Joh and Terry, just chillin' like big old pimps.

If you tune in to Better Homes and Gardens this Friday, you’ll be treated to prime ministerial spouse Thérèse Rein following in a venerable political tradition: leading host Johanna Griggs on a televised tour of the Australian head of government’s official home, the Lodge in Canberra.

According to the Channel Seven presser, Kevin Rudd’s wife will exclusively reveal her favourite spot in the gardens for working on her laptop and Skyping her daughter. Politically explosive!

She’ll also reveal the lasting reminders of former Lodge residents: the section of the garden designed by Tamie Fraser and – here’s the bit we can’t wait to see – a terrifying giant carp named Jaws, who was released into the pond by the Keating children.

It is not customary for the PM’s wife to open the Lodge to public view. Unlike the White House, it’s not an iconic building; I probably couldn’t identify it from a picture. It also has little historical mystique; it’s notoriously too cramped for official entertaining, and several prime ministers – notably, John Howard – have refused to live there. It wasn’t even meant to be a permanent residence when it was knocked together in 1926-7, and little is known of the first woman to call it home, Ethel Bruce.

Still, Thérèse and Channel Seven are clearly hoping some American-style Camelot mystique will rub off on them. On 14 February, 1962, a staggering 75 per cent of American television viewers tuned in to either CBS or NBC to watch First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy lead CBS’s Charles Collingwood through the US presidential residence, the White House. Four nights later, ABC rebroadcast the televised tour and it was another ratings smash.

It went on to be seen in more than fifty countries worldwide. The tour was a television landmark for three reasons. First, it showed public affairs TV in the United States deferring to a woman. Jackie is in charge of her domain and narrates large slabs of the program, with Collingwood reduced to a handmaiden trailing behind her.

Jackie also recognised that, as First Lady, she was obliged to open her home to public view because in an abstract sense, the White House is the American people’s ‘home’. This blurring of public and private lives in politics is taken for granted these days, but until JFK’s election in 1960, it was unusual for politicians to allow the public to relate to them on a personal level. Indeed, the young president’s administration was dubbed ‘Camelot’ because of the mythic charisma and romance that he and Jackie seemed to possess.

Third, the tour granted the public hitherto unprecedented access to the most historically redolent space of American government. Like many similar political homes, such as Number Ten Downing Street and the Élysée Palace, the White House retains the lingering presence of its previous occupants and a general sense of momentousness: here is where history was made.

Here’s a clip of Jackie narrating in that awkward, posh voice of hers:

The Obama administration has been hailed as the new Camelot, so it’s been intriguing to see the extent to which Michelle Obama has made the White House accessible to members of the public. Her main initiative has been the organic kitchen garden she planted with the help of local schoolkids; she’s also organised a concert series that recently culminated with an all-star performance of music from the civil rights era, which will be aired on public TV and NPR.

And in the start of a presumably annual tradition she and her husband set on his inauguration, the First Lady surprised a White House tour group in January with a personal greeting. (The reaction of the overwhelmed tourists is so cute I can’t bear to watch more than a minute or two of the video.)

Can you imagine a tourist being so excited and overwhelmed at the sight of Thérèse Rein? Uh, not really. What’s more, here in Australia television doesn’t tend to be the main medium by which politicians grant access to their lives. That is the privilege of the Australian Women’s Weekly, which regularly publishes extensive interviews with federal parliamentarians and their families. We’ll see if Seven’s Camelot gamble pays off.