KEY POINTS:
In the last debate of the election campaign, both John Key and Helen Clark took the chance to make a few last minute confessions.
A question about whether the public display of tobacco should be banned in shops led to Helen Clark admitting she had indeed "had a
puff."
She hastened to add it was in her teens and "which teenager hasn't?"
John Key, as it turned out.
Mr Key said he had never had a puff - prompting Clark to further note that the the topic was a "hoary old annual" and as she had commented to Paul Holmes in previous elections she was a student in the 1960s.
A more serious misdemeanour for Mr Key emerged when he was asked if he had ever broken the law.
"I have actually," he said, pausing for dramatic effect before saying his great sin was to drive his car on a carless day when he was at university.
He pleaded his excuse was that the car had to be taken to the garage. But he got off by the skin of his teeth.
"The police wrote to me but carless days ended about that time and they decided it wasn't worth prosecuting."
He swore there was nothing worse, adding "certainly nothing that would be worth dispatching Mike Williams to see anyway" - a reference to the Labour President's recent trip to Melbourne to look through the court files to see if John Key was involved in the H-Fee transactions.
Helen Clark took it in good humour, noting she wouldn't want National's President Judy Kirk on the warpath against her either and looking slightly relieved to hear Ms Kirk was in Taupo. Her own answer to the question of unlawful acts was perhaps slightly risky, given the trouble her speeding motorcade caused in Timaru.
"I think I've had a couple of speeding tickets."
But anyone looking for any real verbal biffo from the two leaders was gravely disappointed.
Indeed, the conviviality got a bit cloying. Asked if she thought they would get on well together if they weren't political opponents, Helen Clark said they might enjoy a beer or cup of coffee together. She noted Herself and Jim Bolger now got along quite well.
Mr Key told the tale about a 7-year-old telling him he was "Helen Clark's boyfriend."
And although he didn't think they would be on each others' Christmas card list, "I think we can see the good in each other."
Helen Clark even leapt to Mr Key's defence in a question about his religious beliefs. Mr Key said he was not a deeply religious person, and did not believe in life after death. Although his mother was Jewish and practised her faith later in her life, it was not a major part of his own upbringing. Asked if he believed there was something up there he said "I don't really know. None of us really know."
And while Clark has often berated Mr Key for his protestations that he didn't really know where he stood on the Springboks Tour, this time the well-known agnostic leapt to his defence, saying she didn't know either and it was better for them to tell the truth.
