In the aftermath of the 1996 federal election, there was one ambitious young member of the Liberal party who was worrying, not celebrating.
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Cory Bernardi thought he might have killed John Howard and his prime ministership, before it had a chance to get going.
Shortly before Howard was elected in March 1996, Bernardi - who was not yet a senator - and his hotelier father Leon had lunch with Christopher Pyne and Howard at Parliament House.
During the meal, the younger Bernardi spent his time "coughing and spluttering" all over Howard's Caesar salad.
Soon afterwards, Bernardi was diagnosed with tuberculosis and put in isolation, where he was asked to list all the people he had been in recent contact with.
"I didn't have the nerve to tell them [about] John Howard," Bernardi admits in the latest episode of ABC's Kitchen Cabinet to air on Wednesday night.
"I thought, let him go to the election and then we'll deal with it."
But when Howard was later hospitalised with lung problems, Bernardi was convinced he'd "done John Howard in".
"I don't think I've ever told him that story," the Liberal senator tells host Annabel Crabb in Kitchen Cabinet's season finale.
While Howard clearly survived the Bernardi interaction, other Liberal leaders have not been so lucky. Bernardi was a key player in the ousting of Malcolm Turnbull for Tony Abbott in 2009 over the emissions trading scheme.
He recounts how the internal campaign left him exhausted.
"I was spent," he says. "Those sorts of battles take so much out of you ... you don't realise until after it's over."
But the controversial conservative - known for his headline-grabbing views on same-sex marriage and Islam - played down suggestions that he would break away from the Liberals and form his own party now that Turnbull is back in charge.
"I don't think so," he said, although added "one never knows what's going to happen in life".
Bernardi, who has been demoted twice from the frontbench for making controversial comments, said that he believed he belonged to the Liberal Party.
"I don't think there's an appetite for an alternative party. I think people want to make the Liberals work."
In the Wednesday night's episode, Bernardi cooks a seafood salad in which he confesses it's his first time handling an iceberg lettuce.
He also talks about his diverse CV before entering Parliament in 2006.
This includes a promising rowing career, where he rowed with the crew that became the Oarsome Foursome. Unfortunately, Bernardi's Olympic aspirations were cut short by a back injury.
He says that when he left the crew, the team began to win.
"They only became really good after I left," he says.
Bernardi's post-rowing career saw him work for a German construction company, which in turn sent him to places "the Germans didn't want to go". These included a trip to Libya to build a conference centre for dictator Colonel Gaddafi. It's while working in Libya that Bernardi thinks he contracted tuberculosis.
Crabb's tour of Bernardi's Adelaide home also reveals that the senator is an art lover.
There is a portrait of Dame Edna Everage prominently displayed at the top of the Bernardi staircase.
The senator explains his wife Sinead saw it in a local gallery and Bernardi was keen to buy it when he realised Barry Humphries had sat for the painting.
"He's a wonderfully talented Australian," he explains.
"And I just think the colours in this are fantastic."
