By MICHELE HEWITSON
Goodness, that Mad Butcher's a miserable bugger. He's known for flinging money about the place, so of course I asked him for some. Enough for a little overseas holiday would be nice, I suggested, led on by his story about the woman who wrote to him asking for
just this (and for her house to be painted.)
He told me he'd already given me a holiday. "I've got you a trip on the ferry to Waiheke Island", where he leads his madly busy "semi-retired" life, and he'd bought me a cup of coffee. He did pay for the coffee, because he insisted. But otherwise not so much as a sausage.
We have come to Waiheke to see him because the league season kicks off tomorrow with his "boys", the Warriors, playing in Brisbane, and the Mad Butcher, aka Peter Leitch, is the team's official ambassador.
He is, needless to say, fair aquiver with the excitement.
He could, and often does, talk about the Warriors all day but I thought it might be interesting to get him to talk about himself because I've never really known what to make of him. He seems like an invention but he would likely say that that would involve more calculation than he would be capable of.
He is not beyond a little showing off. He's not about to give me any money but he's happy to give me a lesson in how to ask for money. People do this all the time and when his cellphone rings with a request from a judo club in the Waikato for help, he rushes us out to his SUV so that I can overhear the call on speaker phone.
The guy on the other end is polite but Leitch is not overly excited by polite. "Look, let me give you a lesson, don't pussyfoot around. You must know what you're expecting, **** tell me. I'll give you $2 now."
The guy says he'd like $2300 but "if you can't do that, $2 would be fantastic". Leitch likes that. He appreciates a "good come-back". He tells the guy to email him and he'll think about it.
Leitch is a plain-speaking sort of bloke. He says "what you see is what you get" and "I'm a simple person" and "I'll give anyone the time of day".
He knows he's not everyone's cup of tea: "One person's cup of tea is another person's poison. They don't have to like me as long as they buy their meat at the Mad Butcher's."
He's an old-fashioned bloke who wears singlets, and sweats, and points out that he is sweating. He believes in family and charity and uses the F-word the way other people use commas. He doesn't much like veges and he only cooks on the BBQ. He offers, "I'll put me hand up: I've been pissed."
He says he is "placid" but before we arrived at his Waiheke house he told me a story about a reporter who published the address of his house in town. Which is, by the way, like his Waiheke house, nice but not flash. He says with great happiness: "We've got two loos. We're rich."
So, he says he went to the guy's office and "smacked his face in". Later he amends this to "slapped him a little bit".
Well, all it takes "is one nutter", he says, but he laughs like a blocked drain when, as cars drive by and everyone calls out "Hi, Pete", I call back "the Mad Butcher does not live at this address". He is jolly good fun.
What he has is a genius (a description that will no doubt have him chortling into his beer) for publicity. And an unerring eye for the main chance. Except when it interferes with the Warriors' games.
He is supposed to be at Round the Bays tomorrow. He's co-sponsoring a marquee and an after-party at which you might assume he's supposed to be a bit of an attraction. He reckons his wife, Janice, put him out of his agony by making the decision for him to go to the Warriors game instead. I'm not sure I believe that this is anything but a good story to excuse himself from having to actually run anywhere.
He likes to joke that he's a finely tuned athlete. He does this while patting his ample stomach.
He is still going on about how he doesn't chase publicity because he never goes to the women's magazines and says "my wife's having a baby". He is 60 this year and has been married to Janice for 38 years.
"How old's your wife?"
"22. Hahaha."
Because he never chases publicity, he decides he really must change into his Waiheke Kayaking Club T-shirt for the picture. "We Paddle Like Mad" is printed on the back. "The Mad Butcher" name is on the front. He also holds a bottle of some sport water he's crazy about because "they might send me a free bottle".
He gives away a lot of free sausages for fundraising purposes. And he replies to all of those letters, no matter how opportunistic (which is not a word he would ever use) they might sound. "They might be quite genuine, you know what I mean?"
I know what he means because what he says is simple and he's been saying it for as many years as anyone has been interested. You get the impression that he is still mildly surprised that people are interested.
He says he has no idea whether what he has to say is well said or not. When people ask him whether he thinks his speech went down well he says he has no idea and you'd have to ask the people in the audience.
He is dyslexic and has a little trouble with his words. Which has never stopped him accepting speaking engagements. He either charges quite a lot and gives it all to charity, or he charges nothing at all.
It is true that Leitch - by all means call him the Mad Butcher, because that's another plug for a sausage - is in many ways a rather unlikely motivational speaker.
For one thing, he has a voice which could curdle milk. I think it must be all that talking has worn out his vocal chords because he's never quiet for a minute. Except, or so he says, when he's watching Emmerdale, which he does every afternoon, or Coronation Street.
He has no philosophy, of life or of business, other than to keep it simple, work hard, keep it honest and not to get your "head up your arse".
He has a horror of catching himself in this particular position.
He knows it can happen to people with money, or profile, and he tells his mates to tell him if they spot any signs of him going a bit funny that way.
He uses the word "humble" over and over.
He is, like many self-made people, proud of his working-class roots. He is certainly proud of his parents. His father was a miner and a fitter and turner. His mother raised seven children with very little money and taught him to talk. "Hey Janice," he bellows, "it's fair to say my mother could talk, isn't it?"
If he really wants to convince you that he's talking the truth, he "swears on the graves" of his parents.
So when I ask him how much money he's worth and he swears on his parents' graves that he has no idea and isn't interested I have no choice but to believe him.
I talked to him - well, listened mostly - for two and a half hours and I think that he really is an uncomplicated bloke who likes to give away money (except to me.)
His take on the giving away of money goes like this: "The community, it's like a garden. If you just take from it, the garden will die. But if you give a little bit back, if you just nurture it, big roses will bloom."
See what a miserable bugger he is. The judo guy, by the way, got $1830.
By MICHELE HEWITSON
Goodness, that Mad Butcher's a miserable bugger. He's known for flinging money about the place, so of course I asked him for some. Enough for a little overseas holiday would be nice, I suggested, led on by his story about the woman who wrote to him asking for
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