I gave you a kidney, how about collapsing for me?

KATE NEWTON
There's something ironic about Len Cameron, of Greenmeadows, having to act out a medical emergency for a new television show.
Just six years ago his life hung in the balance - he was desperately in need of a new kidney. In the years since that organ transplant he has been in a serious car accident on Pakowhai Road, and has also fallen off his roof onto the only cactus plant in his garden, with the spines piercing his throat.
But then he did "owe" his son, who produces the new TV One series, a major favour - it was he who had given him a kidney and his new life.
When Len suffered renal failure he was told he should be dead. Both kidneys had shrunk from fist-sized organs to the size of walnuts.
One of the kidneys was functioning at just 5 percent and the other at 7 percent.
When he had to be hooked up to dialysis four times a day it was his son David who first offered to supply a kidney - but the goodwill turned to anguish when scans showed David had been born with just one kidney.
So it was Len's other son Jeffrey who next put up a brave hand, admitting that he fainted at the sight of blood, but would undergo the operation and give his father a chance at life.
"Words can't explain how grateful I was," Len said.
"Every day is a blessing now. Jeff says I don't have to keep thanking him but I always wake up and think 'thank you Jeff'."
But despite not wanting anything in return, there was one little favour Jeff asked of his Dad.
Jeff, who went to Taradale High School and studied television and film at the University of Westminster in London, produces programmes through his television company Starfish Pictures in Auckland.
His latest project is a reality emergency medical series called Rapid Response, which aired for the first time on Monday night and uses real footage on board St John's four-wheel-drive vehicles with paramedics.
When he needed an actor to pretend to have a heart attack he asked his father, who despite being nervous decided he owed his son a good turn.
Shooting the scenes required Len to make the trip to Auckland and act out the heart attack in the office where it had really happened before the emergency services arrived.
"It was actually hilarious. We would be filming and someone would keep walking in and saying 'oh sorry'," Len said.
"We had a lot of fun."
The episode will air on November 19 at 8pm on TV One.
Other episodes will follow a Hare Krishna monk kicked in the head by his cow, a young girl choking on a diamond ring, a man attacked with a pair of scissors and a woman trapped in her own backyard.