Feared by scammers, praised by underdog

Kevin Milne -The Life and Times of a Brown Paper Bag
Random House, $39.99
This is a brisk skip through the working life of one of the country's most enduring television journalists - Fair Go consumer champion Kevin Milne.
He has just retired from Television New Zealand after almost three decades reporting for and fronting Fair Go. But as the title suggests, Milne leaves our screens without the egotistical personality that being so long in the limelight could well have encouraged.
Throughout those scam-busting years reporting on everything from icecream cones being handed over by sweaty shop owner's paws to major consumer complaints, Milne has never put himself ahead of the story.
He has certainly presented them in an entertaining and arresting fashion and has also put the stories across fairly and accurately, letting the viewer decide on the crook.
Before he joined Fair Go Milne had spent time in news as a reporter and as an editor. That experience shows in his work on Fair Go, where he joined Brian Edwards in 1984.
He recalls battles with dodgy car dealers, unscrupulous lawyers, banks, insurance companies and dodgy tradespeople.
Among his favourite stories was the long fight Fair Go had with itinerant roof painters, often transient Poms based in Australia who would zip across the Tasman, live in caravan parks, rip off people by doing atrocious jobs, and disappear back to Australia.
But Fair Go has always been entertaining as well as highlighting consumer issues, and its most popular shows have usually been the annual best and worst television advertisement awards.
Milne doesn't hold back in criticising the way Television New Zealand often made clumsy changes to the programme's staff, although in the end he writes fondly of his long-term employer.
He raves about many of the colleagues he worked with through the decades, finally nominating Brian Edwards and Paul Holmes as the finest broadcasters of his time.
Milne himself may not have had their profile but he has won Qantas awards through the years, and in 2007 became an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit.
Perhaps his most fitting reward was being named this year by Reader's Digest as the second most-trusted New Zealander in their annual readership poll, behind VC hero Corporal Willie Apiata.
Milne's wife and family of three adult sons and an 11-year-old daughter have helped keep his feet firmly on the ground, and his ego in check.
Let's hope the 61-year-old's journalistic talents are not lost to television, even if he has given up a full-time role on Fair Go.
EXTRACT
Just desserts
A good Fair Go programme was like a good meal: a hearty main course was best followed by something delicious and lighter, a televisual dessert. The funnies made the difference between Fair Go and other investigative shows. In fact, I'm not sure if a lot of our audience didn't tune in just for dessert. Funnies could make a show. But only as long as they followed solid stories, otherwise they could make the show look lightweight. Sometimes funny moments emerged right in the middle of the meat and vege course, though.
A letter arrived which sat on my desk for weeks, maybe months. It was from an Auckland pensioner, Vic Milton, complaining that he'd bought a couple of nuns for forty bucks from a breeder in Napier. But they turned out to be too old to breed from - and the wrong sex, anyway. Of course, I realised, after some thought, that he was talking about a breed of pigeon although he didn't say as much.
When pressure came on from the boss at some later time to come up with "a funny" for the end of the programme, I looked at that letter and wondered. How would it be if I got Vic to tell us his complaint on camera and, like the letter, not refer to his purchase as pigeons but nuns?
Well, Vic clearly still had a wicked sense of humour and understood exactly where I was coming from. With the camera running, he stared me straight in the eye, not the hint of a smile, and stated that he'd bought a couple of nuns from a bloke in Napier by the name of Mr Pope (he didn't make that up) and they were too old and the wrong sex to breed from.
"What good are old nuns?" he implored. "'Mr Pope should pull his finger out and either give me back my $40 or send me some young nuns."
"Ethel," I asked his wife, "How do you feel about your husband's interest in nuns?" "Oh, anything that'll keep Vic happy," she replied in a tired, resigned way, "as long as they don't make a mess in the lounge."
The interview lasted several minutes and worked a treat. The studio audience fell about as Vic expressed his outrage at being sent nuns that were not only too young but turned out to be male not female. I ended up asking Vic where the nuns were now. "I keep them down in the begonia house."
We amped up the organ music as this lovely old guy took me and the camera through his back yard for the big reveal: he was talking about a breed of pigeon with black-and-white markings that looked oddly like nuns' habits.
The story was so successful it ended up being ordered by British comedian Denis Norden to be part of a BBC TV documentary he was making about great television double entendres. I think it failed the cut for the actual programme. But Vic got his $40 and we turned a bit of pigeon poo into a beautiful Fair Go dessert.
Then there was the complaint that a carpenter had put in a new door on someone's house with the cat door at the top. Unbelievable but true. Kerre Woodham, Fair Go's blonde bombshell who had a lovely touch with those sorts of stories, was sent out to film the problem. She took with her a couple of Siamese-type cats belonging to Fair Go's redhead bombshell, Rosalie Nelson. She also took one of those mini trampolines popular at the time for personal exercise and gym work.
Fair Go stories are often all in the telling. To illustrate the difficulties facing any cat wanting to get through the cat door, she rolled cameras and popped the two lithe cats through the cat door so they jumped down onto the trampoline a couple of metres below. Then, in post-production, she simply reversed the action. With judicious editing, the cats seriously looked like they were taking a couple of build-up bounces on a trampoline, then with one huge effort were soaring great heights up to the cat door, clambering through and dropping to the floor on the other side. It was a masterful
treatment, turning an oddball story into a funny, visual treat.