KEY POINTS:
Why did I want to go and see Breakfast host Paul Henry? He did ask when I phoned and I made up some nonsense about Breakfast seeming to be doing well, and about his being a finalist in the radio awards. But really, I just thought he might
be interesting.
I forgot to ask about the first two things - except to ask who watched Breakfast. He said: "God knows. Lots of people."
Why I thought he might be interesting was interesting in itself. Perhaps because he's one of those people who seems to be a caricature of themselves. In his case, a larger than life, louder than anyone else, right-winger, who enjoys getting up noses.
I did have one other reason. I wanted to go to his house to look at his baby grand piano which he can't play and I thought this either odd, or ostentatious.
Before I went to see him, a mate of mine said that if I liked him, she'd be appalled. A lot of people hate him. He has a peculiarly charmless public manner, by which I mean, he doesn't - on the telly or the radio - set out to win you over, quite the opposite.
He won't be offended by that "charmless". He sees attempting to charm as sycophancy, one of the many things he despises. His sneer is visible when he talks about people drinking with the right people and sucking up to get on in their careers.
One thing I can think to write about Henry that would give him the pip, would be that he was boring. And the only reason I would do any such thing would be because at one point he said, looking smug, "you see, you can't rattle me". Or I could say that he was pleasant. He'd rather vote Labour than be thought as nice, or have someone say, "my mother likes him".
What about obnoxious? "I'm quite happy with that." Most people would not enjoy such a description. "No, it doesn't bother me," he says, looking actually, happy as a pig in mud. This is a description he would find incomprehensible. Happy implies content, a concept he holds in contempt.
He can see that it would be preferable, in many ways, to be content but the very idea is too limiting for him. He can see that it is more difficult to spend your life striving and achieving, or not achieving, but "I'm not content and I've never been content and I don't think that's particularly unusual either and then all of a sudden you'll see people who are content and you'll think, `God, get a life'. Then sometimes you'll get a window into people's little lives and they're perfectly happy and, in actual fact, if you render down what we're here for - which is to procreate - those people are more successful, you know. Because they've found their little niche, they've found their little group and they're happy, they're content and they enjoy each day and they don't worry about the future and they don't worry about who's going to be the next President of the United States or even that there's a presidential race on and I would, at one level, condemn them for that, but at another level, you almost envy it". Then: "But you don't envy it because you'd rather be dead! But you know what I mean."
I think I know what he means. I didn't always. There is his thing about birds. He doesn't really get birds. We got on to birds because he has pukeko, which he claims to shoot at (although I noticed the gun he keeps for this alleged purpose had collected cobwebs) because they poo around his pond and eat his water lilies. Also, "there's not a lot of point to birds. I mean they clean up bugs, I suppose, but not all birds clean up bugs and they forage around in the forest - where you can't see them - doing what?" They might, I hazard, germinate plants.
"What? The ones foraging around in the forest? I think they just forage around making holes which become a trap for climbers."
He has a thing about dirt and once wrote an online diary about going to Tibet which was all about dirt and, in particular, dirty toilets. I was determined not to let him get started on this. I did manage to stop him at the first mention of a toilet, but that was about the only part of the hour I had any control over.
I'm pretty certain I didn't encourage him in any way to start talking about dirt and how he likes his clothes "to be very clean. I change my shirts quite a lot". Yes, alright, I shouldn't have asked how often, but I couldn't resist. He said, "oh it depends what I've been doing. I don't necessarily change shirts many times a day. In fact, quite often I'll start with a T-shirt and keep it on. But I don't like clothes to be dirty".
Was he, I wondered, frightened of germs? "No, I'm not even remotely frightened of germs. I just don't like the feel of dirt. You know how sometimes dirt feels. There are two kinds of dirt." He stopped and said, "this is ridiculous!" but he'd got himself started and once started, he doesn't stop. I think we all really need to know Henry's theory on the kinds of dirt so here it is. "One is that greasy feeling which is enormously unpleasant and some people feel like that. But the opposite is that dry, dusty feeling. That is hideous. Yeah, I've never liked dirt. I've never been fond of dirt but funnily, doing something that's dirty, that's fine. Not that there's much demand for doing stuff in dirt. Not for me. For some people there is. I love gardening but I haven't got the time to do it properly and if you can't do it properly, you shouldn't do it at all."
That is typical Henry. You couldn't just have a little go at something like gardening, a little tinker. There would be no point. It would be a waste of time.
But if he did have the time to garden, he'd be really, really good at it. In fact he'd likely be the best gardener in the history of gardening. I know this because he is very good at everything, he tells me so, and the only reason he's not very good at some things is because he doesn't do them. He doesn't do much speaking but, "I'm a very bloody good speaker". He could be really good at everything. "Why couldn't I? I'm intelligent, I'm reasonably agile, I've got reasonable control of my limbs." He thinks it's very funny when people, especially Jim Anderton says, "it's not rocket science". "It's so bloody easy. You could get a book out of the library and pass yourself off as a half decent rocket scientist in a week."
Somebody once wrote that he oozes self belief which makes him sounds like a leaky tube of some particularly horrible ointment. "Yeah, a very confident leper. Well, everyone should and if you don't ooze self belief, you're a bloody idiot." What, I say, feeling giddy at the thought, would it be like to live in a world where everyone was oozing away madly, like him? It would be ghastly. "It would," he agrees with grinning alacrity, "be absolutely ghastly."
Fortunately he prefers to ooze at home. He doesn't like gatherings. He doesn't, I suggest, really have mates. "Well, I don't have a lot. Define mates. At what point does an acquaintance become a friend?"
I think you'd know, I say.
"But would you? I think that comes down to how much you need friends. I mean, are friends people who you instantly answer their texts? Because if they are, I have none."
I can't tell you anything about his personal life because he won't answer any questions about it. He lives here in his big, tidy house in Albany with his oldest daughter (of three) who is in her first year of nursing. His wife lives elsewhere and I don't know whether they are still married because he wouldn't say. He has been linked with business woman Diane Foreman but he wouldn't talk about that either, and he said I couldn't really be interested. Well, not beyond thinking that, if true, good luck to her.
He is one of the most exasperating people I've met. For example, I asked him about being part gypsy, which he found out as a young man. As a boy, living in Bristol, he sometimes, for a lark, used to sneak out from school at lunchtime and chuck stones at gypsies. "Yeah, it sounds like a hobby, but it wasn't. It sounds a bit horrible, but in actual fact, I think the gypsies enjoyed it, because no one used to pay much attention to them." Yes, I know he's being silly, but, honestly, he'd send a psychiatrist mad.
Why did I come to see him? Oh, yes. The piano. Which he can't play but has because "it's not a stupid piece of furniture". And, obviously, if he could play, he'd be very good. This is nonsense. I think he knows he'd be crap and that's why he won't learn. "No, that's not true. But here's the thing: You're half right. I don't think I've got the attention span to learn long enough to be as good as I know I could be and it would annoy me enormously to half play the piano. It's better not to play at all."
I would love to say he was boring. Alas, no. But I'm sure if he tried, he'd be the best in the world at it.
