of sexual abuse in April 2010, he said: "I feel a little uncomfortable at being asked the sorts of questions that other Catholics in public life tend not to get asked."
In the same episode, Abbott was asked how he reconciled his tough approach to asylum seeker boat arrivals with his faith.
"Jesus didn't say yes to everyone," he replied. "Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone's place to come to Australia."
In a standalone appearance before the 2010 election, Abbott was confronted by a Vietnam veteran and plumbing contractor who had a gay son.
"When will you, sir, overcome your fear and ignorance of gay people and give them the dignity and respect that you'd happily give to all other Australians?" asked the audience member.
Tony Jones pressed the point.
"You've said in the past you're confronted or have been confronted by homosexuality or found it confronting," Jones said. "Do you think if you really got to know some gay men you might change your opinion?"
"I know some gay people extremely well, Tony," Abbott replied. "I really do. I really do, mate.
"I hope I would always find it in my heart to treat people the way everyone should be treated, with dignity and respect and I think that people who know me well who are gay would be only too happy to testify to that."
His answer would make more sense two years later when it was revealed Abbott's sister, Christine Forster, was gay and had come out to the family some years before.
After the 2010 election, Abbott declined several invitations to appear on the program. Those at the ABC view the decision as being driven more by strategy than animus. Under chief of staff Peta Credlin, Abbott had adopted a highly-disciplined media approach, avoiding long-form interviews that could lead to gaffes or surprises.
In the final days of the 2013 election campaign, Kevin Rudd appeared in a stand-alone Q&A. At the end of the episode Tony Jones said: "We may be back later this week, according to my reckoning, if Tony Abbott agrees to come on."
But Abbott stayed away, and has ever since.
