Jason Gunn, Thingee and the art of the story

Jason Gunn and Thingee. Photo / Martin Hunter/Supplied

When Alan Henderson, the man who was Thingee, died in February, a piece of Jason Gunn went with him. Gunn has a story about that. By Greg Bruce.

He told a lot of stories during our conversation. Almost everything was a story. Things that started out not stories ended up stories. He has just started what he describes as New Zealand's first storytelling academy and that may have had something to do with it.

The term "storytelling" is everywhere at the moment and, Gunn said, "It kind of is all we're doing. If you're in sales, you're telling stories; if you're in television, you're telling stories; children's television; news; selling shoes; selling cars - we're all just telling stories."

When I asked him how to tell a story, he said: "From the heart." He said too many people talk from the head, offering only information, whereas a good story should make the audience feel something, take them on a journey, preferably one on which they don't know the destination. He said: I'll tell you a story right now."

So he did. It was about the time in February this year he was asked by The Project to pre-record a segment about the death days earlier of his friend Alan Henderson, the man who played Thingee, his long-time TV sidekick, New Zealand's most famous and beloved puppet. The piece was direct-to-camera: no interviewer; just Gunn looking down the barrel of the camera and talking directly to the audience. He asked the crew to start recording and then to give him 30 seconds of silence.

"In that 30 seconds, I just sat there and I just sat quietly. And then I went, 'So you know, the thing about Alan is …' and I just talked for a minute. And I laughed a little bit, and I cried a little bit and I got everything out I wanted to say. And I told the story about Alan and how powerful it was to work with him in children's television."

Presenting 50 years of New Zealand Television. Photo / Supplied

After speaking with Gunn, I watched that video. His recollection was mostly accurate - he did laugh a little bit and cry a little bit - but he was wrong about two things: he spoke for two minutes and his opening line wasn't, "The thing about Alan …" It was: "I have so many stories about Al."

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Through the late 80s and early 90s, there he was on our television screens every afternoon, with his goofy charm and funny voices, always with Thingee alongside him. In a time of relatively little choice, they were the only choice for the discerning after-school viewer. Then Thingee returned to the alien planet from whence he came and Gunn grew up and became the guy who could do anything - mostly Dancing With the Stars and meaningless game shows.

But it's the after-school TV that made him - and for which he'll always be remembered - and a big part of the reason for that was his ability to create rapport with hundreds of thousands of people he couldn't see. On the shows that made him famous, Son of a Gunn and Jase TV, he would look down the barrel of the camera and talk directly to the audience:

"I would think about this kid who's had a really average day at school and has come home and has had to let herself or himself into the house - Mum and Dad are both working - so they get in and they get something to eat. They're not feeling 100 per cent. No one in their day has told them, 'Hey dude! Seriously, I reckon you've got what it takes. And, PS, how awesome are you?' Maybe no one in their day has told them that. In fact, maybe quite the opposite. Maybe people have told them they haven't got what it takes. Maybe verbally or physically, they're not getting treated well. So I chose - and I'm no great saviour, I'm just saying I chose - with my mate Thingee, to be that person in the afternoon, who would look down the camera and go, you know 'Hey, how are you doing?' And actually, really, honestly mean it."

He would say things on air like "Have you done something with your hair" and four days later would receive 300 letters saying things like "Jason Gunn, I don't know if you live in the back of my television, but how did you know that I've had my hair cut?" which is how he knew he was connecting with people. It's that connection, he says, that he's trying to teach people now, 30 years later.

"I don't want people to talk at people - I want people to know they can talk with people, and they can make them feel something. What is it you want your audience to think, feel, and do when you leave them? It's a moment, right? So it might be sales, but whatever it is, it's like, how can you make them feel something? "

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When he finished recording his tribute to Henderson for The Project, he says, a couple of the crew members were clearly a little emotional. They asked how he did it - how he went from walking through the doors to the emotion he produced on camera.

"And I said, 'It's all about that 30 seconds - where you take yourself'."

With Dancing With The Stars co-host Candy Lane. Photo / Supplied

Where he took himself, he says, was as follows. First, he thought: "I'm going to talk about Alan. How does that make me feel? What story do I remember? What moment do I think about when I think of Alan? How does that make me feel? What am I most grateful for about Alan? What will I miss? What do I still laugh about? Now think about it and really feel it, really feel it. Take yourself back there. Now, tell me that story."

He says: "So it's like I put myself in the moment and then I'm going to put you in the moment."

This is the essence of storytelling, he says: getting into a state, then putting the audience into that state.

"ʼIf I'm feeling it, like, s***, I'm back in that moment, then I know you're feeling it. So I think that's the way to tell a story. You need to put yourself back in it. I don't retell stories; I relive stories."

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He says he's felt a calling to help people tell stories for a long time. He says he's "bemused" and "a little saddened" that connecting with an audience - something that gives him such a buzz - is something so many people fear worse than death.

"I've been in meetings, I've had CEOs that bore the crap out of me and I'm like, 'Really? Really? Like, do you not know how to ...? Well, for my own sanity and the sanity of my workmates, could we fix this problem?'"

He says it's not true that people can't get better at speaking. Not only can it be learned but he can sell you the solution. He's already doing it for corporates and individuals here and overseas. One of his early customers was Yellow, where chief experience officer Tracey Taylor says he taught her breathing, meditation, the bringing of the conscious mind to her unconscious actions and helped her ask and answer questions, including: Who are you? What matters to you? What are you trying to say? Who is your audience and what's going on in their world? He taught her too how to shape what she's saying to the moment in which she's saying it in order to give it more resonance.

At a recent human resources conference, a place she says people typically talk about policy and structure, with Gunn's help she prepared and delivered a 40-minute talk about love, vulnerability and human connection in the workplace.

She says the feedback was amazing, but, "Even if it wasn't, I felt I'd told a story that was worthwhile and true."

Hosting Wheel of Fortune with Sonia Gray. Photo / Supplied

Gunn says: "This is all very vulnerable and emotional and I understand a lot of people go, 'Jason, I'm head of a large company. I don't want to make them cry.' And I'll say, 'Yeah, but you need to connect with your audience. You need to make them feel something, feel valued, feel listened to, feel excited about the future, make them feel something. That's how you get the best out of your people. Make them feel like we couldn't do this without you.'"

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The show on which Thingee became really famous, Son of a Gunn, was on the air for only three years, between 1992 and 1995. It's more than 20 years since Thingee was making regular television appearances, which makes his decades-long influence on the culture even more astonishing.

Gunn describes himself now as a "sidekick" to Thingee. He describes Alan/Thingee - names he uses interchangeably - as a "great enabler" in his life: "He let me be me," he says, "and I went on to do great things because of what Alan taught me."

He tells the story of one of his hospital visits to see Henderson, who was suffering from the prostate cancer that would eventually kill him. Gunn told him of his plans to start his storytelling academy and asked what Henderson thought of it.

"Al was like: 'We've been telling stories together, bro, for like, how many years?' And he said to me, in hospital, he said: 'You know, it's the greatest thing we got to do. We got to tell stories and we got to let other people tell their stories.' And he went: 'You've just got to back yourself.'

"Cause my thing is like: 'Who am I to teach people?' You know? Who am I - impostor syndrome - to tell people that? and he was the one who said to me, 'You've got to do it.'"

With wife, television producer Janine Morrell-Gunn in 2013.

That conversation, he says - the procurement of Henderson's blessing, of Thingee's blessing - was what gave him the impetus to start his business.

"It sounds silly - I'm talking about a puppet, for God's sake - but it meant the world to me that I got time with Alan/Thingee, and for me to explain my self-doubt about starting a new business, and for him to go ... 'You've got what it takes.'"

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A few weeks ago, Gunn was on a Zoom call with a large Australia-based company. Nobody on that call knew him as Jason Gunn, the fast-talking Peter Pan of New Zealand television; nobody knew him at all. They were all Australian. He says he could feel the old self-doubt starting to creep in.

One of the things he teaches his customers is when they're in speaking situations they find intimidating or difficult, they should keep something helpful just out of the audience's view: a photo of their kids, for example, or a note reading: "Smile" or "You've got what it takes."

On his Zoom call that day, directly under the camera, was a picture of him and Thingee.

"I was like, 'Yeah, there's Al going: 'Ah, hell mate! Come on! You can do this in your sleep. Come on! You got this!'"