Theresa Gattung

Theresa Gattung

Intensely private, hugely driven, one of the country's top businesswomen, Theresa Gattung, opens up to Paul Holmes about her life after Telecom.

The view from her Oriental Bay apartment stretches from The Freyburg Pool to Tierra del Fuego. Despite our shared ownership of a Group One-winning racehorse some years back, (Bramble Rose, New Zealand Oaks winner and Filly of the year, if I may say so), and getting to know her a bit during that time, I have never been here before.

The place is large, light and luxurious. The furnishings are simple and pleasant, not excessive. Her Christmas cards are still on the shelf. She has Nice Things. There's a Max Gimblett, a Ralph Hotere, two flower photographs by Michael Parakowhai - she buys only New Zealand artists.

She offers me tea. I ask for coffee, and where is the toilet please? - because I couldn't be bothered walking five miles at Wellington airport. Coming out, I hear the unearthly cry of a juvenile space creature. You've got a baby here - Rod Deane's lovechild, I say and she laughs.

She's standing at the kitchen bench with the Bodum pot in one hand and the plunger in the other and she's staring at them both.

She says: "Do you put the coffee in the bottom or the...?"

"You've never made coffee in a plunger?" I ask.

"No, I asked how strong you like your coffee."

Pause.

"No, you asked whether you put the coffee in the..."

"I just wanted to make sure. I don't drink coffee. My guests help themselves to coffee when they come."

"So you've never made coffee in a plunger?"

"Yeah, I've made coffee in a plunger."

"Then why did you have to ask me whether you put the coffee in above or below the..."

"Because I just did."

She pours her tea low-tide in the cup. Then she fills the cup with a vast pour of full-cream milk. "No skinny milk round here."

I tell her I want to get a bit personal this time. She says that's fine, and it must be. We'll speak of her public life and the private one she never talks about - a private life in which, in the past two years, she's lost the man she's been with for 20 years. But more of that later.