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I know exactly why I felt compelled to read Paddy Gower’s new book, This Is The F#$%king News, for a second time, immediately after I’d only just finished it first-time round.
I was reading about a lifestyle I well recognised, one I’d once lived.
Paddy and I worked together in the Parliamentary Press Gallery for a couple of years when I poached him from the NZ Herald to work with me at TV3. My job was to train him in the dark arts of covering politics then get the hell out alive after 17 years where I’d effectively become like a cynical, single-minded, hard-wired politician.
I was drinking heavily, I was unhappy, and I needed to leave.
As a self-confessed mad workaholic, so scared of being beaten to a story and fearing failure, I set out to monster everything, every day, no matter what else I had on and/or where else I should have been.
My now 21-year-old youngest daughter used to go behind the TV in the lounge at night to see if she could actually see her dad in person. That’s how often I wasn’t home and how often I was on the idiot box in your lounge instead.
Drinking, working, drinking, working and what was next?
So, I hired Paddy and then stayed to train him. We pushed our way around parliament in unison and with an arrogant swagger. Politicians were suspicious if we approached them to be on the news; they got nervous, and rightly so as something was usually about to go “bang” when we turned up.
I liked Paddy. He was a character; he was vulnerable, new, raw and he had beaten the odds to get on TV news. New Zealanders warmed to him for all sorts of reasons, and he got recognisable quickly.
Like me, his coping mechanism to deal with it was to work and drink.
Sure, we clashed, especially towards the end, but I let Paddy down because rather than check in with him, I was at the bar too, and I wasn’t mature or responsible enough to say, “Paddy, stop, this will ruin you.” Like he’d have taken my advice on that anyway, but I should have tried harder to stop him or at least warn of what might lie ahead in the years to come.
It was a culture where drinking was encouraged and I can recall alcohol flowing freely on, for example, a prime ministerial trip. When you’re in your 20s, you can’t get enough of that sort of thing.
Imagine Christopher Luxon doing that now and the howls of outrage! Given he doesn’t drink, I guess there’s no chance of it happening, and that’s a good thing. I’m also grateful for the fact we didn’t have social media to “skite” on.
Still, I should have at least tried to warn Paddy of the suffocating nature of parliament. It’s a place with no heart or empathy, where you’ll be swallowed up. There are winners and losers, successes and failures.
It’s that binary; there is no middle ground, no guidance counsellors, few support systems, massive power imbalances, and it’s not bound by any wider employer collective or rules. There are hundreds of sets of eyes watching you; friends seem few and far between.
I don’t know what Parliament is like now; I hope it’s better than it was. If not, if you can get out alive and continue a career, you’ve done well.
I’m not going to bite my arm off regretting the past, but Paddy’s book is a confronting reminder of what it was like and what I survived.
