Cheerio New Zealand

So after 8 days and nights the party moves onto Australia. We all have fond memories of New Zealand but, as they say, could not eat a whole one.

The scenery is breathtaking, the people friendly, the wine and food of a high standard. The negatives are being 13 hours ahead of GMT and a definite feeling of isolation.

I set myself the exercise of naming 10 famous non-sporting Kiwis and struggled after 6: Kiri te Kanawa, Katherine Mansfield, Russell Crowe, Sam Neil, Sir Peter Jackson, David Cameron.

There was that architect of Blairism who tried to disguise his bald patch and Rod Stewart’s ex-Kim something or other. I am sure I am unfair to politicians and poets but I simply cannot name them.

I have also rarely met a nation with worse dress sense.

T-shirt’s with incomprehensible logos, shorts and baseball caps – all totally uncoordinated – are de rigeur amongst anyone under 30 and (worse) a few over.

There seems to a semi-obesity problem too. I feel a bit rotten writing this as, except for the grim-faced woman at immigration, everyone is so helpful and friendly and  I have met some awful French and Italians who dress with great elegance

I have a friend who occasionally submits the odd piece for the Rust who was offered the position of Head of New Zealand tv.

Had he taken the job he would have surely got to know Sir Peter Jackson as his film career was taking off at the same time.

In the 60s New Zealand had but the one channel starting at 4.00 featuring little but Coronation Street and farming programmes. Thunderbirds were frontier defining. Nowadays it’s mainly SKY but the sports channels regurgitate stuff on the All Blacks or from Australia. The newspapers are local and pretty average. He would have had a Herculean task upping their media  game.