Family time up north

Comedian Mike King and family will see in the next century in Kaiwaka, eating oysters and sipping a few beers beside a raging bonfire.

This New Year is special and it is important to spend it with family, he says.

People who do not appreciate that "lead nonsense lives anyway."

"You know, I made sure I wasn't working.

"I knocked back a lot of work for New Year just to be at home with the family - you don't see too many millenniums, do you?

"We'll be doing the whole three: we'll be seeing the sunset, midnight and the sunrise, well out of the way of all the junior drinkers and apprentice drinkers who'll be running around Auckland."