Michele Hewitson singles out a few of her favourite interview moments from the past year...
Bob Harvey, the Westie mayor, wept. He said, "I'm grieving. I've never had a divorce but this is like a divorce. I'm not leaving her but she's leaving me."
He meant his city, Waitakere, soon to be swallowed by a Super City.
He pulled out a feather cloak, given
to him by John Tamihere. Feathers flew. I said, "you've got the moth!"
There were tears, then, and comedy - well, I laughed - and much generosity.
Robyn Malcolm, the actress who pays a Westie, offered to show me the placenta in her freezer.
I went to see the poet and essayist, Brian Turner, in the middle of winter, in his little house in Central Otago.
I moaned about the cold and he growled at me and gave me his possum cap with flaps to wear.
He said, "Do you want a hug? To warm you up".
He said, "You would be a bit mad, I imagine".
He meant this kindly because "anyone interesting is mad. How do you define mad? It's a mad word: mad".
Mike Moore, the former Prime Minister, wore his slippers and growled at me for having a nosey at his papers which were so confidential he'd left them lying around.
He got to his feet and gave, hand on heart, a re-enactment of his old mate Willy Brandt, former Chancellor of West Germany, going to Poland to lay a wreath. Then he said, "pixie dust!" Nope, still don't have a clue about that.
Bob Kerridge, the animal lover, offered to do his bull noise. Try stopping him. I can say, hand on heart, that I'll never hear a better one. This might have been a bit mad.
Sam Hunt, the poet got to his feet, to give a recitation, with a cushion stuck, somehow, madly, to his backside.
Michael Hill, jeweller and brand, patted at me, like an awkward praying mantis. He shouted, "you and I, we could change the world!"
He told me he travelled with a little blender, so that he can whisk up his idea of a drink, a disgusting sounding brew of green vegetable tops, wherever he is in the world. I left, exhausted, and headed to a pub for my idea of a drink.
The author Alexander McCall Smith popped in to sell some more of his astoundingly successful, gentle books about people trying to behave well and often failing.
We talked about a dog called Cyril, who has a gold tooth. Cyril is not a real dog. "Aah," said McCall Smith, "fictional characters assume reality and that's why we have to be careful what we do with them ... When you create a fictional world, it does have certain moral consequences and you can't just say, 'it's not true'."
He gave me a scoop: In Cyril's next adventure, in the 44 Scotland St series, he will go to Italy and have a romance. I suggested he might go on the back of a motor scooter.
"Yes! Actually, that's an idea. Thank you for the suggestion. I really love the idea of him on the back of the scooter."
This was perhaps not a world changing idea, but it'll do me. He promised he'd put my idea in the next book and I believe him because what a good chap he is.
The new Anglican Bishop, Ross Bay, must be a very good chap, possibly one of the best chaps in the country, because a Bishop must be, surely.
I tried to behave well, and failed.
"Bloody Anglicans" I said and he stuck his tongue out at me.
I liked him very much and will never be rude about Anglicans again - if he sticks to his promise to let me pop over to the cathedral and have a sit in his Bishop's chair.
The co-leader of the Greens, Jeanette Fitzsimons, announced she'd be standing down as co-leader. She said, "for God's sake don't paint me as some kind of goody-goody."
She is often portrayed as the nice, saintly Green lady politician. I wasn't about to cross her. She had a steeliness that reminded me of another lady politician: Helen Clark. Had she ever managed to out-glare Clark who, I said, could wither a grape on the vine, with her glare.
"I have never," she said, giving me a look, "felt withered by Helen."
She said somebody once described her as a "steel magnolia", a description she liked. And that she did said quite a bit about her, didn't it? "Yes."
Another Green co-leader, Russel Norman, stood in the Mt Albert byelection. He has a reputation, according to me, for a certain aloofness. We met at a pub, in Kingsland. Some time, much later, I asked if he was a Twitterer. He said he might Twitter right now: "Doing interview with Michele Hewitson who has certain preconceived ideas about me."
I certainly did not. Did he smoke dope?
"I have certainly smoked dope. I don't any more. It's illegal and I'm a law maker ... Do you smoke dope?"
Certainly not. It's a disgusting hippy drug.
"It's just another of the mind-altering drugs we've just been partaking in." We had some more mind-altering wine and he had a few of my disgusting, possibly mind-altering fags. He said he'd have one, but not if I was going to say he'd had one. I said he was stuffed now, either way. He's a good bloke to have a drink and an argument with. That may not have been one of my preconceived ideas.
The National list MP Melissa Lee was campaigning for the byelection too.
She said, of her campaign, which was going from blunder to blunder, that "I can't believe the kind of support I'm getting! I'm sure you get the fingers here and there but ... I'm oblivious, probably." Probably.
She kept saying: "It's not about Melissa Lee." Right at the end she hitched up her knee highs, and giggled when she saw I'd noticed. I wrote I thought it a shame, for both of us, that Melissa Lee hadn't turned up earlier.
Mouth for hire, former Wallaby turned biographer, Peter Fitzsimons, came to town to flog his book - about Charles Kingsford Smith - which is exactly what he was doing when I turned up to see him at Eden Park.
He, and a crowd of mostly blokes, were at the ragged end of a rugby lunch which involved a talk by the motor mouth, young women wearing only body paint on their top bits, and a fair bit of booze. He shouted, "buy my book, you mongrel", at those silly enough to stagger past his flogging table.
He said, to me, "sell my book". I let him do his own plug because, who could compete?
"... It's a bloody great book." He said, in response to a question I'd never asked: "I'm hardly a chardonnay socialist."
I said, since he'd asked himself the question, that I'd read he was. In an hour, he'd drunk almost a bottle.
"I think," he said, waving at the bottle,"that's cabernet sauvignon."
I said I wouldn't know: he hadn't offered me a glass.
He sent an email: "A great piece of writing... and I thought yours was pretty good, too!"
I sent John Campbell a YouTube clip of another Australian, Chopper Read. This was not even attempting to behave well. It was a very rude clip; the message was: Harden the eff up. Well, he was driving me mad, dilly dallying about whether he'd talk to me and I've only been trying for years. He didn't want to, he hated it, why did he have to? Oh, he enjoyed it really. I did enjoy him.
He got himself into a pickle of his own making by attempting to elicit support from a bunch of blokes at the pub. I'd rolled my eyes at his shameless flattery. He shouted, "you're such a Kiwi bloke! You're like Ewen Chatfield!" Who? He called out to the drinkers further down the table. "Lads! Who's Ewen Chatfield?" A lad said: "Cricketer."
"Cricketer!" he shouted again, "and he couldn't take a compliment, could he? If he got nine wickets, he'd be going,'oh yeah, but the rest of the team were better than me.' He did what you just did!" A lad said, "that's humility." He said: "Bloody wankers!"
The lovely, clever artist, Sarah Hillary, said about mountains: "Well, I'm a bit scared of heights. I certainly wouldn't want to climb Everest. No Way! They don't have cappucinos there."
The rugby star Dan Carter owned up to a closet full of dress-ups, of masks and wigs and Super Hero costumes. He said, "my first ever was the Phantom and Ali Williams was Spider-Man. The Flash is a pretty good get-up!"
The botanist David Bellamy came to celebrate 25 years of conservation in the Whirinaki Forest Park. It was like meeting a dinosaur, and I mean that affectionately: who wouldn't want to meet a dinosaur? He was once very famous. "Well, I still am!"
He thinks global warming is "poppycock", his favourite word. He hasn't been on TV for a long time. He's gone out of fashion. He's regarded as a bit of a crank. He used to be a jolly green giant of a man. He was a bit of a clown.
"Ding! I can sort of put it on," he said, and did. Then he said, "it is very, very difficult being in that persona. So I do turn around and have a cry now and then".
Hone Harawira gave a press conference then we went and sat in a hotel lobby and he drank a pot of tea and was, some might say, uncharacteristically thoughtful.
I asked a question most politicians would take umbrage at: Was he arrogant? He said, "Yeah, I think I am." Not many people would admit to it. "Probably because not too many people have people say it to them all the time."
I asked the leader of the Labour Party, Phil Goff, whether he might be thought to be a bit smirky and slick. He took that well.
"I've never been a smirker! I don't think I'm an arrogant, superior person! I don't think that's part of my image!" He managed to keep smiling and gave me a little peck on the cheek, possibly through relief, when I left. You can't imagine the former Labour PM doing that.
A couple of the year's best emails. From Bruce on Sam Hunt: Like a piece of drift wood bobbling in the tide, but never left stranded on the beach.
From Melanie on interviewing Mike Moore: Like intellectual shadow-boxing with a kitten on Ritalin.
Thanks to everyone who wrote or emailed (except the person who sent that one about Harawira. Does your mother know you send emails like that?) And thank you to everyone who was generous enough to appear on this page this year.
One last email. Somebody wrote: Why don't you just shut up?
What a good idea. I will. For a month.
