by Paul Henry
You have got to knock on a lot of doors to sell a roof, but it’s not hard to knock on a door. Many have knockers to get you started.
I think they were good roofs. I hated doing it but I made money. I had to be able to make money because I knew so many people with no talent or ability who were making money doing the simplest things. These people were not particularly bright but they were doing well. I worked out what it was that made them successful. My father had been right: they were doers and not talkers.
Eventually, I got off the sales treadmill and got the announcer’s job I had been training for — at 2ZD Radio Wairarapa. The first time I went in to introduce myself they asked me to record a couple of ads on the spot. They were happy with that and keen to use me but said I needed to do an announcer’s training course because — and I know this will be hard for many readers to believe — there were a few things I didn’t know, such as Maori pronunciation.
I had always — and I still do — prefer radio as a medium. I went on the course, which was as much about qualifications and pay scales as announcing. The A scale was the announcers’ scale and the one to be on. The top grade was A9 — Lindsay Yeo and Merv Smith were both A9 so that was obviously what I needed to aim for. The fact I had done some announcing meant I was certain to pass, which I did. I hate to think how many times I reminded them that nearly all my previous announcing had been with the BBC.
Call centres
I’m not good at being put on hold, it may not surprise you to know. That’s a shame because putting people on hold is something of a specialty for Telecom with whom I have a bit to do as a customer. They shag you around by giving you a bill which is presumably convenient for them but impossible to understand. You spend half an hour trying to work it out, so that’s 30 minutes of your life you will never get back, plus your life is probably another half an hour closer to ending because you’ve got so emotionally wound up.
Then you pick the phone up to ask them about it and they shag you around for another half an hour waiting for someone to talk to you. That person then puts you on hold, while you listen to music that will definitely shorten your life, and probably forgets you so you have to start all over again. Finally a new person answers and you waste five minutes saying ‘Do you know how long I’ve been waiting on this call?’ and it isn’t that person’s fault. It’s not their fault their call centre is in a country where English isn’t their first language. They’re part of a system which is evil.
It’s actually our fault for putting up with it, though a lot of companies are coming under pressure and changing these arrangements.
“EVERYTHING ABOUT IT WAS IN YOUR FACE, ESPECIALLY MY SUITS. I GOT MEASURED FOR SOME EXTRAORDINARY CHECKED SUITS THAT WERE TO BE MADE FOR ME BY BULLICK & BLACKMORE IN MASTERTON. I WAS THE TRAILBLAZER FOR THAT PARTICULAR STYLE AND I THINK THE TRAIL ENDED WITH ME.”
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WHILE I WAS DOING breakfast on 2ZD, the TV show Top Town came to Masterton. Whenever they turned up somewhere, they went to the local radio station and got the breakfast host to be the field announcer. He didn’t appear on television but turned up at the event and helped liaise with the crowd and get them organised for the games. As 2ZD Radio Wairarapa was the only station in town that meant me.
To be honest, I did a phenomenal job for the two days it took. I know that because it seemed so easy. I had a radio mike and stood in the middle of a field with the people up in the rugby stands. The games were huge and as the contestants watched, I had to run around the field enthusiastically demonstrating the games for them. That was all there was to it, so it really was easy.
As a result I was asked to audition for a game show called Every Second Counts, which went to air in 1987 and ran for two seasons. I got the job and made $500 an episode. It was up against Coronation Street on TV1, so was always a dodgy prospect, but the main reason it didn’t go longer was that the fee for the rights to produce it locally made it too expensive.
I was amazed by the sheer size of the TVNZ machine. I had my first-ever publicity shots taken. There was a big group working on the show, which was one of the first to make full use of flashing lights and loud music. Everything about it was in your face, especially my suits. I got measured for some extraordinary checked suits that were to be made for me by Bullick & Blackmore in Masterton. I was the trailblazer for that particular style and I think the trail ended with me.
Although the show and the people on it were incredibly professional in all sorts of ways, little things tended to get overlooked. For instance, no one ever told me to look at the camera. At my first rehearsal, I began talking directly to the studio audience, assuming the camera would find me.
The format took three couples who were related in some way — husband and wife, or mother and son. In the first two sections of the game they answered questions and accumulated seconds. The last section of the game was where you won prizes by spending the seconds you had accumulated. The last segment does actually hold up today because it’s so quick-fire while they’re using their seconds. That makes up for the fact that the questions are banal. It’s going so fast you don’t really notice that. Also, the prizes were just embarrassing. Looking at it today, I can’t believe people were willing to get so excited about the prospect of winning a pop-up toaster.
In the last section you had to pick a subject — say, Maori language or beaches. The contestants all went through a similar thought process: ‘Well I know a little bit about the Maori language, but I know a bit about beaches, too. Surely beaches must be easier.’ I knew that giving away lots of prizes — say, a trip for two to Club Med Moorea — on any given night would help kick along a show if you thought it wasn’t rating. So I learnt the skill of saying, ‘Would you like Maori language or beaches?’ and giving away with my eyes which one they should pick because it would be easier for them.
I continued to multi-task. I’ve always been of the opinion that if a job is worth doing, another job is probably worth doing as well. At one point, I was setting up my own radio station, which we’ll get to later, reading news on Radio New Zealand and filling in for George Balani and Mike Hosking. George Balani was doing the late night talkback and Mike Hosking was doing New Zealand Tonight. These were network shows that the community stations used.
I’ve always loved newsreading, and I have gone back to it several times to fill in. I love the discipline of it. I love the fact that you simply cannot fuck it up — you need to pronounce things correctly, but you also need to make your delivery match the magnitude of what you’re talking about. The unspoken message was ‘All right, you’ve had a bit of fun listening to your music. Now sit down, shut up and pay attention.’ To do a perfect bulletin is a wonderful thing.
For a while I was in charge of the racing show on Radio New Zealand, which was reticulated to the community stations. I can only imagine that branching out into this area — a sport about which I had no knowledge and in which I had no interest — was part of my subconscious wish to become skilled in every aspect of broadcasting.
I worked with the big names of radio racing: Paddy O’Donnell, Mary Mountier, Alan Bright. Racing had such a following that the people became stars — the sort of broadcasters who could put out books of jokes or recipes using beer. They were giants in their field, which was fortunate given the depth of my ignorance. However, I was very good at the technical side of things. I could cope easily with three different feeds in one ear — linking, timing things out and putting them into a programme in a seamless way. The relevant authorities had discovered this and decided I could handle the racing show.
Racing was nothing if not chaotic. For a start, as Radio New Zealand’s racing controller, I had to organise what races we would cover and when. Some were obvious but not the international ones, like those from Australia, which listeners were also interested in. Saturday was huge. I got in early, went straight to the TAB and got the racing sheets and the latest scratchings. Then I sat in my office at Broadcasting House with these giant, big
ger-than-A3 race sheets, printed out from computers on the paper with the holes in the side. I had to time things out — work out from the schedules which races would clash and plan it so we could fit in as many as possible. In some cases we had to record them to play later — and then you had to decide which was more important and should be live.
When the first races started, so did racing control. We had TV feeds of the races and just worked our way through them. The stations would break off their Saturday sports shows to take the feed from racing control, and then resume their other sports coverage. You tried to do the race live, then give the results and preview the next race. You tried to do that live because if you started to record things, suddenly you had a stockpile to get through and quickly fell behind.
Then, all of sudden, something would stuff up — if the first race of the day was at Addington and it began late you were fucked. That meant every race at Addington was going to be on at the same time as the Ellerslie races. All the stations on the community network were doing their scoreboards. In one ear they had me, racing control, but they were trying to do motor racing and rugby, and God knows how many other things at the same time.
Compared to that, TV work was relaxing. As a result of Every Second Counts I got to do Telethon Tonight, little slots leading up to Telethon. Part of the job was to meet the overseas stars at the airport, show them around a bit and take them out and do some taped pieces with them. Su Pollard from Hi-De-Hi! came the year I did it. I was with Patsy Rigger, the country singer, and trying to introduce them. I turned around to point out Su Pollard and turned back and poked Patsy Rigger in the eye with quite a lot of force, because I was enthusiastic in those days. I could feel her eyeball denting against my finger. I was impressed because she was so dignified about it, just emitting a low groan. I carried on: ‘Look, Su Pollard’s just over there when your eyes come good.’
That was one of the last big Telethons. Outside the Avalon studios in Lower Hutt, we had a row of portaloos for people who were queuing up to come into the studio. They ended up queuing to get to the portaloos instead. The weather was shocking that year — shocking Wellington wind. We had a helicopter bringing in one of the stars and the wind from it was just enough to send these portaloos over like dominos. Doors fell open. People fell out. I can’t believe we didn’t get it on camera — it was the best thing about the whole Telethon.
My biggest break in television nearly came just after that. Expo 88 was being held in Brisbane and I was asked to go and host a series of programmes from there. That would have been a huge break because it was an opportunity to practise hosting skills but also to be a bit playful and ad lib. You were showing the expo to people who weren’t able to afford a ticket to Brisbane. But my wife, Rachael, and I had our second child due about that time.
I had met Rachael when she was a teacher at Featherston Primary School, which was a few blocks from my shop and cafe. She was just out of teacher training and that was her first assignment. Her parents were both educationalists so that was their expectation. She comes from a family of academics. We were very different in many ways — my father would say the doers and the talkers have got together — but sometimes that works out well.
She used to take her kids for walks and they used to slide their hands along my windows, which used to infuriate me. ‘That’s great,’ I thought to myself. ‘These teachers, all the holidays in the bloody world, I’m paying their bloody wages with my hard-earned taxes and the best they can do is come around and dirty up my windows.’
So that’s how we met. I invited her out when I was in Macbeth and in lengthy rehearsals. We got engaged very quickly. We didn’t get married quite so quickly. And we didn’t start a family for a while because she hadn’t been overseas and she wanted to do that first. After we were married she went to Europe for a month or so.
So when the Brisbane offer came up, everything was relatively settled. I thought it would be perfectly reasonable for me not to be around. I thought the birth of our second child would be very much like the birth of our first; I couldn’t see it having much to offer in the way of novelty.
‘There’s no way I would miss the birth,’ I told Rachael, when we were discussing the Brisbane offer, hoping like hell she’d say, ‘Of course you must go.’
‘Of course you wouldn’t miss the birth,’ she said.
‘Of course not,’ I agreed, but I was thinking, ‘Please God give me a break here, let me go do this great job. Make her insist that I go.’ But she didn’t. Good for her.
Poshest actresses in the world
Dame Judi Dench. She makes Helen Mirren look like a cheap slapper, the kind that would accept an Academy Award with no underwear on.
Helen Mirren.
“ALTHOUGH I HAD WORKED IN MANY AREAS OF RADIO I HAD NEVER OWNED MY OWN STATION. ONCE THIS POSSIBILITY OCCURRED TO ME, IT BECAME A MINOR OBSESSION.”
* * *
ALTHOUGH I HAD WORKED in many areas of radio I had never owned my own station. Once this possibility occurred to me, it became a minor obsession. This was in 1990, when the radio spectrum was being freed up, and frequencies were being put out to tender.
It was a second-price tendering system, which means the person who tenders the highest only has to pay what the next highest bidder offered. So if I tendered $100,000 and the closest other bid was $50,000, I only had to pay $50,000. That is not the brilliant gift it seems because, when you know that if you get it you’re only going to have to pay $50,000, why not tender $200,000? Everyone else knew that and everyone did the same, so across the board, the bids were pushed much higher.
This was not good for a person in my position — which was that I had no money. Everyone had to pay a deposit, which the government got to keep for as long as it took for the sales to be finalised. Then Maori decided that they owned the frequencies so the whole thing stalled for months and months and months while the government negotiated with Maori over what it was going to do.
In the meantime, schleps like me, who really couldn’t afford it in the first place, had our money tied up without knowing whether we had won or whether there was going to be anything left for us to win.
I was sure I could run a successful station. I had acquired a lot of knowledge about radio and I thought I knew what people wanted to listen to. I would be starting in a community that I knew, the Wairarapa, where there was only Radio New Zealand’s AM station.
In the end, my tender wasn’t successful and my money was refunded and the frequency went to an outfit based in Wellington. It was nice to have my money back, but I would have preferred the frequency. I was just devastated because in the interim, I had, of course, purchased an old hall in Carterton from which I was going to run my radio station. I was certain I would win because I couldn’t think of anyone else in the Wairarapa who would bid the kind of money I did. It never occurred to me that people from outside the Wairarapa would be interested.
The only thing I could do was find a new frequency. It seemed impossible that there could be 20 frequencies available in the Wellington area but only one in the Wairarapa.
The government said that if I could prove there was another frequency available on the spectrum then I could have it for six months. At that point it would be put up for tender and I could make a bid — along with anyone else who felt like it — for the frequency I had established. It was better than nothing. Not a lot better, just a little bit. I could make a lot of money. Or I could be left with nothing but a huge financial loss and several disgruntled, soon-to-be-ex employees. Naturally, I jumped at the chance.
I commissioned Broadcast Services Limited (BSL) to find me another frequency. They found an excellent one that didn’t interfere with existing frequencies. After securing the frequency, and at the same time as I was plotting to overthrow them, I was still working at Radio New Zealand, reading the news and doing numerous other odd jobs. Naturally they found out what I was doing and I was called into the office of Caroline Lane, who was one in a long line of peop
le employed to eviscerate the organisation.
‘Have you considered buying our AM station?’ she asked me.
‘Is it for sale?’ I parried.
‘Everything’s possible in this environment.’
‘All right, I’ll buy it,’ I said. It had lots of advantages. I could simulcast it on my new FM frequency and if I didn’t hold on to that after the six months, I would still have a substantial station making good money. It solved my problem of how to fill up 24 hours a day of airtime; it gave me a staff and the infrastructure I needed. It was brilliant.
After mucking me around magnificently for some time, Radio New Zealand lost the services of Caroline Lane and informed me that there was no way they were going to sell one of their stations, but rather they would be a fearsome competitor.
Meanwhile, back in Carterton, the builders were in and my empire was taking shape. There was a tiny office for me in the reception area, a studio and a small control room, open plan offices and a couple of toilets, and a little area with a photocopier and a big car park next to it.
The costs involved were enormous, especially compared to what can be done with today’s technology. I was renting one tape machine from Radio New Zealand for $500 a month. You don’t even need tape machines now. I had to have a library with records in it in order to be able to play music. Now you’ve got a music programme and everything is available to you instantly on the internet. For $20,000 today I can buy a station’s worth of music plus the Apple equipment to play it on. Back then I could get a three-CD player with a shuffle function for $800. And it had to be a 24-hour station so people would know that whenever they turned their radio on your station would be there.
I employed Radio New Zealand technicians to sort out the transmission site. I bought a transmitter from Italy; I rented transmission links, UHF uplinks from my building to the BSL tower where I had to put my transmitter. Working out the payments to APRA, the Australasian Performing Rights Association, for the music we played was a nightmare. And although we were in competition, Radio New Zealand sold me their news service.