Prince Charles has come and gone with all the pomp and glamour of a visiting drain inspector. At least there’s entertainment to be had from the breathlessly reported Windsor wit and wisdom. “I hope you didn’t pick up any nasty diseases,” quipped HRH when meeting some widely travelled Royal New Zealand Air Force staff. How they must have chuckled. The lamentable standard of the royal banter has always been a bit mystifying. They’ve had centuries to do little but perfect the small talk required when meeting the hoi polloi who pay for their increasingly bizarre visits. Certainly, some of Charles’s antipodean witticisms – “Where did you get that hat?”; “… it all became too big for me, as the actress said to the bishop” – sounded several centuries old.
He really should consider updating his material to something more relevant. “Get your colonial shame off my breasts, as the topless protester said to the Prince”, perhaps?
TVNZ marked the Royal tour with Charles and Camilla, a British news special which demonstrated that however many unlovely body parts we in the colonies thrust in his direction, the Prince of Wales gets much worse at home. Things have come to a pretty pass when, as one commentator on Charles and Camilla noted, a headline like “Boring Old Gits to Wed” is hailed as a softening in the public’s attitude to the union.
Never mind the sheep shearing. While Charles was here, they should have had him visit our newest industry. We must now surely top the OECD countries when it comes to current affairs shows per capita. Our roads are a mess, our education system has gone troppo, but when it comes to gits in studios interviewing anything that moves, we are all stocked up. And that’s with Campbell Live still to air. Latest off the blocks is Williams Up Front, the story of one man’s quest to find an audience, any audience, by screening twice a week at 8.00pm on Sky News.
Like Royal tours, current affairs shows are becoming increasingly strange. Williams Up Front is the Pak ’N Save of the genre. No frills, just Newstalk ZB’s flinty Larry Williams and a guest or two brought on to make kamikaze attempts to answer his questions. Williams’s style is short, sharp and staccato, like repeated kicks to the shins. The first night I watched, the topic was paedophiles and child pornographers. Inevitably, the guests were Act MP Deborah Coddington and anti-child pornography campaigner Denise Ritchie.
Williams’s interrogation technique is of the match-in-a-canister-of-fireworks variety “Deborah,” he barked, “are we soft? Is it a haven? How many are out there?”
“There are a large number of paedophiles out there …” began Coddington, grabbing a question at random as it flew by, only to be interrupted by another urgent entreaty from Williams: “Have they been able to get away with it!?”
“Other interview news shows are guest-driven,” Williams declared in the show’s publicity material. “Williams Up Front is driven by me.” That night he seemed intent on driving it across the centre line and into the path of the oncoming traffic.
They were discussing the problems that beset the police’s Internet child pornography sting operation, but you didn’t really come out of it much the wiser, as the interview careered wildly all over the road. Williams would ask Ritchie something complex, like the difference between a paedophile and a child sex offender. She would no sooner get started, than he’d bark, “Thank you, we’ll come back in a moment!” and take a break.
There were lighter moments. What about chemical castration? wondered Williams. The problem is in the mind, indicated Coddington. “Can’t whack their heads off, can you, I suppose?” mused Williams wistfully. But the combination of grim topic and pinball approach proved dispiriting.
The next night saw Williams treating Don Brash to such pithy enquiries as, “The book. What’s the point?” Brash burbled about letting people get to know him better. “Young people don’t want to know about corned beef and peas!” thundered Williams. “They’re interested in noodles and all that stuff!”
The encounter did provide some answers as to why the National Party seems so off track. Asked about his low profile in the House, Brash declared that he was out and about a lot, talking to New Zealanders “in Upper Hutt, in Lower Hutt, in Waikikamukau, in Timbuktu …”
Don must have been wishing he was in Waikikamukau by the time Williams got on to the Opposition’s image problem.
Larry: “What is it about National? Do they lack sex appeal?”
Don: “Eeeeeeh, well …”
Larry: “Do you lack sex appeal?”
Don: “I can’t answer that question.”
Larry: “Well, you’re no Clinton, are you, with respect.”
You could only hope that, along with all those potential National voters in Timbuktu, the PM was watching. She could learn something from the way Brash handles abuse. His technique is not unlike that of Prince Charles. When one’s subjects are appallingly rude to one, it’s better to react with amusement or ignore them altogether. Her Royal Helenness can only seem to manage variations on “Off with their heads!” So far, Williams Up Front doesn’t bode well for the level of public debate in election year. Still, if we can expect corned beef and pea-free political biographies in the future, the show will have done its bit to make the world a better place. And the noodle producers of New Zealand must be ecstatic.