KEY POINTS:
Murray Deaker, who has just won his fifth gong for best sports presenter, is on the phone giving me detailed instructions on how to get to his apartment in Takapuna. I am supposed to be writing these instructions down and I would have, if I'd realised they were merely thepreamble to a punchline.
When I meet him, I realise fairly quickly that this is what he always does whether he is being interviewed (hollow laugh), or is on the radio, or just having a yarn. He delivers a long story, with a punchline. If a line doesn't spring to mind, he'll conjure one.
"And you need an aside, to make it come to life," he says at one point, halfway through - although I had no way of knowing it at the time - a 10-minute-long story. If I interrupt, he'll say, "I'll tell you about that in a minute." Not much interrupting went on, though he'd probably beg to differ.
When he phoned me the day after the interview, he said he supposed I'd already finished writing. When I told him I hadn't started, he couldn't believe it.
"Well, Murray," I said, "because you talked so bloody much I've just finished transcribing."
"Oh, get out of here," he said, but I thought he sounded rather pleased.
I had better interrupt myself here to deliver his first punchline. It is that he told me to push a certain button on the security gate and to be aware that the name wasn't Deaker, but his wife's maiden name. This is because drunk blokes think it's funny to push the button in the night to ask who's going to win the Super 12. He told me this, then said: "There's your intro."
His idea of being interviewed is to direct, in a meandering sort of way, the interview. If there is something he feels I've neglected to ask, no worries, he'll say: "Now I'm going to ask you a question." These were questions I would never have asked, such as "How many millions did Brad Butterworth cost New Zealand?"
"I wouldn't have a clue," I said.
"How many billions ..." he said.
"But Murray," I interrupted, "I'm not interested in these questions."
"... did he cost New Zealand?" he finished, utterly undeterred.
I was interested in the cuckoo clock Butterworth sent to Deaker with a note saying he was a hard man to buy a present for, but that the clock reminded him of Deaker.
He thought the gift was "the funniest thing" that he's done. I wanted to see this cuckoo clock so I asked where it was, and he said, "I should tell you, we've got to be upfront or it's a wasted interview. The clock came round; Sharon [his wife] didn't like it. Sharon was selling real estate at the time and she sold someone's house, so she gave them the clock as a present."
And do the recipients of the clock know where it came from? "No, no, no, they don't! They'll read this and laugh." They probably will; he certainly did.
I don't think there's anything you can't ask him about because he's aired most of it publicly: the troubles with the drink, which he gave up 30 years ago; the death of his first wife, Di, from cancer, which he speaks about without his usual blustery bravado; how he went nuts on air and subsequently, and again publicly, came out and said he was bipolar. Because of that last event, he knows why I have asked if he thought the gift of a cuckoo clock was funny.
He keeps a list in a drawer in his bedroom, headed "Early Danger Signs", which include lack of sleep, general tiredness and "thirdly, it's an interesting one: fanaticism. Because I think what happens to me is that when I get too much into something it leads to it annoying me, and if I can't get a result, I become more and more intense about it."
It is interesting because I earlier read to him a quote from Graham Lowe about his "near fanatical crusades of criticism", and he said, "Yeah, I wouldn't argue with that."
So I wondered how he distinguished between one of his obsessions and something going haywire. "I can answer that," he said. "I don't. I just go with the flow."
He will come back to the bipolar description. "You mentioned a word, and we need to probably put this in because you'll say something about it ... bipolar does not sit well with me because I don't think it adequately sums up where I'm at and I think I was talked into that a little bit." He says he wasn't misdiagnosed; he probably misdiagnosed himself. He isn't on any medication and hasn't even seen his GP for 12 months. Well, what is he then? "I think that I'm ..."
A bit nuts? "No. I'm a complete extrovert." That sounds like a correct diagnosis.
He was kind enough to let me know after almost an hour when I got a question in - about the difference between the public and private Deaker - that "it took you a long time to get to the major question for an experienced interviewer. And here's your answer: none. I am the same on air as I am at home, the same everywhere."
"Jesus!" I said. This may have sounded ungracious, if not appalled. Some people might have taken offence. Not Deaks.
He said, "Yeah, I'm no different. I live very comfortably in my own skin because I never try on a stunt. I am what I am, and I know what I am."
I have always wanted to hear somebody say "I am what I am". It's so ridiculously self-assured that nobody could really mean it. He does, or really seems to, so I said that everybody has moments of self doubt, surely. He thought for a while. He can be quiet; he was at great pains to tell me that he might be a world-class talker, but he was also very good at listening. He said, "I've had moments of self doubt. I haven't had those professionally. No. I believe in the stand I took against the America's Cup, I believe in the stance I took against the All Blacks. On all the major things I would not take a word back. I'm sticking with it."
THERE are consequences. After the Rugby World Cup he slagged off the ABs, but mostly he slagged off someone he's known for 40 years, and whose "number one supporter" he had long been, Graham Henry.
I asked whether he had any regrets, which was a stupid question, and whether he missed Henry's friendship. "No, not particularly," he said. "I wouldn't say that we were close friends. I think that's been overplayed by the media." But he phoned me the next day to tell me that Henry had been at the Mad Butcher's book launch on Thursday night, that the AB coach had winked at him and had later come up for an amicable chat.
I must say he sounded pretty happy about this development, so I hope I won't stuff it up with the scoop he said he'd give me. "Let's be bloody honest," he said. "Between you and me, you can have something that nobody else has had. What would you say if I told you the major broadcaster on sports in this country went and put 1500 bucks on South Africa to win the World Cup? The payout was $10,500!"
What I did say was "ouch" and "does Graham Henry know?"
"Of course he doesn't."
What I think is that he might owe Henry a drink. He has loads of money, in real estate, but he wouldn't tell me how much. He says he "had school teacher tastes and I still do". He was a teacher, and latterly a vice-principal for 17 years, and even if I hadn't already known that, I could easily have guessed it.
Because he is so opinionated, it will come as no surprise to him to learn that other people hold as many opinions on him as he does on the state of sport in this country. It is fair to say other journalists, particularly sports journalists, do not love him. When told I was going to see him, one said: "You'll come back saying he's a bloody good joker. And you'll know this because he'll have told you."
I can see why journalists hate him. He told me the difference between him and other sports journos is that he gets out and about to get his stories, whereas other journalists get theirs off what he calls (he doesn't know how to turn a computer on) "a line. I've always found my own." Oh, they do not, I say. And he is, after all, being interviewed by one of those other journalists.
"Too many of them do. They sit there tapping away at those bloody things for hours."
Yes, it's called typing, Murray, which is what I had to do to transcribe all his talking. The last sound on the tape is that Deaker laugh, which is what we might call completely extroverted. It is not my question - "Oh, what a hell of a good question!" - that has made him laugh, it's his answer.
The question: "Does he like being famous?" The answer: "Yeah, of course I do. I'd rather be famous than infamous. I'd rather be famous rather than being nondescript, but most of all I'd rather be happy. And I'm happy. I'm happy when I'm famous. I'm happy when I'm number one rating!"
Is the famous Murray Deaker a bloody good joker? I couldn't possibly hope to answer that question.
