Will Johnston on a Zoom call with John Rhys-Davies, Jono and Ben, and Blair Dowling. Photo / Supplied
Will Johnston on a Zoom call with John Rhys-Davies, Jono and Ben, and Blair Dowling. Photo / Supplied
COMMENT:
Remember the line from Lord of the Rings by Gimli - that little slightly ginger, rotund, aggressive/Scottish dwarf: "And MY Axe!"
Of course you do, you're a Kiwi.
I ended up on a Zoom video call at 12.30 in the morning last Thursday with Gimli (John Rhys-Davies)! If that wasn't weird enough, there were three other guys there, too.
Okay, this is sounding creepier by the second. Let me explain.
The Hits BOP 95FM's new Breakfast Show duo Jono & Ben were attempting the record for the longest-ever Zoom meeting. They started at 8am on Wednesday and were aiming for 24 hours awake and planned to have lots of celebs and listeners popping in and out of the Zoom.
They are clearly suckers for punishment. Sounds like torture to me.
Entertaining to watch, but 23 hours and 39 minutes of torture nonetheless.
They had people from members of Six60 to Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters on there. Sports stars, actors and regular random humans from all over NZ and the world. It was actually a pretty sweet community of people they made.
So myself, Jono & Ben and Blair (who does the Hits Day Show in the Waikato) were just having a yarn on this Zoom call late at night, because we could, and because they needed a little pep-up after being at it for 16 hours, I imagine.
Will Johnston on a Zoom call with John Rhys-Davies. Photo / Supplied
And then, unbeknown to all of us, on hops old mate Gimli.
He was at his home on The Isle of Man, which he described as: "70,000 alcoholics clinging to a rock in the middle of the Irish Sea!"
At that point I knew it was going to be fun.
He then proceeded, in his most amazing accent and tone of voice, to regale us with stories of some of his acting jobs in movies such as Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones.
He then went and got his actual Gimli helmet from LOTR and started to mildly abuse us, in character. I mean the guy is a one-man show. At one point Jono suggested we should be paying to watch this right now.
He's not wrong.
Rhys-Davies went and got his Fez hat from Indiana Jones and then proceeded to just show us precious artefacts he has at this house.
During this time, remembering he was 76, I thought he would be the most amazing grandad in the world, right?
Like, imagine that voice reading you a bedtime story. He'd do the scary bits so well.
Then it turned to his fondness of New Zealand. His wife and a couple of his children are living in the Waikato. Of all the places in the world, right? They all split their time there and the Isle of Man.
What a transient life of an actor he's led, it seems. What a legend.
He explained that his son dropped out of Berkeley University in California and is now studying maths at the University of Waikato. When asked how he felt about that, Rhys-Davies said: "The problem is you can't kill them and you can't chop them up small enough to stick in the microwave!" Lol.
Finally we chatted about this crazy virus world we are all living in.
He said we should take his word for it when he proclaims the world is in awe of how New Zealand has handled this virus and people, especially in the UK, are watching with a very close eye how we manage coming out of lockdown.
He said our people are among the most laid-back, welcoming and talented in the world and we shouldn't take for granted the position we are in - and we should definitely not "party on the Viaduct in Auckland too soon".
In this crazy time of lowering lockdown levels and a little more freedom afforded to us, I think Gimli from Lord of the Rings is as good as any to get advice from, right?
