Before we get into May's best and worst TV quotes, here are some notes I made in May.
• Be careful what you wish for No. 1 - Re: Seven Sharp, I haven't been able to shake this thought uttered by a friend but I concur: Mike Hosking looks like he's backed up, ie, in need of colonic irrigation (on second thoughts, they might do it live on the show, so scratch that).
• Didn't think Fargo (the TV series) could live up to the utter brilliance of the movie, but so far it has. I thought old Hobbity features Martin Freeman would make a poor William H Macy, but he's perfect. Billy Bob Thornton is superb.
• I can't get enough of Madmen. Who are you people who say it's boring? Only boring people get bored by Madmen.
• Every time I get a letter from Sky saying they are bumping up the price I think about chucking it in, but never do. Part of me dies every time I get that letter. It's like I have no control over my life.
• Most of the people on My Kitchen Rules are terrible cooks.
• The two best lady cops of all time: Detective Sergeant Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) on Broadchurch and Fargo's Deputy Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) Surely we've had enough of all the Barbie dolls on the other shows.
• Be careful what you wish for No. 2 - Paul Henry has been pretty tame in his new late night home. "He's lost his edge," some say. Then came the budget night, and the old dog was back making fun of a female parliamentary employee because of her size. The poor woman wasn't even trying to be on TV but was in the back of a shot. Still, it's not as if Henry is promoting obesity via those Snickers commercials is it, because they don't make you fat, they make you nice.
Maybe he should apply a nightly Snickers Bar, suppository style? (OMG, maybe that's the problem with Hosking. But he must have used a Picnic Bar or Chokito by mistake, because he's not getting any nicer.)
And now, May's best and worst quotes. Can you guess who said them?
1. "You've never been caught on camera?"
2. "I also had the head of (expletive) New Zealand bribe me, she says she has a sex tape of me."
3. "Put the ice block in the car and your hands on your head."
4. "Just pretend I'm a 300 pound nine year old who can't finish a sentence."
5. "Forty-five people are murdered here every day, but the numbers are down on last year."
6. "Do you want to take that butt plug home with you?"
7. "Squeeze your anus before you answer the question."
8. "No jousting, no dwarves, no 72-course meal."
9. "I spent a year and half putting the left front headlight on a Mitsubishi Magna."
10. "And no one told John Key, and no-one told Ian Fletcher, even though the week the GCSB's formal involvement began, they were there?"
1. "You've never been caught on camera?"
Wallace Chapman asked New Zealand First MP and former North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams, on what must have been the most drunken episode of Back Benches (Prime) to date (it was after all Shane Jones' going away do). The question came during a debate about the rise in CCTV surveillance and the reference was presumably about the time the then Mayor was allegedly spotted having a pee on a tree after attending a dinner in Takapuna in 2010. Andrew Williams paused for moment and said, "I don't think so". Wallace pushed on. "So you've never, ever, been caught on camera?" Williams: "I don't think so." Cut to Shane Jones chuckling while scoffing from a plate pilled high with kaimoana. This show is shaping up to be essential election year viewing.
2. "I also had the head of (expletive) New Zealand bribe me, she says she has a sex tape of me."
Charlotte Dawson on TV One's Sunday, in her final interview for Australian TV before her untimely death. The reporter continued: "According to Charlotte in her book Air Kiss And Tell, in 2004, she had a drunken romp late one night with the winner of a New Zealand reality show called The Player. They were on set, and, unbeknownst to her, it was caught on CCTV." More moving were the words of Dawson's sister Vicky who recounted the moment when she first laid eyes on her adopted sibling: "I can remember mum coming down off the plane in Palmerston. She had a fur hat on and this beautiful bundle in her arms. We were so excited. She was just so beautiful, she had a head of gorgeous curly dark hair and it was one of the best moments of my life."
3. "Put the ice block in the car and your hands on your head."
Obviously inspired by the "blow on the pie" cop, an armed policeman yelled this out to a suspect on an Auckland street. I'm guessing a pineapple Fruju.
4. "Just pretend I'm a 300 pound nine-year-old who can't finish a sentence."
Said Lorne Malvo, (Billy Bob Thornton) on the marvellous Fargo, (Soho) as he buys some amphetamines from a drug dealer who also sells zombie kits: "A shotgun, machete, you know in case the un-dead come back and it gets all dog eat dog." Malvo must surely be the most malevolent psycho on television at the minute. He turned down the offer of the zombie pack. "It's already dog eat dog", he said. Moments later, he kills an actual dog.
5. "Forty-five people are murdered here every day, but the numbers are down on last year."
BBC World's Nomsa Maseko, on crime in South Africa. The story looked at the rising number of whites who were arming themselves even if they are actually safer than they were under apartheid. "White people are arming themselves but the bulk of victims are poor and black." A young black man on the street was asked how he viewed the Oscar Pistorius trial. "I know if I killed my girlfriend, I'd be in jail, even if I had money."
6. "Do you want to take that butt plug home with you?"
Said Paul Henry to Yanika ter Ellen, in reference to the sex toy that sat on the desk, presumably from an interview earlier in the show. I like to imagine elderly clergy or new immigrants channel surfing and landing on TV3 at this exact moment.
7. "Squeeze your anus before you answer the question."
Not Henry this time, but a good guess. This was from The Americans, (Soho, Four) and is, apparently, a technique used by Russian spies to fool a lie detector test. Try it next time the FBI put the screws on. It seems to work.
8. "No jousting, no dwarves, no 72-course meal."
Shane Jones lays down the law for his going away party, or, is it Tywin Lannister, (Charles Dance) on Game Of Thrones making plans for the next family wedding, which he hopes will turn out better than the one that ended with the death of Joffery? Clue: Can you imagine Jones turning down a 72-course meal?
9. "I spent a year and half putting the left front headlight on a Mitsubishi Magna."
The unlikely back-story of Green co-leader Russel Norman revealed on Campbell Live's series of home invasions called At Home With The Leaders.
10. "And no one told John Key, and no one told Ian Fletcher, even though the week the GCSB's formal involvement began, they were there?"
Not quite pithy enough for a Tui Billboard but the gist of Campbell Live's revealing special that makes claims by the Prime Minister and GCSB head Ian Fletcher that they knew nothing about the raid on Dotcom's castle seem to beggar belief.
The Kiwi actor has been part of the Star Wars universe for more than 20 years.