Lush told listeners it was an amazing world in talk back when he received the email from Sharon Heath.
Lush told listeners it was an amazing world in talk back when he received the email from Sharon Heath.
A chance talkback call on Newstalk ZB reminiscing over the concert of a late musician has reconnected two long-lost friends 50 years on.
The pair were both listening to the Marcus Lush Nights show when Lush lamented on the passing of Jamaican singer Millie Small aged 73, most famous forher hit single My Boy Lollipop.
Lush was hearing from callers who had attended the singer's concerts in New Zealand when Nelson man Don Macbeth rang and mentioned he went backstage at one of her shows with an old friend named Parris Heath.
"In about 1965 I was living in Greymouth and I was about a 17-year-old and I met Millie Small in the regional theatre, my mate was a reporter for the Grey River Argus.
"We were good mates. We played rugby together and we went along to the show because he wanted to interview her afterwards."
"I'm sure the last thing she'd want to do after a show in Greymouth would be an interview with the Argus, but that's show biz for you aye," Lush said.
Following the call, Lush received an email from Heath's wife Sharon asking whether her husband's name had been mentioned or if he had imagined it because he was half asleep.
When Heath, who now lives in Timaru, phoned in he initially told Lush he couldn't recall Don, but when the pair were connected live on air he knew exactly who Lush had been speaking to.
"Oh its Don Macbeth, he never told me your second name."
"I was actually looking at old photos the other day and I thought I wish I could find out where Don McBeth is he was my mate, he was my mate in Greymouth," Heath said.
"That's right, yes, yup, I'm lying in bed here I haven't got my top teeth so its a bit awful," Macbeth said.
Following their live reunion, Lush left the pair to reconnect off air.
Heath said the concert was "amazing", but he left journalism shortly after the interview.
"I was there as a young junior reporter and when it closed the new editor they brought down to close the place up, he went down to the Dunedin Evening Star and I was to go down there with him but I got caught up and I went out shearing."
