KEY POINTS:
Tributes and accolades have begun pouring in for Paul Holmes, who will vacate the NewsTalk ZB breakfast host's chair next Friday after 21 years of broadcasting domination.
He's having more farewells than Dame Nellie Melba, but so he should. The man is a communications genius.
He is my colleague and my friend, so I will undoubtedly be accused of bias, but 43 successive surveys have put him at number one, indicating that plenty of other people think he's a genius.
In his last survey, in the cutthroat, saturated Auckland market, he had 20.9 per cent of the market. The second-highest rating station had 6 per cent.
When he said there was daylight between himself and his competitors, he wasn't wrong.
Radio is a wonderful medium.
On television, personalities can fake it - on radio, there's nowhere to hide.
So your listeners know you - warts and all.
It's an intense and very real relationship, the one between broadcaster and audience. If you win them over, listeners are incredibly loyal.
Paul's listeners know that he can push the boundaries a bit - that sometimes he goes just a little bit too far.
They know that he can be irascible and unreasonable and pig-headed.
But they also know that he is intelligent, empathetic, kind, generous, witty and possessed of a thesaurus of a vocabulary, which means he can spin the most masterful tales.
I feel sorry for the few people who didn't get Paul. They've missed out on so much over the years.
There will never be another like him and I'm proud to call him a mate.