Fame takes many forms, as the Donald Trump-inspired franchise of Celebrity Apprentice is always there to remind us.
There's long, lifetime and hang-on-like-grim-death fame (Kerri-Anne Kennerley). Fame that lurks by proxy if you're willing to grab and run with it for the mad moment it lasts (Gabi Grecko???). And then there's the Mel Greig kind of fame - relatively low-level until it lurches into global notoriety via a single, unfortunate mistake that destroys your life and career until you re-emerge as ... what exactly?
Well, in the modern age there is always reality television, and it was via these means that the woman introduced on Wednesday night as "royal prank DJ" found herself back in the spotlight courtesy of one of the simultaneously stupidest and smartest reality formats yet concocted. The reality genre is by definition contrived, and Celebrity Apprentice takes that to new extremes: there is nothing about this show, and nothing about anyone on it as they front up in this format, that is really worthy of your time. 
But given the options, Mel Greig and her story are by far the most interesting thing about it.
To recap: in late 2012 Greig was half of an FM radio team doing what FM radio teams do. Act the goat. A prank call was made to a London hospital where one Kate Middleton was residing, sick and pregnant with the heir to the throne. Greig pretended to be the Queen. The nurse on the other end, Jacintha Saldanha, fell for it and put her through to the royal ward. Saldahna later took her own life. For Greig, global disgrace, the threat of criminal charges and long-term unemployment followed. She has scarcely been seen in public since.
"I haven't been in a job for three years," Greig said in an in introduction package on Apprentice, adding: "Failure does not define you."
"She's someone who's been through the ringer," offered Kennerley.
"Let's hope she's got what it takes," declared our op-shop Trump imitator Mark Bouris???, the businessman who lives with both the indignity of fronting this program and the embarrassment of having to insist, like his US counterpart, on being called "Sir" and "Mister".
Said ex-Bachelor Blake Garvey, whose claim to fame you're welcome to ponder along with your life choices: "Mel. That's an interesting one. I thought that I might be the only controversial person here or maybe the most. But I think Mel takes that one out."
That was the smartest comment of the entire program. No one else - not barrister turned Real Housewife Gina Liano???, not either of Gabi or Geoffrey Edelsten, not former Australian Idol judge James Mathison???, not the former Big Brother winner and not the former or soon-to-be-former anyone else populating this D-list line-up - could hold a candle in Bouris' "survivor" stakes compared to Greig.
To the producers' credit, in the opening episode they didn't actually milk the tragedy that prompted them to hire her in the first place; they first had to deal with the immediate tragedy of having hired Gabi Grecko, and she was sent packing at the end of the episode as the round-one recipient of Bouris' "You're fired".
Whether they continue to be this kind - and whether Greig can use this platform as a springboard to public rehabilitation - remains to be seen. But it's hard to wish her any further ill. Piled on her public travails, she has endometriosis, the charity cause for which she is raising money.
And while no one on this show is here for charity - they are here because they either need a job or can't breathe without the exposure, or both - Greig has some claim on being given a second chance in whatever format is available to her. It's a job, and a chance to forge a second act after enduring the kind of unfortunate fame you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy.
A photo posted by Mel Greig (@melgreigradio) on Sep 13, 2015 at 12:24am PDT