"I was mortified." Amber Sherlock on the emotional toll of 'jacket-gate.'

In mid-January, as the news cycle spun slowly in the wake of summer holidays, Amber Sherlock went from delivering the news to becoming the news.

In as little as a couple of hours, Sherlock went from being that familiar face on your TV with a name you can’t remember, to a person you became desperate to discuss at the water cooler.

But for Sherlock, after 20 years working as a journalist, it would soon be the only thing she was known for. Forget any finance story she’s covered, any news she broke or any time she delivered you a story that would shape our world, Sherlock would forever be known as the woman who asked her colleague to put on a jacket before a live TV segment.

Two months from the event, Sherlock has spoken to Stellar about how the entire ordeal impacted not just her personal or professional life, but her young family too. And how ultimately, yes, she probably was a little too brusque that day.

“I am the first to put up my hand and say that for whatever reason — I was stressed, I was tired, I possibly overreacted, there are better ways to deal with it,” she told the magazine.

Despite any support she may have received from the Nine Network, her colleagues or her friends, it seemed to be her husband Chris who kept her head above the water and gave her the strength to brace the rain that comes from a viral storm.

It was Chris who cleaned up her social media accounts so she wouldn’t see the comments, and it was Chris who “put things back in context when my mind went to dark places”.

A post shared by Amber Sherlock (@ambersherlock9) on Dec 8, 2015 at 12:03am PST

But according to Chris, it was Sherlock who had all the strength, fronting up at work despite being the topic of every conversation across the country.

“I imagine a lot of people would have fallen in a heap. But Amber had the strength to go, ‘I need to go to work tomorrow. This is what I do for a living, they expect me to be at work, this is what I will do,'” he told Stellar.

For now, of course, the storm has passed. Most of us can recall the exchange, but few of us discuss it. But for Sherlock, that’s little consolation if it’s the only thing the public remembers her for.

“I have worked very hard in my career for 20 years, and I will be mortified to think this is what people might remember me for,” she told the magazine.

“I have given up so much — I’ve done shift work, I’ve missed Christmases, I studied so hard. [So] I hope it’s not — I hope my body of work is what I am remembered for.”