What Was I Thinking: A Memoir (23 page)

The only thing that made Pam more irate than the amount we were paid was having to listen to consultants, who are the bane of every media worker’s life. This was an attitude I shared. People who know next to nothing about media and much less about New Zealand and our audiences were regularly shipped over, usually from America, and paid the sort of money we weren’t to tell us how to do our jobs.

‘What does he know?’ Pam said once. ‘He is an American, he is some carpetbagger, come from another country to try and tell us how to do what we know how to do better than the rest of the world.’ When she said ‘we’ she meant her and me but mainly her. She treated the consultants like they were trying to impress her with penis tricks. We could have used some guidance on a few things but there was no one there capable of guiding us.

For the time we did that show I spent the larger part of the day sleeping and panicking. Pam and I lived in hope that we would be funded properly and get an extra producer. But it just went on and on and on, and got harder and harder. When it ended, the most common reaction from those concerned was relief.

Pam left first, to a TV job, and I carried on doing breakfast on my own for a while. One of the things that takes on a strange
level of importance when you’re working early in the morning is the smell of co-workers. Pam, I remember, always smelt nice in the morning, but there was one particular morning where she smelt exceptionally good. So good in fact that we talked about it before going on air. I sniffed her up and down and discovered that the strikingly pleasing aroma was coming from her head. She felt her hair and it dawned on her that she had doused herself in air freshener.

If only our producer Kate McCallum had made the same mistake on another occasion. She was a nuggety young lady with a single-minded doggedness on the job. If you had asked her to get a pen at the moment when someone flew a plane into the Twin Towers and you said, perhaps we should do something about that, she would keep walking and say, ‘Not now. I’m getting a pen.’

She was always in before me and one morning when I arrived I instantly noticed an appalling stench.

‘Can you smell that?’ I said to Kate.

‘Can’t smell anything,’ she said.

It was clear to me that Kate’s sensory perception was at a low ebb. I base this not only on her olfactory deficiency but also on the fact that she was still wearing a ballgown from the night before, her make-up was iffy and she had twigs in her hair.

After half an hour it became apparent that the stench came and went every time Kate went in and out of the office. Finally I pinned her to a chair and sniffed her up and down.

‘Kate, this stench that I’ve been referring to all morning is coming from you,’ I said. ‘What the hell happened to you last night?’

Eventually she admitted that she had staggered home from an event at the yacht club and collapsed on her bed.

‘You’ve been pissed on by a cat,’ I said. ‘A cat has pissed on you and you have come to work.’

She then sniffed herself and even with her compromised senses had to admit the accuracy of my observation. She had discovered when she came to in the morning that she had collapsed on the cat when she went to bed. She strode home and got changed before returning to work to set up some interviews. She doesn’t look terribly athletic but she can move quickly when she needs to.

While I was still doing breakfast with Pam I was contacted by Wendyl Nissen and asked if I was interested in appearing on a TV advice show she was producing called
How’s Life
? It ran just before the six o’clock news on TV1 so I saw some of it most nights.

I was immediately enthusiastic. I’ve never mastered the art of not appearing enthusiastic in order to force up my price or make people work harder to get me. If I like an idea it shows straight away. And I’m quite capable of being enthusiastic and haggling at the same time, though I didn’t bother in this case.

Part of me thought that, being television, it would probably never happen, but within a very short time I was being styled. This was a concern I raised with Wendyl at our first meeting because I know I dress badly. Fortunately, this was a show that wanted its presenters to look good so that responsibility was taken away from me and given to someone who could handle it.

The content of the letters we got asking for advice used to worry me, even more so when I found out they were all real and not made up as many people thought. I was surprised that people would write to seek advice for problems which were so obviously solvable. The letters showed that people’s lives are desperately boring and ordinary. It used to frustrate me. I wondered how the other panellists could take these problems so seriously. Was that what their own lives were like?

On one of my first shows I was the last person to speak. We had a letter from a woman whose husband was obviously a
prime shit. Everyone else recommended counselling. I suggested she poison him. I explained that it could be done because she had his trust and he would not expect it.

‘You’ll get away with it,’ I went on, ‘because I’m assuming you’ve never poisoned anyone to death before. You will be successful, but you do have to be very careful that the success doesn’t go to your head and you don’t keep poisoning people until you’re found out.’

I watched it go to air and when the news started immediately afterwards, I’m sure Judy Bailey had been watching, because she appeared to be a combination of shocked, alarmed and amused. I thought if I could shock, alarm and amuse Judy Bailey I must be doing something right.

How’s Life
? started to give me a reputation as someone who spoke his mind. I was happy to be typecast in that way because it was a general niche, not one that constrained me. I actually toned things down a bit because I didn’t want people to think I was saying what I said in order to be sensational. It merely sounded sensational because what other people were saying was so bland.

The host, Charlotte Dawson, was extremely entertaining. I felt her breasts twice, I think. There was nothing significant in that. Almost everyone was offered the opportunity to feel them, so I took it. The other panellists were nearly all people I had heard of but never met and I enjoyed the experience, though it would be going too far to say I liked them all. But I was amused by them. They seemed to see the show as a doorway to stardom and several became prima donnas. They had agendas and they began scheming to get those agendas met.

I thought it was fine to capitalise on something, but not to scheme to get rid of people to advance your own status. I thought it was probably a better use of time to focus on my own performance.

The other thing that surprised me was the research they put in. I looked at the letters in the green room before we went on because I figured the best TV would come from getting our reactions to the letters. Other people agonised over them and came in with lists of books that people were never going to read.

Panellists were rotated so you got different combinations on different taping days. Sometimes it was like
Survivor
with alliances being formed and plots being drawn up so people could get on more often. Some became convinced they were being deliberately overlooked. And if a new face turned up, everyone’s first thought was how much of a threat they were going to be.

When the show was cancelled — for reasons that remain mysterious because I think it was a good, useful, cheap and entertaining show that I know rated well — I was one of the few people on it who wasn’t devastated. The others were stunned. They lost all sense of proportion. They couldn’t imagine anyone not loving their show. And them in particular. They were planning to take a live version on the road. They were going to write advice books. As far as I was concerned it was great fun but it was just a little bit of my life. I was unconcerned because I have never seen any of my jobs as a career.
How’s Life
? wasn’t meant to be a stepping stone to anything, though I believe Pam Corkery was once heard to comment that in my case it had created a monster.

THE MEDIA HAVE ALWAYS
operated, and continue to operate, on the system known as swings and roundabouts. There’s no better example of this than the professional relationship between me and Bill Ralston, who used to fill in for Pam and me if we were ever away at the same time. His primary role was host of the show after ours, and he and Pam would often share a cigarette together during breaks. Not much later, when I was doing Pacific breakfast on my own, Bill had become head of the biggest news organisation in the country — TVNZ News and Current Affairs.

One day he rang me and suggested we catch up.

‘How about we do lunch at Prego?’ he said.

I had read about Bill Ralston’s lunches, which were reputed to be magnificent. He arrived at the restaurant in his customary shambolic fashion. Bill has a distinctive gait, a slight hunch as he constantly runs his hands through his pockets checking for his cell phone, or his cigarettes or matches, where is my wallet, do I have my credit card — not unlike an Australian warding off flies.

‘I am revamping
Breakfast
,’ Bill said after we had both ordered. Alison Mau was doing it on her own at that stage. ‘How would you feel about doing
Breakfast
on Television New Zealand?’

Before I could say yes — and I was never really going to say anything else — he interrupted to tell me about a new company edict forbidding the purchase of wine costing more than $60 a bottle. He was unconcerned because the edict said you could buy as many bottles of wine at $59.99 as you liked and, good journalist that he was, Bill had done his research and discovered some particularly good ones. We spent at least $119.98 on two bottles of wine — which was a large amount for me — and by the end of bottle number two the deal was informally agreed.

I spoke to Brent Impey, my employer of sorts at Pacific, about it. He was not impressed. He liked to repeat the axiom that radio is the bread and butter on the table and TV is the icing on the cake. There is some truth in that. Long careers in broadcasting are more likely to be on radio than on television. He managed to fill me with uncertainty about the wisdom of going to TV.

‘Don’t piss anyone off in radio, because you could well need to come back to this,’ he said, hinting that every week at TVNZ could be my last.

I ignored Brent’s warnings and within a few weeks I had resigned from Pacific yet again and was having lunch with my new co-presenter, Alison Mau, who I met for the first time at Andiamo, just a few restaurants down the road from Prego. Our on-air relationship was one thing I could see I wouldn’t have to worry about — she was always a lovely, considerate colleague.

I had only a few days at TVNZ and quite a lot to learn before I went on air. Among other handicaps, I had never read an autocue before. Doing that was a big part of the Breakfast job description.

I’ve never worried about my ability to do anything, but I always worry about my ability to be bothered doing it well. I didn’t know a lot about what the new job entailed, apart from the fact that I had to get up early and go to the studio. I didn’t understand how the rundown worked; I didn’t understand how computers worked beyond what is necessary to function as a human being in the twenty-first century; I didn’t need or want to know what the people in the control room did.

When I ascertained very early on that mastering the autocue was the one essential, I committed to getting the hang of it. Most people can manage it, but they are not dyslexic and this was a key difference for me.

When I did other jobs that required me to read out loud I always had time to study the material before delivering it. Even with late-breaking news, on the radio, there are usually a few moments where you can scan something and work out what the words are — especially when no one can see you.

With an autocue, however, you can’t see more than a few words ahead and you are at the mercy of the operator who controls how fast the words scroll by — in some situations operators have been replaced by a button the host presses with his or her foot to control the autocue. As yet, this innovation has apparently not seen a mass influx of dyslexics into the industry.

But the strategy I had honed over the years through panic and necessity was no longer going to work, at a time when I most needed it. I had to try to get as much script as possible to study before we were on. Right up to my last day on air, I read as much as I could in advance. One of the biggest problems with dyslexia is that it sucks your confidence away, which exacerbates the problem. I’ve managed to gain confidence by creating some
skills, so at least now my only challenge is the dyslexia.

It was always the little, odd-looking words that I stumbled over. ‘Philanthropist’ and ‘bovine spongiform encephalopathy’ gave me no grief whatsoever, but I could stare at ‘query’ for ages trying to work out what it was.

I got good at bluffing. There are other strategies, such as changing the subject to avoid using an unrecognisable word you see coming up. While your co-host is otherwise engaged, you can have a crack at figuring it out.

The network also tried to give me computer training early on and put me in a room with computers and a lot of young people. My attitude was that this was far beneath me, and I have an inkling that I might have let that show, so I learnt nothing there and continued to learn nothing about computers during my entire time at TVNZ.

We used an editing system called Quantel and I have only started to pronounce that properly since leaving the organisation. I deliberately mispronounced it because I reasoned that if they thought I couldn’t even pronounce it, they would never expect me to operate it.

On my first day in the building, not long before my scheduled debut, the producers sat me down to run through a script on autocue, and I completely mangled it. I couldn’t make sense of the words or why they were moving the way they were. And as soon as I started to stumble, the scrolling stopped. There were four words on the screen and I couldn’t say 25 per cent of them.

There was doubtless some consternation in the control room as the realisation that their new presenter could not read out loud dawned on the production team. And they were stuck with me — thanks to Bill, my employment was a done deal. There was no trial period.

Simon Dallow was hurriedly brought in to train me. I sat on a cushion — slightly elevated to bring my eye level within the
vicinity of the statuesque Alison’s. ‘I can bluff my way through nearly everything,’ I told Simon. ‘I just want you to give me some tips on autocue and that.’

Simon stood back and looked at me for a while with his finger on his chin.

‘Are you entirely happy with the way you are sitting?’ he finally said. Then I was really worried. Not only could I not read, apparently I didn’t even know how to sit down unaided. So much to learn in such a short time. The job had two parts — reading and sitting — and I really thought I had sitting nailed. I was beyond any help Simon might have been able to give me. Of course, the other thing about a new job is the people you meet and the new friends you make. I had been at TVNZ for a very short period of time when I had a run-in with Paul Holmes. I had said something critical on Radio Pacific about a
Holmes
show in which he interviewed Julie Christie in a way that seemed to me unreasonable. It may not have been him; it could have been the way it was produced. But in the end I had no idea who was right or wrong. I just felt sorry for her — and that’s not an easy emotion for me to summon up.

The interview contradicted one of my fundamental beliefs about the profession: the way I saw it, my job was not just to ask the questions but to make sure that the interviewee answered them. It was not my job to determine that the answer wasn’t good enough.

‘Why do you keep interrupting?’ people would frequently say in my interviews.

‘Because you are not answering the question and I will keep interrupting until you do,’ I said. But that was as far as it went. The viewer or listener could decide for themselves whether the answer, when it finally came, was adequate. Occasionally, if I judged an answer to be particularly appalling I pointed that out and gave them another opportunity to respond.

Critics didn’t like the interrupting. They claimed they only wanted to hear what the interviewee had to say. But I didn’t interrupt unless they were avoiding the question.

It was on these grounds that I criticised the
Holmes
interview. He took exception to my criticism. It was about day two of my tenure at TVNZ. I was sitting in the middle of the newsroom, staring at a computer and wondering how to switch it on.

Suddenly, Holmes swept across the floor in my direction and went ballistic. The entire newsroom fell silent. Towards the end of his tirade he said, ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

‘No, Paul,’ I said, ‘I know you’re not stupid, but you looked stupid on television the other night.’

Fortunately the newsroom offices have sliding doors, which means they are much harder to slam.

I made it through my first broadcast and soon came to terms with the autocue and other encumbrances.
Breakfast
was the best programme at the worst time. Apart from the hours, it was ideal for me because it gave me so much licence but with a great deal of structure and support.

My alarm went off at 4am and I got in anywhere between 4.30 and 5am, never later. I never felt like waking up. I’m not a morning person, I’m a night person. The only thing I disliked more than having to get up straight away was having to go to bed early. I didn’t do it begrudgingly, because I loved the job and I was paid a very small fortune to do it. But it was an odd job that had you in an underground bunker having make-up applied at nought o’clock in the morning when everyone else was still asleep.

I always went straight to my dressing room and stood for a moment pondering why, no matter how many shirts and suits you have, you always look the same. I didn’t wear a tie because I don’t like ties and who wants to wake up in the morning to
someone looking like an accountant? Even people who are married to accountants don’t want that.

I touched the suits that I touched every day and never wore. Then I pulled out shirts and failed to make a decision about which to wear before going into the newsroom to entertain whoever was there, no matter what mood I was in.

My aim was to avoid actually knuckling down and looking at the programme. People thought I was wasting their time but really I was waking up and trying to get interested in another day. Then I opened the programme up and saw the mistakes and everything that was going to go wrong.

Then back into wardrobe where I chose a shirt I had worn dozens of times before, even though I knew lilac didn’t suit me but at least it was slightly different.

Despite the fact I was well catered for in the styling, make-up and hair departments, I used to sometimes, for almost no good reason, do my own hair at home because many years earlier I had purchased a Warh hair-clipper set and didn’t want to waste my investment.

One disastrous Sunday afternoon, I attempted to style my hair in a number two, but the plastic number two comb detached itself from the shaver, resulting in an inch and a half wide number nought over my right ear. My choices were limited. Did I go in completely bald or find a way to simulate a tuft of hair? I chose the latter option. By dibby-dabbing some Kiwi nugget I was able to create the illusion of the existence of hair in the offending patch, from a certain angle only. Like the rest of me, my hair was able to bluff its way through a career in television.

After wardrobe, it was into make-up and then into the studio with my folder of bits and pieces and my mind full of things I might say or do. Sometimes the stuff I ad-libbed took up as much time as what was prepared.