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The crowd went wild.

  I knew something was wrong right from the off. The Cat bounded out, as it had done on the previous two occasions, but something was wrong with the Kiwi. It walked slowly forward and seemed a bit confused. I was immediately

  on high alert, but the crowd was oblivious. The show continued, and I did my best to keep it going while keeping an eye on the motionless Kiwi. When I could, I sidled over and whispered, ‘Are you okay?’ Nothing from the Kiwi. ‘I think I should help you off the stage …’ Still nothing.

  As the children smiled and clapped, the Kiwi puked. From inside the costume, I heard the loud and expansive sound of a teenager comprehensively losing her lunch. I grabbed the feathers of the bird in the knowledge that it was about to keel over.

  ‘Thank you to the Cat and the Kiwi … yaaaay … I think it’s time they both went back to their satellite dish to go to sleep. Come on, you two.’

  The crowd was still totally oblivious, until, as I led the stricken animal from the stage, a large splosh of vomit gushed forth from its feet.

  The costume was beyond the hope of any dry-cleaner. The Kiwi was incinerated, and the remaining shows cancelled.

  As we felt more settled in our new country, we began to explore. The scenery in New Zealand is breathtaking, as you will know if you’ve visited or watched the Lord of the Rings films. We drove through the stunning hills of the Coromandel Peninsula, covered in temperate rainforest, and then down to the black volcanic sands of Piha beach. A note of caution: the black sand gets substantially hotter in the sun than the golden sand of Fistral beach. I attempted to run across it barefoot to the sea. After six paces, I ran back, yelping.

  My folks had made friends with a British couple called Alec and Vera. Along with their two grown-up children, they lived in Taupo, in the centre of the North Island. Taupo is a pretty town beside the lake from which it takes its name. Again, the scenery is spectacular. The entire area is volcanic and much of it is still active. In the distance are three rumbling volcanos, Ruapehu, Tongariro and Ngauruhoe. In fact, Lake Taupo is in the caldera of an ancient volcano. Given that the freshwater lake has a surface area of 616 square kilometres, it must’ve been a bloody big bang when it went off.

  Alec and Vera invited us all down to stay and asked if I would like to learn to water-ski from their boat, out in the lake. I don’t know how much of what they then told me was true, but it all seemed highly plausible, given the geographic location. They said that the ground beneath the town was entirely pumice and that if there was ever a water shortage in New Zealand, the residents of Taupo would always be able to water their gardens because the water soaked through the grass, into the pumice and straight back into the lake. The other fact was thrown casually into the conversation as we sat in the boat on a cloudless day, the lake beneath us as flat as glass and the mountains mirrored on its surface. I

  was getting kitted up for my first attempt at water-skiing when Alec told me that at the bottom of the 110-metre-deep lake were pumice caves. If anyone drowned in the lake, the bodies were hardly ever found because, as they sank, they were pulled into the pumice caves and were impossible to recover. Well, that put the shits up me, for starters.

  I jumped into the water and bobbed as the boat circled to leave me the rope. The clarity of the lake was astonishing. As I looked down to my feet, it was as if there wasn’t any water there at all. I looked past the water-skis and into the crystal-clear depths beyond; no chance of seeing the bottom. As I thought about those pumice caves below, waiting to steal my drowned body, I felt something happen in my head and I shivered. It was the beginning of a phobia, a fear of deep water that would stick with me for years. A fear that was compounded years later when I was scuba-diving in Antigua and swam over the edge of the continental shelf. The water went from warm aquamarine to cold black as I looked down the sheer, rocky wall into the abyss. My instructor laughed for hours. He said he’d never seen a human bend so much in a turn. ‘It’s a miracle you didn’t snap,’ he said.

  Anyway, turns out I’m not a bad water-skier. Maybe it was the fear of falling in that kept me upright on the skis.

  We only had two experiences of earthquakes in the four years we were in New Zealand. Mine was about five floors up in a hotel room in Christchurch on the South Island, where I was about to host a concert. It felt at first as if a large truck was driving past. I only looked up from learning my lines when I realized that not only was it taking a very long time for the truck to pass, but now everything was falling off the shelves. I was new to this, so I ran down the corridor to tell the crew there had been an earthquake. They looked at me bewildered. To them, what I’d felt was just an everyday occurrence to be ignored.

  My folks had a far more interesting experience. They were on a weekend break with friends in Napier, on the east coast of the North Island. The women decided they needed to use the public loo and the blokes were standing on the pavement, waiting. As the fairly large quake hit, both my mum and her friend Ann were sitting down having a wee, and a chat through the cubicle wall. They were rocked, screaming, from side to side as they sat. Mum told me later that she felt like she was trying to stay on one of those bucking-bronco machines, all the time trying to pull her pants up!

  My most frightening moment came not from shifting tectonic plates but in front of a camera on a talent show. Anyone who knows me will tell you how terrible I am at maths. Right from school, I knew it wasn’t for me. English, biology, history, politics – yes. In physics and chemistry, I showed a passing interest. Maths – literally, no chance. My folks even paid for private lessons, but Mr Holmes gave up. It’s funny how these weaknesses have a habit of manifesting themselves when you least expect it.

  One of New Zealand’s most highly regarded entertainers at the time was Ray Woolf, a genuinely lovely ex-pat who had become a very well-respected singer and TV host. Ray was launching a new talent show called Star Quest and I was invited to be on the panel. This was a big honour for me and was an establishment seal of approval. Ray was a talented, affable host. As with pretty much every talent show in the world that would follow, a performer performed and a panel of four judges gave their critique.

  There had been no rehearsal for the judges because the acts were to be a surprise.

  The studio audience clapped the end of the first act, a singer. Ray asked us all to vote out of twenty for presentation, content and star quality. We all complied. I gave the performer marks of sixteen, fourteen and seventeen, respectively. I completed my scoring, sat back and waited for my turn. Ray went to the first judge, who I think was a charming kids-TV host called Olly Ohlson. Olly chatted through how he thought the performer had done, and then:

  ‘So, Olly,’ said Ray. ‘Could I have your scores, please?’

  ‘Well, Ray, I gave Alison fifteen for presentation, fourteen for content and sixteen for star quality.’

  ‘Thank you, Olly, so that makes your grand total?’ asked smiling Ray.

  ‘My grand total for Alison, Ray, is forty-five,’ beamed Olly.

  Oh dear God! We had to do our own adding up!

  I told my family what had happened and my dad was helpless with laughter. We all sat down to watch when the show went out.

  ‘Thank you, Olly. So that makes your grand total?’

  You could see my head snap round to look at Olly and Ray, my eyes wide with panic, then both my hands shot under the desk so that I could frantically try to add up my total score on my fingers. It was hopeless, I hadn’t left enough time, the cameras would very soon be pointing at me and Alison would be waiting for her score. The family screamed with laughter every time there was a shot of me. Head down, looking at my fingers, deep in panicked concentration.

  I couldn’t do it: I’d have to change her score. Poor Alison got straight fifteens from me because it was easier to add up. She didn’t win, by two points.

  One afternoon in the Shazam! office, Peter and I were discussing music and musicians and he told me a story that he assured me was true. I
’m not going to name the person, in case it isn’t.

  At the time, Auckland bar-opening hours and their accompanying rules were confusing. There was a hangover from the 1920s, when they were only open for an hour between 5 and 6 p.m. This was called ‘the six o’clock swill’. You got as much down you in that hour as you could then staggered off into the dry suburbs. Sixty years later, even though the law had been very much relaxed, that first hour of opening time was often carnage. If the bars in the city were raucous, the bars out in the deep country were like the Wild West, with larger versions of Kiosk Kev’s shack in I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! There was a long wooden building with a single shutter which, when open, revealed the bar, but it could be slammed shut if things got out of hand or if it was closing time. It was seldom ever closing time, so things often got out of hand!

  In the story I was told, this particular artist had a false lower leg, but no one knew. He was at the bar, in the bush, and was being seriously ribbed by the locals about how soft he was because he was from the city, how he had no idea how rough life was out here, how they could ‘out-tough’ him at every turn. As it was in the middle of nowhere and as rough as hell, naturally, there was a bloke standing nearby with a beer and a shotgun. The artist in question said, ‘You wanna know how fuckin’ tough I am?’

  He picked up the shotgun, pointed it at his (false) foot, pulled the trigger and blew it off. A dozen hard-nosed drinkers were apparently sick on the spot and ran off. Our artist calmly finished his beer. How he got from the bar to his car with only one foot, I wasn’t told, nor indeed, come to think of it, how he drove home.

  I was desperate to learn as much as I could now I was finally on the inside of the business. Peter was happy to facilitate my education. He sent me on a public-speaking course and I travelled to Wellington and Christchurch to complete courses in TV production, directing and film-making. I like to think that, these days, it helps me see the work that goes on in a studio from other people’s perspective. At the time, I was just happy to learn anything I could. It’s strange, though. It’s not what you learn from working in television that can make the greatest difference, it’s what you learn from watching television that can profoundly change the course of your life and the lives of those around you. Our family was about to discover that fact on the most traumatic night of our lives.

  I was never home in those days. I was always out with mates, out with girlfriends, working. I loved the city, the country and my jobs on radio and TV. Life had got very exciting and varied; it was full and fun. I’d ditched the Hillman Hunter and was the proud owner of a Honda Civic, which, admittedly, wasn’t very showbiz for someone who had by now interviewed some of the world’s biggest stars of the time.

  My first-ever ‘star’ interview was Cliff Richard. He is a great friend of Gloria Hunniford, mother to Caron Keating, who I would later go out with. We’ve laughed about the

  fact that I interviewed him in New Zealand – Cliff remembered his trip to NZ, but not our interview. He said he didn’t remember any terrible interviews, so I must’ve done a reasonable job.

  I wish I could remember who taught me the most valuable piece of interviewing technique I possess; it would have been in one of those letters I got when I was about ten. The most important thing in an interview is to listen! Don’t have a list of questions that you relentlessly stick to. I learned in the early days to have a structure but to be prepared to throw it out of the window, to engage in whatever is said, to be interested and to listen.

  I’ve mischievously used this technique in interviews I have given, when I know the person asking the questions isn’t really listening to a word I’m saying. Halfway through the interview, at the end of an answer, I’ll say:

  ‘So, you see, that’s how I got my first job in TV … and then I ran over the nun.’

  ‘Right,’ says the interviewer. ‘And were you excited to be in television?’

  Only when they got the recording back and listened to it would they realize what I’d said and think, He did what?!

  I had interviewed Elton John, who had just got married and surprised the world. I’d recorded a TV special with Boy George and Culture Club. I’d driven in the back of a limo with Billy Idol as his screaming female fans bounced off it. At one party in Auckland, Laura Brannigan, who was riding high on the success of ‘Gloria’, had decided I needed to learn how to put a lighted match in my mouth without burning myself. She must have been a pretty good teacher, because I didn’t singe the roof of my mouth. One of the most surreal moments was interviewing Sting and The Police, because the last time I’d seen the band was when I was standing beside Joyce at the tea urn, watching them press the ‘Enter’ button in Broadcasting House.

  I’d also flown to Australia to record a special with Duran Duran. It was while Peter, Ev and I were in Australia that we were introduced to an Australian performer who was, as yet, unknown outside the country. He was charming, enigmatic, sexually charismatic and fascinating. We all had a beer, and he asked if we would like to go to the studio to listen to the album he had just recorded. We all eagerly agreed. The album was incredible. He was incredible. And so it was, that night in Sydney, that we spent a wonderful evening listening to Shabooh Shoobah with Michael Hutchence of INXS.

  I had celebrated my twenty-first birthday with all my family and friends and my dad had made me a wooden key with ‘21’ on it that everyone had signed. We had applied for and been granted New Zealand citizenship, so I now had dual nationality.

  Happy 21st birthday.

  My girlfriend at the time was part Russian, and I was asked over to her house for dinner to celebrate my birthday a couple of days later. It was a messy affair, as her Russian father toasted everything with a shot of vodka. My arrival: toasted. Sitting at the table: toasted. The wonderful company: toasted. The wonderful vodka: toasted! Being totally smashed certainly helped with the main course. There is nothing I can’t eat. In company, I’ll always be polite, even if it’s something I don’t like. I love the yolk of an egg, but I never fancy the gloopy white, and I don’t like polenta, because it should be packaging and not food, but I’ll eat it if I have to. That night, in the midst of incredible Russian hospitality, I was served something that I, literally, couldn’t eat.

  Imagine a fish that dies from unnatural causes, then washes up in a harbour in August and lies on the tideline for a week before being picked up by a seagull and dropped on to the deck of a cargo ship, which then takes it around the world. After arriving in the tropics, it is kicked off the ship by a passing sailor, falls over the side of the ship and on to the dock, where it is scraped up, put on a plate and posted to a Russian who lives in Auckland because he’s having a dinner party. The amazing fish, toasted … and hidden in a napkin.

  So, my social life was full and fun, but on one rare occasion – that traumatic night – I happened to be at home. Mum, Tim and I were sitting watching TV. Dad had enrolled in an art night-class and was out painting and we were waiting for the sound of his car in the drive. It was a surprise when we heard his key in the door, but no car. He walked in.

  ‘I’ve locked my bloody keys in the car at night school,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ I said. ‘Get your spare ones and I’ll take you back down the hill.’

  Dad was skinny and fit. He’d jogged up the hill from the class to home – he usually jogged everywhere when he was out on his own. None of us noticed him do something he very rarely did: he walked into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Then he walked back into the sitting room and sat down with us to watch TV. My mum was beside him on her chair, my brother and I were in our usual places, Tim lying on the floor, face down, head in hands, propping him up as he watched, me sitting on the floor with my back to Dad’s chair.

  ‘Brian!’ cried my mum suddenly. ‘Brian!!’

  I turned and looked up. He was having a heart attack in his chair. It’s a sight I will carry with me for ever. He was gasping and clutching and it was utterly hor
rific. It’s strange how, in times of deep trauma, your mind and vision focus to a laser-sharp pinprick. There was a whooshing in my ears. All I could see was him. Mum and Tim were blurs in my peripheral vision. I was aware that Tim was phoning for an ambulance and that Mum had run next door.

  I pulled him from the chair on to the floor. He was dead.

  I have no idea where I had seen CPR or mouth to mouth, but it had to have been on television because, back then, there were no lessons or any real awareness and I’d never been in a situation like that. I started compressing his chest and breathing into his mouth, again and again and again and again. Nothing was happening. I kept trying. I looked at the lamp and wondered, if I pulled the cord out, could I hit him with 240 volts? No, the fuse board would trip and I’d be in the dark. Again and again I compressed and breathed into him. His lips were blue and he was totally lifeless. It wasn’t working. I put my left hand flat on his chest over his heart, lifted my right hand over my head in an arc and crashed the side of my right fist on to my left hand, over and over, then breathed again into his blue lips. I thumped more, I breathed more, he made a small gasp, but nothing else. Again and again and again and again. Small signs of something. Was it life?

  I was oblivious to everything but him, but then I heard a siren. As I kept up the thumping and the breathing, two paramedics arrived. They were pulling kit out of a bag, and one of them said:

  ‘Well, mate, that’s an unorthodox method, but it seems to be working. Keep going until we’re set up – only thirty more seconds.’

  I kept going.

  ‘Clear.’

  I stopped, sat back on my feet and watched. They had cut his favourite T-shirt. He wouldn’t be happy with that. A high-pitched whine, two paddles on his chest and a thunk.

  His eyes shot open.

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said.

  ‘What’s his name?’ asked the paramedic.

  ‘Brian,’ I told them.

  ‘Okay, Brian, nothing to worry about. You’ve had a bit of a heart attack, mate.’