Winston Peters. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Winston Peters. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Winston Peters hasn't had a holiday since last year, can get by on four hours' sleep a night and insists the gruelling saga of undeclared donations has not taken a toll on him.

Fresh from a week when the media spotlight, with Peters caught in its glare, rarely dimmed, the suspended Minister of Foreign Affairs won't entertain for a moment the suggestion the Owen Glenn donation might have taken its toll on him.

Taken its toll, he wants to know? "How do you mean?"

Moments later he answers: "No, I'm enjoying myself."

He's unfazed by the Prime Minister Helen Clark calling him "belligerent" during a week which saw him defending his testimony in the face of conflicting evidence from billionaire Monaco-based businessman Glenn over a $100,000 donation.

Does he agree he was belligerent?

"Well yes, I think that is not a comment I am going to argue with. Wouldn't you be belligerent if you are being attacked by all and sundry, interviewing each other, without the facts, in without the evidence in?"

As for his relationship with the Prime Minister, he says: "Well I've never lied to her and that's number one. Number two, I respect the office and I think I have a duty to make it work for the time there is an undertaking to do just that. I did so with Jim Bolger. No one can say I didn't, despite our past, put it all aside in the interest of stable government."

It is Peters' way of saying he has no hard feelings over the Prime Minister's name calling.

A politician since 1978, Peters is no stranger to being out on a limb in big battles, most notably the Winebox inquiry, but in hindsight would he have handled things differently over the donations/Spencer Trust claims?

"Not really because I couldn't, I didn't know, I couldn't have done anything differently."

He resents the alleged pecuniary interest inference in the Glenn affair.

"What could that possibly be? If there is no debt and there's no gift, what pecuniary interest could there be if there wasn't a cent involved in it for me. There is only a downside for me."

With the conflict in evidence between Peters and Glenn he concedes the truth could lie somewhere in the middle, between two men who are remembering their version of events from three years ago and aren't remembering correctly.