Upfront
Camilla Martin
by Olivia Kember
Olivia Kember talks to Camilla Martin [bFM’s new breakfast host].
Host the Radio 95bFM breakfast show and you’ll become a big star. Look at Mikey Havoc or, er, Marcus Lush, last seen dispensing advice on How’s Life? But the station’s new morning host, 20-year-old Camilla Martin, got the TV spot first – she presents Intellectual Property, a half-hour of old, odd, excellent music on C4 (Tuesdays, 10.30pm). That blank white void of a television studio got its first accessory from her: a filthy, burnt, tiger-stripe rug that she dragged in from home. Other records: she’s bFM’s first female breakfast DJ, Auckland’s only solo woman-in-the-morning, and arguably the only person to suggest, to his face, calling the Leader of the Opposition “Brashy”. Former occupations: weather girl (“Camilla Nimbus”); speech and drama teacher. You’ll know her when you hear her – she’s the one with that voice. Think Minnie Mouse on helium. The Listener met her for coffee and cigarettes on a sunny day in Auckland’s Herne Bay.
Your voice is your gimmick. Do you like it or does it drive you crazy? I could never do anything incognito, I’d get busted. So I can’t prank-call anybody – it’s been the bane of my life. And I used to get teased about it when I was younger. Even now, people don’t believe it’s my real voice … but it’s actually been a bit of a gift, because nobody sounds like me. People always hate it or like it, but they remember it. It’s got me on radio.
Was broadcasting always the plan? I wanted to be a video-clip director, or a fashion designer, and they were, like, why don’t you be an accountant … At school, we were put under a lot of pressure to go to university, and I didn’t feel ready for that, so I started going up to bFM when I was in seventh form, for work experience. I offered to make the coffee, but they already had someone doing that, so I did data entry, and sat in on shows. At first they looked at me in my school uniform, little girl, high-pitched voice, and thought, “What does she know?” But after a couple of weeks they started to talk to me and decided to train me up … when Hugh [Sundae] started doing breakfast, they asked me to be the weather girl. We fibbed and said I knew about it, but I actually had a guide about a brick thick and every day I’d choose a different term to teach the listeners. Then I got lazy and started looking out the window and guessing. I had photographers telling me, “I really rely on your weather report”, and I was winging it. Though in Auckland if you say it’ll be rainy and sunny, you’re in.
So, you were working hard towards the breakfast job even then. Never. I didn’t know I was even being considered. I was basically told five days before I started. Why don’t you throw me in the deep end? Why don’t you expose me to Helen Clark and the Puppetry of the Penis penises in my first week?
And weekly doses of Don Brash, too. Were you at all prepared? Last time I studied anything like that was in social studies, when we learnt about select committees, which I’d forgotten, anyway. But Helen told me to go to bed early and stay away from caffeine before bed to keep tiredness at bay, and Don has told me that prisoners could work in the garden. A big prison garden, because prisons are very, very spacious and they should be doing something to pay for the $58,000 it costs to keep each one in a high-security pad annually.
Who would you really like to interview? Iggy Pop. That sounds lazy, because he’s such an icon, but he lived through an era of music that I wasn’t even born for, and survived all of his drugs. How did he manage to survive? Did he want to die when everyone around him was carking it? Was it weird to be one of the last ones standing?
Who would you pick that’s not a musician? Malcolm McLaren. I would like to accost him, and ask him why his vision failed with the New York Dolls – people say they were past their prime, but were they? He dressed them in patent red leather like communists and played on the fact that they could stir a reaction from an audience. It worked with the Sex Pistols – it was a blazing glory of an affair. I’d ask him if the vision he had was what he wanted in the end. And if he was ever teased for being a ginge.
How about an unmusical New Zealander? [long pause] I’d like to interview the Lion Man, the guy in Whangarei who, with his wife, is bringing up lions. They’ve built this – it’s almost a lion zoo. And they’re so cute, but of course they’re still dangerous. I would ask Mr Lion how he learnt to train and build a rapport with other alpha males. How much does an average lion cost and whose permission do I need to purchase my own?
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