Campbell's knighthood crusade a ghoulish step

John Campbell. Photo / Greg Bowker

Like a terminally ill cancer victim rushing off to Mexico for a dose of expensive snake oil, John Campbell and his team have been trying every trick in the book to try to escape TV3's death row. And I for one have been quietly cheering them on, forgiving them their excesses in the interests of saving the last daily local current affairs on our screens.

But running a poll on whether dying cricketer Martin Crowe should be awarded a knighthood was a ghoulish step too far - a bad-taste gesture that you wouldn't expect from a host who makes much of his olde worlde good manners.

In using a dying man as a stick to badger the Government, Crowe was left wide open to humiliation. It was, in effect, an attempt to blackmail Prime Minister John Key into giving Crowe a knighthood, or stand up and say why he didn't deserve one.

On Monday night there was a vox pop as well from ambushed passers-by, some supportive and others quipping "a bit soon" and "no, he's only a cricketer".

John Campbell then gleefully announced a victory - 72 per cent of those polled favoured a knighthood. Marvellous!

If the TV3 management had pulled the plug on the programme at that stage, it would have been deserved. Ironically, they probably loved it, full of the shallow, reality show, make people cry, humiliation and pathos that passes for good television these days.

Campbell Live's death-knock knighthood crusade wasn't all its own work. It was following up an online petition launched by a Hirone Waretini who was quoted saying the case for a Crowe knighthood "should bear no discussion". Not between Crowe and TV3 anyway.

Adding to the confusion, on Sunday, the Indian news site NDTV Sports followed up reports of the petition with the claim that Crowe had said if offered a knighthood, "I will respectfully decline". It also quoted his brother Jeff, speaking from Dhaka where he was refereeing a cricket match between Bangladesh and Pakistan, saying: "The knighthood is not needed. He already is conferred with MBE [Member of British Empire]".

However, according to One News, this was wrong. Martin Crowe was reported as saying he was misquoted. He had not declined a potential knighthood after all. What he had declined was an invite from the Pakistan Observer to be interviewed about the petition.

As an opponent of this anachronistic honours system, I would normally delight in such an embarrassing muddle. But in the present circumstances, it's just distasteful.

Cornered on TV One's Breakfast show, Mr Key ducked for cover, saying Crowe was "an amazing New Zealander" but the decision about knighthoods wasn't his, it was up to a committee which drew up lists at Queen's Birthday and Christmas.

The Prime Minister was being too modest. In December 2012 for example, when dying broadcaster Paul Holmes sought the help of former Prime Minister Helen Clark in getting himself a death-bed knighthood, she messaged her successor, Mr Key, with the advice that if he had any plans to knight the ailing broadcaster, he'd better not dawdle. He wouldn't last through to the Queen's Birthday round of honours.

Mr Key took the advice and had Holmes' name added to the already completed New Year's list, personally ringing Holmes on Christmas Day with the good news.

Mr Key also forgets he created more than 70 knights and dames in one fell swoop in 2009 after taking office and restoring the imperial honours system which had been abolished by Clark. He offered a title to all the worthies who had had to make do with the untitled New Zealand honour the Clark Government had introduced.

The vast majority accepted with alacrity.

That said, there is a selection process in place which is designed to try to keep at arms' length the mawkish and the maudlin.

How many weeks or months one has left to live is not one of the criteria. Though I see the French would disagree.

All around the world, French ambassadors are pinning the prestigious Legion of Honour on any soldier still living who took part in the D-Day landings at Normandy 70 years ago, beginning the liberation of France from the German occupiers.