Smooth talker's passion for city

Tauranga is a small place and it feels like everyone here knows Classic Hits 95FM Breakfast front man Brian "BK" Kelly.
His energetic voice has been dancing across our airwaves for the past 30 years and his grinning face is plastered across the side of buses and billboards all over town.
He's one of this country's longest-serving radio personalities and still holds the coveted number one breakfast spot among local radio stations. In fact, he's one of only a few people you could genuinely call a celebrity here in Tauranga.
"I don't really consider myself that," he says modestly. "I've just got a job and I'm lucky that I've got both the breakfast show and motorsport commentary. I'm doing the things that I love - playing music, talking and watching motor racing."
Talking is something Kelly does brilliantly. His ability to strike up a conversation with anyone has been the cornerstone of his career.
He counts New Zealand legends such as Sir Colin Meads, Greg Murphy, Sir Peter Leitch and the late Possum Bourne among his friends but will devote as much time and attention to Mary Hill from Papamoa when she calls Classic Hits on any given morning.
I admit to Kelly I'm nervous about interviewing him, for fear my shorthand skills won't be fast enough.
"Because I talk too much?"
Well, yes.
But he quickly has me smiling again by declaring Rangiora is his favourite place in New Zealand.
"My best mate lives there with his wife ... I'll walk into town and I can always smell bacon curing and bread being baked. And it's just that whole smell of old town New Zealand."
Unbeknown to him, Rangiora is my beloved hometown and considering most people don't have a clue where it is, Kelly has instantly won me over.
Any publicity is good publicity

His best mate, Lindsay Kerr, confirms he is indeed a top bloke to hang out with.
"He's always entertaining. What you see is what you get with Brian.
"You often find with someone in his position that the person is different from who they are behind the microphone. But he's got his feet on the ground. He's never been swayed by his public persona and that's the secret of his success I think."
Kelly believes "any publicity is good publicity" and routinely shares his day-to-day life with 13,600 listeners so I was surprised to find there was a lot I didn't know about this man.
Kelly was, in fact, born Mark Wilson.
"I'm adopted. When they released the Adult Adoption Information Act [in 1985] so you could find out where your real parents were I went into that big time. It took me about five years and I eventually found my real family."
Kelly discovered he had two sisters and two brothers but his birth parents had already died. "I missed them by about a year, bugger it."
By sifting through electoral rolls and phone books from the 1950s in Wellington's Alexander Turnbull Library, he uncovered a wartime love story between his mother and an American serviceman.
The pair had married but when the soldier returned home to Little Rock, Arkansas, he was run over and killed by a car.
"A policeman came to the door to tell my mother and a relationship started up there with the policeman who became my father eventually."
He reckons the story would make a great movie script as his siblings had no idea Kelly had ever existed.
Disappeared off the radar

"It was really amazing the day I rang up, once I had traced my family, and said to my sister 'was your mother Beatrice Mary Wilson?' And she said 'yes'. I said 'are you sitting down? I think I'm your brother'."
Exactly why he was given up for adoption remains a mystery but Kelly was floored again a few years later when another sibling emerged from the woodwork.
"I got a phone call from a guy and he said 'is that Brian Kelly', and I said 'yes' and he said 'was your mother Beatrice Mary Wilson?' And I said 'yes'. And he said 'well I'm your brother'. No one knew about him either. We had both just disappeared off the radar."
Kelly has stayed in touch with his birth family and regularly visits them.
"I went to my sister's 50th birthday and she brought a lot of friends along who had grown up with the family and they looked at me and said 'oh my God, you look like your father'. Even my sister says I've got Dad's hands which is really cool."
Our earlier conversation about how small a place New Zealand really is comes full circle when Kelly recounts another eerie co-incidence.
"One of my cousins through adoption got married back in the 1960s to my cousin through birth. Both my adopted father, Ned Kelly, and my birth father would have been there. They both loved beer so they probably would have propped up the bar and got talking and neither would have known the tie in."
Horse commentaries in the bath
Despite his tumultuous start in life, Kelly grew up in Wanganui and knew he wanted to work in radio from a young age.
"I just went to a friend's place and they had one of those great big cabinet radios and it fascinated me the voices coming out and the music. And that was how the seed was sown. I almost remember the day."
Kelly set about visiting his local radio station trying to get on air during their "junior sessions". He set up radio stations in his bedroom with a record player and microphone.
"I remember I used to lie in the bath doing horse commentaries. It must have been the resonance of the room or something. And there was a great horse commentator at the time called Peter Kelly. I think my father must have listened to the radio and listened to horse races."
Kelly says he always wanted to entertain and started playing guitar in bands from his early teenage years.
So how does he maintain the level of energy required to entertain people at the bleary-eyed hour of 5am each weekday?
"I don't really mind it. There will be some times I go 28 days straight working, because I'll go away at weekends and do motor racing [for Radio Sport]. You get tired sometimes but I've learned to always have a sleep in the afternoons - religiously.
"Everyone knows in the press room at motor racing that if they see my head go down on the table they know I'm having my little nap and it might be during a race. I can just turn off for 10 minutes or quarter of an hour."
Sporting pursuits

After a typical morning on the airwaves from 5am until 10am, Kelly will arrive at his Avenues home for lunch and a nap before setting off again to do some exercise.
"I like being active. Over the years I've run marathons, I've done triathlons and now I've got full on into rowing so on a nice day like today I'll go out on the Wairoa River and have a row."
His sporting pursuits have rubbed off on his three children. Michael is an aspiring professional athlete competing in ironmans and the like, daughter Amy is also a rower, and Mark, the baby of the family, is boarding in Auckland so he can pursue basketball opportunities including a weekly training run with the Breakers' academy.
"He's 16 years-old and he's 6 foot 7 inches (2.3m). He's a very good basketballer. He's been in New Zealand age group teams now for the last couple of years."
So Kelly and his wife, Roanna, are officially Empty Nesters then?
"Yeah, we are now," he says. "It's good. We're still really busy. We went to the movies last night for the first time in about three years. We saw The King's Speech and loved it."
The movie's plot held a special interest for Kelly who has always been fascinated with linguistics. As an 18 year-old, he was told he'd never make a radio announcer because he didn't have the right voice.
"I didn't give up. I had to get on the radio so I became a sports journalist and got on that way."
He doesn't think his voice sounds any different nowadays but says back in the 1970s radio announcers like Dougal Stevenson, Phillip Sherry and John Hawkesby all had lovely round deep voices.
"They all spoke the Queen's English beautifully," he recounts, with as big a plum in his mouth as he can muster.
"It's funny because my voice probably sounds rounded and educated now to younger people. The standards have slipped a lot," he laughs. "It's very American now."
Always on top of the moon

After 41 years in broadcasting, Kelly is taking on a new project and giving something back to his industry by mentoring an up-and-coming radio jock.
He reckons Jake Townsend, 15, from Mount Maunganui College has what it takes to become one of the youngest commercial DJs in the country.
"He's had his own radio station since he was 12 and he kind of reminds me of me. He knows his way technically around our equipment so the next thing for him is to learn the art of broadcasting."
Kelly describes his protege as a little guy with a deep voice.
Needless to say, Townsend is ecstatic to be learning from the best in the business.
"He's brilliant. He's got heaps of energy and is always on top of the moon and willing to help people. There's never a dull day with him."
The teenager meets Kelly once a week for a one-on-one session to hone his speech, ad-libbing and general on air skills.
"I reckon he's the best person to learn from because he's been number one regionally for however many years now ... he's trying to teach me how to be the perfect DJ so I can get into a top-dollar job."
Kelly's friends describe him as an extremely loyal person, and his employer, The Radio Network, would surely agree.
While he's had countless job offers from rival networks over the years, he has happily stayed put in Tauranga.
"They're a good company to work for. We're a family. If I left it would be like a divorce."
I ask Kelly how long he intends to anchor Classic Hits' breakfast show for, given that he's been doing it for three decades already.
"As long as I can stay on top and still sound fresh and it's still a challenge. Every day's a new day."