RUGBY LEAGUE: Mad Butcher made name with throwaway line

ANENDRA SINGH
Not knowing his alphabets and times table as a dyslexic lad growing up at Newtown, Wellington, Peter Leitch's future looked bleak.
As in movie scripts, put his life on the fast-forward track and Leitch finds himself with a meat cleaver sorting out the rumps from the fillet in his Auckland butchery, Rosella Meats.
One day he's sipping beer at a local pub and this Maori guy walks in, points to him and says: "Hey, there's that ----ing mad butcher!"
And that's how New Zealand's fascination began with a man who today is a household icon in the rugby league world. He was at the Wiri Trust Hotel bar with radio personality Tim Bickerstaff, and using the phrase, minus the '----ing" part, proved to be the perfect gimmick.
The business became Rosella Meats - Home of the Mad Butcher. But another radio presenter, Gordon Dryden, suggested it was a mouthful so out went Rosella Meats. "So the fairytale started and the sense of humour appealed to the public. We started off with one shop and now we have 34 shops from as far north as Whangarei to down south in Timaru," says Leitch, 61, with a shrug, while visiting his Hastings butchery recently to promote his business in tandem with rugby league.
But life hasn't always been a breeze for the Mad Butcher. Born Peter Charles Leitch in 1944 in St Helen's Hospital, his mother, the late Myrtle, raised seven children - three boys and four girls, with Leitch the baby of the family. Father John, a fitter and turner at Tramway Workshops, "did all sorts of jobs".
"I was working-class boy and didn't learn anything in school. I went to Wellington Technical College and left when I was 15 years old," says Leitch, who fondly considers his first job of delivering telegrams on bicycles and trams, "a bit of a hoot".
Seeing no future in Posts and Telecommunications stores he became a butcher's boy in Seatoun for a man called Charlie Yeoman.
"That's where I started my butchery career - no apprenticeship but I was lucky because Charlie was a good teacher, and from there I had a couple of other jobs around Wellington."
Yearning for a change, he and a mate put a cabin on the back of a 1934 Plymouth and headed to Auckland. For almost a year the butcher became a grave digger, biding his time until an opening at the "legendary K Road" beckoned.
"It was full of prostitutes, transvestites, and male and female strippers. It was a colourful time and a bit of a hoot. They were just good, normal people."
There he met a young woman, Janice, they "became an item" and she later became his wife. They have two daughters, Angela and Julie, both living in Auckland.
Leitch was soon to learn the harsh realities of life while managing a butchery at Michael's Avenue, in Ellerslie.
"I never had any ambitions then and I was just content to plod along. The boss wasn't that kind-hearted and I got sick with quinsy (inflammation of the tonsils) and went into hospital.
"The first thing he said to me a week after I came out of hospital was that the till was short the week I left. I thought there's no future working for this bloke," he says in the little office of at the back of his Hastings shop.
So the cash-strapped Leitches started looking for butcher shops in the weekends in their 1950 Morris Minor.
"We had just had our first child, Angela, and had moved into our first (Beasley) home."
Having spotted a shop in Rosella Road, Mangere, Leitch faced the dilemma of many budding businessmen - finding cash to rent a commercial space. The property's owner, the late Herald Hill, whom Leitch was to learn was the "big boss" of Hancock Wines and Spirits, insisted Leitch give him his name and number.
"He said, 'Look, I sent my wife down to your shop to get some meat and she said you're a lovely young man'. I said to him, 'Gee, you must have sent her to the wrong shop'," Leitch says with a chuckle.
Wanting to sell his block of shops but needing tenants, Hill was prepared to lend Leitch some money.
"I'd never had anyone lend me money like that before, so I thought 'Ooh, that's bloody great' and went home to tell the wife. She said if that's what I wanted to do then I should go for it."
Hill agreed that if after a year Rosella Meats wasn't viable Leitch could walk away from it and give him the keys with the debts.
A year passed and Leitch found himself doing two jobs to pay the shop and house rents and the business wasn't making money.
The kind landlord waved him away, saying he could pay when he wanted.
"I battled on and got the shop pigging up a little bit and paid my debts," Leitch says.
Hill sold the shop to a Dutchman - "the first thing he did was put the rent up".
Even the new landlord's bean counter agreed Leitch couldn't afford to pay the rent. The new owner's stance forced Leitch to close shop. But, refusing to throw in the towel, he moved into a condemned butcher shop around the corner in Massey Road.
Listening to Tim Bickerstaff and Geoff Sinclair on Radio Pacific while working was the norm and one day he took exception to the pair getting stuck into the Mangere Rugby Club.
He ended up taking bets off air with Bickerstaff, who later asked him to advertise on the radio.
"I said I couldn't afford it. Then I went back and thought, 'Gee, if I stop the gambling I can advertise'." He believes people like Hill make the world a wonderful place.
"He said I was the only man who was honest with him ... we never signed a deal on a piece of paper. It was a handshake and he gave me an open cheque."
Discussing wealth doesn't sit comfortably with Leitch.
"I'm not rich and I'm just a working man - a battler - and I love getting a few beers under me and I swear and I get speeding tickets. I'm just a normal bloke who's shared my life over the radio with people and I've stuck with the Warriors when they needed support."
* See also: 'Life beyond my wildest dreams'