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To paraphrase the American editor who famously reassured a young girl of the meaning of Christmas - Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa clause!

High-profile ABC radio presenter Virginia Trioli welcomes the adrenaline surge, that 'Christmas is coming' feeling, when an uneasy interviewee resorts to an evasive answer.

Twice winner of Australian journalism's premier honour, the Walkley Award, Virginia doesn't expect today's media-trained newsmakers to use the timeworn 'no comment', often perceived by audiences as an effective admission of guilt.

'These days the weasel words may sound superficially reasonable, but you know you've hit a soft spot,' says Virginia, drive time presenter in Melbourne since 2000.

'When the interviewee tries a rueful smile and says, 'Sorry, we've appointed an inquiry, and regretfully can't pre-empt its conclusions,' you know you're getting close.

'Ditto with 'commercial in confidence', sometimes incorrect claims of 'sub judice', and other evasions like talking about 'moving forward' in the hope you can dodge an issue.

'Sometimes they'll try aggression, even bullying, but you can't back down or be sidetracked, or fall for the old trick of answering their questions, because the listener knows what's going on.' Virginia is famed, sometimes feared, for high-octane interviews. One of her Walkleys recognised the persistence which torpedoed Federal Minister Peter Reith in the 'children overboard' debate, drawing categorical statements later proved untrue.

While she falls into the 'A' List and 'media celebrity' field, there are few lengthy media profiles of her: she prefers that the journalist not be the story. She made something of an exception for this interview for La Trobe.

Virginia's ABC biography notes promise a program 'strong in news, conversations and the issues of the day - with a healthy dose of larrikinism thrown in.’

‘Feisty and fiery' are common media takes. Virginia tends to polarise opinions. Read the letters pages of the media and you'll see her placed on a spectrum ranging from Attila the Hun to Mother Teresa.

'It's one big robust debate,' she says, with politics, social issues and the arts her particular strengths. While much of the program is warm conversation, there's always a sense that a simmering discussion can come quickly to the boil. 'Velvet glove, iron fist' springs to mind. There are days when prisoners are not taken, fools not suffered gladly.

A strong feminist (she wrote Generation F: Sex, Power and the Young Feminist in 1996 in reply to Helen Garner's First Stone), she tries to reach the next generation: 'I regret that many young women resile from pursuing issues of equity and access.' She appeared in an Age pictorial feature on the 25 sexiest Melbournians ('I told them to focus on my shoes.')

While her late engineer father was Italian, and stereotypes about the passionate Mediterranean temperament have been used, she reckons the fire comes from her Anglo-Irish mother Patricia who also passed on her love of writing and letters.

It's a rounded CV. Born in Bendigo; HSC at Donvale High School (where she won the Victorian Debating Society's Best Speaker award for year 11); BA at Melbourne University, and Honours at La Trobe 'because it had the best Cinema course'. A spell as a publicist for a publisher; a year as a journalist with the Victorian Ethnic Affairs Commission, then the Big Time, The Age, 1990-99, everything from finance to arts to subbing, entertainment, writing columns and features, up to Opinion editor and assistant news editor. (She still does a fortnightly column.) Then a spell with The Bulletin. Radio spots date from 1992 and she does the occasional guest spot on TV. For three years she was President of The Age's chapter of the Australian Journalists Association.

From 10.30am, Virginia and her veteran producer Colin Tyrus focus the collective experience of four Walkley Awards on the issues of the day. Her Combat Zone is 4-6pm, in the ABC's Southbank building, where she prefers to work 'frocked up, high heels', light years from the long ago BBC custom of radio announcers in dinner suits.

The show airs seven seconds behind life, and the producers have kill buttons as a backup in case of broadcasting peril.

Two computer screens present the guest list, bios, dot-pointed questions and research, including the hypocrisy check (past quotes to be compared with that afternoon's statements). Presenter and producers watch for anomalies, create diversions, battle stonewalling and try to balance callers - always alert to organisations trying to flood a talk-back debate.

There have been tart exchanges on air, sometimes continued afterwards but no walkouts on air: 'You can have the most pungent exchanges, and stay civilised.'

The mix of current affairs, personality interviews (right down to Thursday's 'Spin Doctors' commenting on the week's winners and losers) and some music, rolls on. The shift coincides with most of her audience heading for home on the crowded roads which are part of her beat.

Suddenly it's over. Then it's off to decompress at arts functions (life's not long enough … she tries to limit speaking engagements to one a week), a film, or home. She married senior Age journalist Russell Skelton last year in Italy. Cooking is another enthusiasm.

Regrets? 'Studying at New York University on a scholarship which covered only two of the three semesters needed for a postgraduate degree. Should I have stayed on and waited on tables to cover the third semester? Did I do the right thing returning to a fabulous job at The Age - I still think so. And although I have an absorbing love of music, I didn't get around to learning piano.'

She thrives on the daily challenge of deciding on, locating, persuading and researching interviewees, some of whom may even be looking forward to the laser treatment. Her urgent research gives a chance of penetrating the composure of media-trained newsmakers who know far more about their subject than an interviewer.

There are old battles to fight: how, for instance, do you work within the symbiotic relationships where both parties need each other, and compromise and cosiness is always a risk?

One particular issue eats at her: the stoicism of elderly parents of children and adults with mental disabilities, sometimes clinging to life to protect people who, she rages, have been abandoned by government. Relevant Ministers, be alert, and afraid!

Bias? Being criticised by both sides is always the healthiest indication of balance, she believes. 'People see what they want to, however much you insist you have no interest in any political persuasion.'

There's a venerable journalist's mantra she respects: 'News is what someone, somewhere, doesn't want published. The rest is advertising.'