Miriama Kamo: Not just a Sunday girl

By EMMA CHAMBERLAIN

At this time of year when television's news-reading regulars are on holiday, the "talent" gets shuffled around and new talent bobs to the surface.

Miriama Kamo has popped up on TV One's weekend bulletins with Eric Young. A reporter for TV One's current affairs show Sunday, Kamo had read the news only a few times on Breakfast before her debut on December 28. But if — in front of an
estimated audience of 700,000 — the 29-year-old first-timer was nervous she didn't know it or show it.

"I am not very good at acknowledging my nerves," she says from her home town of Christchurch. "I wonder if they come out in different ways and maybe sort of 10 years down the track I'll have a tummy full of ulcers."

She says there are no firm plans to read again.

"There's nothing formal in place. I did that weekend and maybe something more in the future ... we'll just see."

So should Judy and Richard be worried?

"It would be great to do some more newsreading. I really enjoyed it. But I would be loath to give up my job on Sunday. I love that job. It is what I have always aimed to do."

Kamo grew up in South Brighton — a "very middle class" part of Christchurch — the middle child of five and went to Aranui High School.

She lived two streets back from the beach and her parents, Mary and Raynol, still live in that house.

"Our family is very tight. I still hang out with my brothers and sisters and parents a lot.

"My nephews live here ... and they are just the joy of my life. A typical day here is just to hang in the house and watch them play.
I just love it."

Her mother is a chaplain at Christchurch Women's Prison and her father worked as a draftsman and a youth justice co-ordinator before he retired.

Kamo's father is Maori and through his influence and that of his parents, being Maori became an important part of her life (fluency in te reo is on her "to do" list) and she was tapped to present the introductions to the Nga Reo series of Maori documentaries which is now screening.

As a child she spent a lot time on the Rehua marae in Christchurch, which her grandmother helped to set up. She says her family still spends a lot of time there.

Her mother's Scottish and Irish heritage is something she is equally passionate about and she says that set of grandparents were also a big influence on her life.

Kamo got her first job in television at age 21 as a reporter and presenter on Get Real, a science and discovery show for children. At the time she was one year into the three-year journalism course at Broadcasting School in Christchurch. She moved to Wellington a year later and got a job as a reporter on the TV3 arts show called, funnily enough, Sunday, and funnily enough hosted by Mike Hosking. After one year that show switched to TV One, and became backch@t hosted by Bill Ralston. Kamo stayed at backch@t for about three years. She quit shortly before the show was canned and moved to Sydney to take a break from
television.

"It was a pretty full-on decision because I really loved backch@t," she said.

In Sydney Kamo tried her hand at non-TV work and "was pretty hopeless at all of it". She lasted two days as a receptionist at an advertising agency. "I was so shocking that they asked me not to come back."

She didn't last much longer as a trainee typesetter and was by her own admission a "bloody awful" cafe waitress for about a month. She eventually found her feet as the assistant manager of an inner-city art gallery where she stayed for six months.

Kamo came back to New Zealand in 2001 to "hang out" with her pregnant sister. She freelanced as a director and presenter in Christchurch and Auckland until the beginning of this year when she got a phone call from TVNZ's new head of news and current affairs, Heaton Dyer. She was eventually offered a place on Sunday.

Dyer says Kamo is smart, driven and
destined for great things.

When he met her, she was toying with the idea of going back to Britain and was
focusing on a career behind the camera. Kamo has been a director on and off since she started in TV.

"She was not a person who was in my office saying, 'I want to be on television'."

Yet Dyer says Kamo has the talent to become a fantastic on-air presenter as well as a journalist.

"The thing I find most impressive about her is, when you see the interviews she does, the way that people relate to her — they themselves become very open and honest and ultimately in television that's what you want."

Telling stories is what matters to Kamo: she writes fiction in her spare time, she wants to have written a book in five years and she says it is the getting and the telling of stories and the people who make up those stories that fuel her interest in journalism.

The interest in story-telling could come from her parents who, says Kamo, were keen that their children know where they were from — be it Ngai Tahu, Scotland, Taranaki or Ireland.

"I never went into journalism thinking
I can make a huge difference to everybody. It was really just 'Fantastic, I can tell some stories and meet some incredible people."'

"[On Sunday I] have the privilege of telling people's stories. People trust you to tell their stories and to tell them well and I think that is a pretty big thing for somebody to do for you — to allow you to tell you their story."