Mon, 20 Apr 2009 6:57a.m.
The first time I should have met Helen Clark, I had only been living in New Zealand for a couple of months. I was working for a current affairs chat show on a rival broadcaster and she was coming to slug it out with RadioLIVE presenter Willie Jackson.
Miss Clark would not prove be my first run-in with a New Zealand politician. My first was Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia, who politely implored me to eat more hospitality spicy chicken wings, before going on to say the number of UK immigrants to New Zealand should be, gulp, reduced.
I could not help gloating to friends and family in the UK that I had only been in New Zealand for a matter of 60 days and I was already going to meet one of its most recognisable faces; a stateswoman who was more than just the Prime Minister of my adopted country, but a politician of international stature and morality.
Pride does not always come before a fall, but it did in my case.
As Miss Clark’s burly security men cased out the waiting room, just in case we had poisoned the sausage rolls or hidden a terrorist in a nearby plant pot, they decided the place was too crowded for Aunty Helen.
Being the most junior in the room, I was the one to go. Thwarted, I watched Clark walk through to the studio with my nose pressed up against the glass in the control room.
This happened a second time - on the same programme. I was losing patience with Helen – I can’t vote in New Zealand , but the Grand Dame was in grave danger of losing my support.
Was I really so intrusive? Are all states-people wary of crowded rooms?
Finally, more than a year later, I met Miss Clark. This time I was working as a runner for a political debate programme in the run up to the election. All the major party leaders were appearing and I got to take them from the boardroom to the studio.
They all revealed vignettes of character as I studied them talking to aides, other journalists and on occasion myself.
Pita Sharples was small in stature but big of heart, Peter Dunne’s wife wouldn’t stop talking about the Lexus she wanted to buy, Russell Norman enjoyed a red wine and came out with the panel after the show and Jim Anderton didn’t know which camera to look at.
But, I was really looking forward to meeting the main players – John Key and Helen Clark.
I had met Mr Key a year previously – he had seemed awkward then, he was an uncle at a wedding permanently dancing through his interviews.
Someone in his PR team had given him some good training, as this time he was much more relaxed. He sat down and drank a couple of beers with the producers and journalists and generally made everyone feel at ease.
This is when politicians and the media really get down to business. The naïve young journalist in me was surprised at the familiarity between the more experienced journalists and the politicians.
But, it made sense – these people live in each other’s shoes, they both depend on each other for their livelihoods. Getting on well is preferable to getting on badly and its very bad form for a journalist to annoy their source of information.
Miss Clark though, was something else.
She stood and held court and the press gathered round as she quipped and gossiped. I was again surprised – I had expected a rather conservative, tight-lipped woman – in her place was a person with a wicked sense of humour and charisma thicker than the TV make-up she was yet to remove.
Instead, Miss Clark was your naughty Godmother who never got married. She twinkled, mocked and joked her way through the post-show conversation, an unfamiliar glass of Pinot Noir (apparently she normally drinks white) glued to her hand.
The surrounding press were not in her thrall exactly, but in her confidence. A powerful political play on her behalf – no one felt insignificant and everyone felt an attachment.
This is why I think Miss Clark will be excellent as head of the UN’s Development Programme. Half of her job will be convincing the media that the UN has any influence at all on world events.
She may just give the toothless monster some teeth, but they won’t be bared in anger, they will be part of a wry, darkly humorous grin.