Australian press on NZ export Paul Henry

The papers prepare readers for the new Ten morning host. But does he look and sound like an Australian?

Henry and the kooky, fun-loving Ten team

Paul Henry debuts on Australian breakfast television a week today, and the Australian media are buzzing with anticipation. Sorry, that should read the New Zealand media are buzzing with anticipation.

That’s not to say there has been complete silence over there. The Fairfax papers have enlisted Adam Dudding, feature writer for their New Zealand stablemate the Sunday Star Times, to prepare readers for the man with the gift of the gurn.

Here’s Dudding, in a piece that appears in the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald:

Paul Henry is smug. He’s a rich, self-satisfied right-winger who’s rude about Hispanics and gay parents. He described British singer Susan Boyle as ”retarded”, and mocked an environmentalist for appearing on his show sporting hair on her upper lip …

But – and this is why so many of us who disapprove of him kept watching – he is frequently very funny. So we’re not sending you another Derryn Hinch/Andrew Bolt, more a low-budget Jeremy Clarkson.

Much of Henry’s humour is schoolboyish: saying ”donkey’s cock” on air, or chortling at an Indian name that sounds like ”dick shit”. Yet he has a sharp brain (he can do proper political interviews when he turns his mind to it) and a well-developed sense of the absurd.

In an interview with the Sydney Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, Henry – “the loudmouth Kiwi” – takes an early jab at Julia Gillard.

“Really the differences between [Australia and New Zealand] are paper thin,” he tells the paper’s TV writer Richard Clune:

We have politics in NZ, just like you do. Only we have a good prime minister at the moment, unlike the one you have here. That there is so much distraction with regard to the leadership would indicate she is doing a very poor job.

He “denies being a shock jock and making controversial statements just to garner publicity”, write Clunes.

Henry:

It’s clear that I’m not one because the definition of a shock jock is someone who sets out to shock and I absolutely don’t set out to shock anyone. But because I am honest, at times, I’m going to say things that shock people – but I don’t say things to shock people. All I want to do is entertain really.

Clunes concludes:

His “honest” approach will no doubt please Ten executives eager for Henry’s wayward mouth to drive ratings for the new player in the lucrative breakfast TV market against established rivals Sunrise on Seven and Nine’s Today.

In New Zealand, where Henry hosted similar television formats, the 51-year-old sparked international outcry for labelling New Delhi’s Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit “the dip shit woman”.

He also used the term “retarded” to describe British singer Susan Boyle.

No mention in the Telegraph, however, of the most egregious incident, which led to Henry being made to walk the plank from TVNZ: asking the prime minister, John Key, whether it was time to appoint a governor general ”who looks and sounds like a New Zealander” – unlike, by implication, the then governor general Anand Satyanand.