by Paul Henry
The boat was laden down with out-of-date and malfunctioning safety equipment and attempts to make a mayday call were futile. For some reason the engine kept going, although the electrics had all shut down. However, the thick black smoke made it impossible to control the boat from within the pilot house.
We tried to put out the fire with buckets and seawater, but we couldn’t reach whatever was actually burning because it was under the deck; also, diesel floats, so all we were doing was moving the flames closer to the wood we were standing on. Half an hour had gone by and it seemed inconceivable that we weren’t surrounded by rescue craft. It was obvious that our plight had been radioed in because a spotter plane was flying overhead. At the point where the paint on the deck was bubbling and we were considering leaping into the water, a helicopter appeared in the distance. It was not, alas, the Westpac Rescue Helicopter. It was a 3 News helicopter, there to record the event. It was a comfort to think that our loved ones would have a visual keepsake of our last moments.
Not long after, the Westpac helicopter did appear and we were winched off just seconds before the boat was engulfed in flames. The helicopter circled a couple of times as we watched it sink beneath the surface, and we were taken back to be paraded before the news cameras.
I was supposed to go and hear my daughter Lucy sing with her school choir that night and still had time to get there. I had spoken to Rachael, who had seen the rescue on the TV news, so everyone knew I was all right. I picked up my truck which had needed a tyre change, put the new tyre on and headed back over the Rimutakas. As I neared home, wearing some particularly ludicrous garments that had been found to replace my soaking wet ones, the new tyre came off and I saw it rolling ahead of me. Shit, I thought, this is turning into a really crappy day. But I did get to the concert.
When I went up to Auckland for Radio Pacific, I didn’t expect to see Derek Lowe at all. He was a mysterious, legendary figure. His run-ins with Pam Corkery were particularly renowned. But he had a big impact and influence on me. He was a real taskmaster. As far as he was concerned, there was one way to do it and that was his way. Your way might have been better, but it was wrong.
Over the years we eventually grew quite close. He never lost his absolute passion for radio, even when most of his time was focused on the boardroom and operating Radio Pacific as, at the time, the most successful broadcasting entity in the country. He was juggling all sorts of competing requirements. He had a board and shareholders, he was developing an enormous network, buying and selling other interests and making a huge amount of money. His role was more that of businessman than broadcaster, but he still loved radio.
He always had with him a pad of recycled paper — he was stingy, too, though lavish with the people he needed to be lavish with — and even when he was concentrating on a complicated deal, if he got a good idea for a promo, he wrote it down. He wrote all the station promos, which were absolute masterpieces of the genre, on this pad. And once a week he would go into the studio and produce them.
I can’t say he ever showed much passion for the infomercial hour, though I know he was passionate about the truckloads of money it brought in.
Derek realised that encumbered with racing, as Radio Pacific was, it was never going to be the number-one rating station, which would have been the goal of many people doing his job. But that didn’t mean that it couldn’t be the number-one money-making station. If you’re never going to get as many listeners as the others, how are you going to create the desire in those listeners you do have to spend, spend and spend? He did it by creating the notion of the Radio Pacific family and producing branded products that you bought to be part of the family.
After a while I got regular overnight shifts on the weekend, so I would commute up to Auckland and stay in a motel. Then I got a daytime show, Paul’s People, for which I would commute weekly. It was vaguely infomercial but more newsworthy than straight infomercial programmes. Even though they were huge money-spinners, they weren’t great for ratings. Derek had brought Brent Impey in to make some changes, which included my new show.
Talkback was something I wasn’t very enthusiastic about. I have hovered around talkback a lot, but I always loathed it. I loathe how the insatiable need for a caller makes you say things you don’t necessarily believe just to get a reaction.
For Arch Tambakis, an Australian talkback host who was at Pacific for a while, a successful talkback show was a full board of calls, even if every single one of those calls was from a complete moron.
For me, successful talkback is that all-too-rare brilliant caller who says something you haven’t thought of or heard before and who makes everyone listening say to themselves ‘Where the fuck did he come from?’ In those cases, the next thing you think is ‘How can someone like that be listening to this shit?’ I love talk radio when it is done properly, but I don’t think talkback is something you can do properly.
So I tried to fill Paul’s People with interviews — I could have the luxury of doing a 20-minute interview if the subject was worth it — and I tried to keep the talkback component to a minimum.
The BBC did a survey when they first realised that talkback was a force to be reckoned with and was something they were going to have to do. One of the things the report discovered was that people who call up are not representative of the people who are listening. In other words, talkback consists of a large number of quite intelligent people listening to a comparatively small number of absolute fucking cretins. And those people listen to and enjoy talkback, despite the enormous frustration they get at hearing the morons, because it constantly reinforces their prejudices against humankind. Reading this made me realise why it is so stunning when, on those rare occasions, you do hear someone intelligent or interesting call in.
Arch was the quintessential talkback host. On first encounter, he impressed you hugely with this blunt, brass, crass enthusiasm. ‘I could fill a board in a graveyard,’ he said to me early on. The full board of calls is every talkback host’s goal and safety net because it means there will always be someone to talk to and you won’t end up having to fill the empty air with a monologue of your own improvising. I was impressed and wondered how Arch managed always to have a full board.
I soon found out he did it by being truly ignorant and obnoxious. He was entirely bulletproof in that regard with no concern about what anyone thought of him. He was short, overweight and virtually blind. Somehow, despite that, he would intimidate you even when he wasn’t trying to. Usually, however, he was trying to. He eyeballed you and, despite his lack of stature, got right up in your face. Part of the motivation may have been that only then was he able to see you. Fortunately his glasses were about six inches thick so he could never get closer than six inches.
Arch did phenomenally good infomercials. He gave the advertisers an extra minute on the phone, which was very valuable to them. And in return they wanted to be nice and offered him their products.
You had to be careful with that sort of thing. For a start, there are only so many glow-in-the-dark crucifixes you can use. Most of us when we were offered great things accepted them politely. We might say that we would do our best for the advertiser the next time they were on, but that was the extent of it. Arch visited them and got to know them personally and took more great things and more great things. That was crossing a line he could never see.
One day, to my horror, it was announced that Arch Tambakis would be doing breakfast with me. It was not uncommon for him to come in, bail me up in that nasty little glass conservatory we used to call an office, shake his fist in my face and discuss the day’s programme.
‘If you fucking talk over me again, it’ll be the last fucking thing you do’ was a typical suggestion. He once threw a chair at me in the studio, which was remarkable for several reasons. The chairs in the studio were huge and wired loosely to the ground. Arch got up while we were on air, picked his chair up in his chubby little arms, using every ounce of strength in his incredibly unfit body, and
threw it at me. It failed to hit me only because (1) he wasn’t very strong, and (2) it was connected to the floor by wires.
I thought briefly that some brilliant radio might have come from the combustion created by putting the two of us together, but I always knew that the chance was extremely small and it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen after a few days.
Arch wasn’t capable of brilliant radio; he was capable of doing bad radio brilliantly. In the end, he had to go. I think Brent kept him until there were simply too many court cases pending for various offences inside and outside work. His career with Radio Pacific ended in court. Derek Lowe stopped me one day to tell me that Arch was suing.
‘There’s an employment hearing,’ said Derek. ‘Arch has taken us to court, awful man. You’ll need to be there.’
I turned up with my written statement and all I had to do was read it and Arch Tambakis would be out of my life forever. I was in the waiting room, ready to do my bit, when Arch came out of the courtroom and walked up to me.
‘You fucking turd, you absolute fucking turd,’ he began, putting his fists up. ‘You fucking say one fucking thing against me you little shit and I’ll fucking pound you into the floor. Don’t think I can’t fucking do it.’ That possibility never entered my head.
Arch was so incapable of seeing his own flaws that losing was not an option for him. There was no way people weren’t going to see through all these arseholes ganging up against him.
So they got rid of Arch and I went on holiday to Australia. While I was there, Brent rang me to say that I’d been taken off breakfast and the show was being changed. I wasn’t too worried. I was going to Bosnia to do some reporting, and when I came back from that Pacific would find work for me. I was focused on the Bosnia trip. After Arch Tambakis, I was looking forward to the more relaxing work environment I would find there.
“I WAS BEYOND EXCITED — I WAS GOING TO WAR WITH THE NEW ZEALAND ARMY AND I WOULD FIND OUT EVERYTHING THAT WAS GOING ON. I DIDN’T REALISE, NEVER HAVING DONE IT BEFORE, THAT MY PERSONALITY WAS REALLY CUT OUT TO DO THIS. I ALSO WAS YET TO LEARN THAT I COULDN’T EXCEL IF I WAS JUST GOING TO BE THE LACKEY WHO WENT WITH THE ARMY.”
* * *
I THOUGHT IT WOULD be a good idea to go to Bosnia and cover the war there for Radio Pacific. It was 1995 and this was to be a one-off. Because Derek Lowe didn’t really have anything else for me to do, he agreed. Without either of us knowing it, there was a little seed planted then that would grow into something very big later.
I was left to make my own arrangements. I managed to get the New Zealand Army to agree to let me accompany them on the ground. I flew over and met them in Zagreb where I was getting my United Nations accreditation to go into Bosnia.
I was beyond excited — I was going to war with the New Zealand Army and I would find out everything that was going on. I didn’t realise, never having done it before, that my personality was really cut out to do this. I also was yet to learn that I couldn’t excel if I was just going to be the lackey who went with the army.
It became obvious that the benefit of having access to the army’s logistics and their knowledge on the ground was outweighed by the fact that any opportunity to find out what was really going on was stymied because I was there with one prejudiced player. My reports were compromised no matter what. If you reported the army was doing great work — which they were — who would believe you weren’t just saying that to keep them onside?
I was constantly pushing them to do things that they wouldn’t normally do: ‘How about you just give me a couple of guys and we go to the front line? You were saying that there’s a minefield over there? Can you take me over there?’
‘Sorry, Paul. We’re not really supposed to go there.’
‘Assign me a couple of people, take me to the minefield. I want to see what a minefield is like, I want to see what the trenches are like.’
And they did. The soldiers themselves were excited because they had never seen a minefield either. Soon we were in the thick of it. We were picking over bodies in trenches. I found a Kevlar helmet with bullets and half a head in it, like something that had been mashed up in a mouli.
There were five of us walking along in this place where soldiers wouldn’t normally go when all of a sudden the guy in front shouted, ‘Stop!’
Although it looked like a pleasant scene, with the silver birch trees standing straight and their leaves covering the ground, he had spotted a hillock where earth had been piled up for a gun. He looked to the other side and saw another one. Then we realised we had wandered into the middle of a minefield.
That is the eeriest thing, because you know that as long as you don’t move you’ll be perfectly safe, but eventually you will have to or you’re going to starve to death. There is nothing wrong with the ground you are standing on but there are several choices to be made about how to get to safety.
Do you retrace your steps? You are taught that, if you possibly can, you should do that and get back to the point where you know you’re safe. If you have wandered a long way into the minefield, all you can do is look for the quickest way to safety and follow that. There were so many leaves and we’d walked so far in, we couldn’t retrace our steps. You never shimmy. You don’t step gingerly because that means you have to take more steps and increases the chance of stepping on a mine.
You have to leap. If you leap onto a mine, of course, you’re fucked. But if you step on one gingerly you’re fucked too.
I was the third in line. When you can’t retrace your steps, you choose the person who is closest to the shortest route to absolute safety. That person leaps out and you follow him. The other advantage of leaping is that you make very clear footprints for the next person to leap into. The person in front of our group was blessed and we followed him safely out.
It’s bloody frightening. If the person in front gets blown up, you wait for it to settle and then you keep going on that path because not only has that mine exploded, but you can be pretty sure that if there had been another one within cooee it would have been set off too.
But what is likelier in that case is that your guy is still alive, albeit writhing on the floor in agony, so you’ll need to get him out. It’s very complicated. Let this be a lesson to us all: do not lay mines. It’s only going to cause strife for yourself or others.
I also managed to get the army to take me to Tuzla. I stood there as the refugees from the Srebrenitsa massacre arrived on the back of trucks. These people had just seen their families killed and they told the most harrowing stories. Dutch peacekeepers were still putting tents out and digging trenches as huge numbers of refugees, mainly women and girls, arrived. The men and most of the younger boys made up the majority of the 8000 people killed. The survivors had made this torturous trip from their home and seen the most horrendous things. They all had stories of seeing their families torn from them and killed before their eyes.
I followed one girl through the process. She climbed off the ute when it reached the camp. It drove away and left her standing at the end of a wide corridor of razor wire. She just stood there for ages, then she walked all alone, down the centre of this corridor into the refugee camp. She knew nothing about what was going on or what she should do. She was greeted by someone who looked in her mouth, patted her down and told her to go over to a wall where the surnames of people who had already arrived had been scrawled. This was one of the few ways people had of finding out if they still had any living relatives. In her case, she had been separated from her immediate family before they were killed. Other family members had been killed in front of her over the three days it had taken to get to the refugee camp. After seeing no one’s name on the board, she wandered off and was taken to a tent where she would live with people she didn’t know for God knows how long. She had no idea about anything.
I had a $30,000 satellite phone. It was so high-tech I didn’t fully understand it. The phone was rented and every time I used it, it cost £9 for a connection and £9 a min
ute. So the first minute was £18. Sending a photo on its analogue system took about 20 minutes and chances were the link would fall out halfway through. I never sent photos but the costs were still phenomenal.
I was on the land phone reporting back whenever I could get access to one. Derek had been supportive but I knew not to spend a cent more than necessary so the satellite phone was used only sparingly. In many situations you can’t bring them out because you become a target as soon as anyone sees it. They were inefficient things. They were the size of a suitcase and I remember people dying around me while the phone was saying ‘Searching. Searching. Searching.’
After being a foreign correspondent for a few days I realised that the best way to do this was to turn up at the war, uninvited, as it were. There would be logistical problems but I could bullshit my way through anything, or thought I could.
Halfway through the assignment I was starting to worry because arrangements were being made to get me out when my time was up and I didn’t want to go. By then I had found a lodging house to stay in on my own, just so I had a bit of distance from the army. I was breaking away. I had also made contact with the British Army and spoken to them. I had got to know other journalists.
‘There’s a whole interesting bloody landscape here,’ I said to the others. ‘How do we find out what it is like for the people who are just living here?’ The atmosphere in an army town was obviously different from that where the ordinary people were just going about their daily lives as normally as you can in a war.
I decided to hire a car to take me to Split. I had no idea what car-hire facilities were like in the middle of a war but thought I could find someone to give me a lift. I ran the idea past a British Army contact. ‘Oh, you’ll be killed’, I was told. ‘You can’t just rent cars in a war zone. Between here and Split there’s like 25, 30, 40 front lines.’ That many front lines sounded extremely exciting.
