KEY POINTS:
At one point during yesterday's extraordinary press conference at Auckland's Hilton Hotel, a parliamentary journalist asked Owen Glenn if the red top he was wearing was a Labour Party T-shirt.
Opening his jacket to reveal a motoring crest, the expatriate billionaire quipped: "Listen mate, it's Lamborghini. You have got to get out of Wellington."
After Tuesday's formalities in front of Parliament's privileges committee, Mr Glenn held his own court in Auckland, on his own terms.
It was, he told journalists, a last shot to ask questions before the star witness to the year's biggest political story and citizen of the world left the country he grew up in.
The 30 minutes in front of the cameras was also a parting shot by Mr Glenn to "challenge people" and media "lies", such as "I'm a lush, I'm a white slaver, a womaniser".
"I'm just an average Kiwi, mate. I enjoy my yacht, I have a lot of people there. This so-called thing I am always there with beautiful girls. Yeah, five of them are my daughters and one is my mother."
Questions from Maori Television about his friendship with Sir Howard Morrison - "a good mate and a loyal fellow" - gave Mr Glenn a platform to highlight the meaning of loyalty.
He did it by cursing Helen Clark and Labour for taking $500,000 of his money then turning the dogs on him.
The money, he said, would have been better spent on feeding three million people in India, one of many charities the Glenn Family Foundation he set up 27 years ago has contributed towards.
There was a freshness about Mr Glenn's performance, not to mention touches of drama and humour, like when he said: "You're going to love this. He [Labour Party president Mike Williams] asked me for a job."
Despite the bad blood, Mr Glenn still had time for his political foes. In his eyes, Mr Williams was a liar, but that did not have to mean the end of a friendship: "I hope not, he is a great guy to have a beer with."
And in Winston Peters he saw not only a minister who had done good things for racing and foreign affairs, but a man's man. "He likes rugby. I like rugby. He likes horses, I like horses. He's a forthright type of guy."
He said problems started when one of Mr Peters' New Zealand First colleagues, Dail Jones, called him a liar.
Mr Peters' honourable course, he said, would have been to declare the $100,000 gift instead of asking people to believe he knew nothing about it.
"I don't think the average New Zealander has trouble making a judgment about the truth. I didn't come all the way here to fantasise ... I'm just the worm that turned."
