Nickie Muir: Snuggle up in bed and get to know the sexy stuff ...

John Key at the launch of his book Key. The Unauthorised Biography.

Key. The Unauthorised Biography.

It's important that people know me. The real me. (Readers pause briefly now to fill in a personality profile and then select the appropriate real me to read about first.)

Now snuggle up in bed readers, with a cocoa and a hottie and get to know the sexy stuff, like how I nearly gave up politics because people were annoyingly getting in the way of everything.

Like that time they marched down Queen St complaining about opening up national parks for mining. What were they thinking?

Probably the same people who complain about the lack of development in provincial New Zealand.

Look I know there's the whole Stockton issue and they've all lost their jobs. It's fashionable to talk about long-term economic legacies in communities that are over the binge and hangover economics of mineral extraction but I live in the real world.

What they need to understand is that everyone can have holiday homes in Hawaii if we just all work together.

Well maybe not everyone but that's really what a meritocracy is all about.

That's why I'm where I am today. My mum was single. I grew up in a state house - I know what happens in the hood.

Some people may say I'm duplicitous. Not Phil, Kate, Brash or English.

I've noticed they will walk a square round the room if I'm in it just to make sure their back is never exposed. That's just silly.

They know I went for Brash in the open, front on. I nearly went for him with a wooden stake but I was saving it for Winston.

No, I'd say I'm flexible. Adaptable - pliable to forces that are conveniently advantageous to the new meritocracy like myself.

I'm conservative in a liberal kind of a way and I want the world to know that.

I voted against the civil union and against prostitution but that was mainly because - who really cares what gay people get up to?

I was initially all for legitimising the oldest profession (the tax revenue alone makes it worth it - thanks Helen) but a woman called Carmel came into my offices in Helensville and told me I was very wrong. She had daughters, and this was sending all the wrong signals.

I have a daughter and to be honest, Carmel was scaring me so I voted against. You can't run a country on a case by case basis - but you've never met Carmel.