OPINION: Career suicide note from a deranged narcissist
Been there, done that. Get some help, mate.
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Hawke’s Bay
Read the interview in question here. Paul Henry last night released a statement through MediaWorks Saturday night saying "I meant no harm or offence" with his comments, which took in his hatred of many people and things, a Trumpesque quip about a nearby woman's chest and a bucketload of bad language — Editor
Paul Henry has given a lengthy interview to the New Zealand Herald's Canvas magazine. The paper teases readers in a banner front page headline: 'POTTY MOUTH PAUL - Has Henry finally gone too far?' Having read the piece my preferred headline would have been SUICIDE NOTE FROM A DERANGED NARCISSIST.
Been there, done that. Though the interview I gave to a national newspaper in 1970, when I was making my name on the current affairs programme 'Gallery', was not riddled with expletives as this interview is. I've always thought that needing to pepper your language with 'f**ucking' represented a failure in communication. Or perhaps just trying too hard to impress.
Anyway, as I was leaving the studio one night after a particularly prickly interview with Brigadier Gilbert, the head of the SIS (who had immediately rung Keith Holyoake to demand that the recorded interview not be broadcast) I was stopped on the pavement by Bruce Broadhead the NZBC's Head of Current Affairs. "You realise," he said, "that you have transformed current affairs broadcasting in this country forever."
I would later end a crippling Post Office strike by bringing the parties together on the programme. Time magazine reported on this apparently unique achievement.
So here's the thing, Paul: for a couple of years I was more famous in Godzone than you will ever be. Loved and loathed in equal measure. Your former morning co-host on TV3, the gorgeous Hilary Barry, once called me 'a legend'. On your morning show!
Skiting? Hardly. For starters, there was only one channel in those days. So viewers had nowhere else to go. No choice, no competition.
My point is that I know about fame if only in your own backyard. It's corrosive and corrupting. It turns mild-mannered men and women into monsters.
Been there! Experienced that! And then one day you're overcome by some self-destructive impulse to smash it all down. Or maybe it's not self-destructive at all. Maybe you just want to test how far you can go before the adulation stops. Will you still love me? You've turned into a deranged narcissist! Time to give an intemperate foul-mouthed interview to a national newspaper perhaps. A career wrecking ball.
Been there, done that. Get some help, mate.
Broadcaster and media trainer Dr Brian Edwards posts at Brian Edwards Media.
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OPINION: Career suicide note from a deranged narcissist
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