What Was I Thinking: A Memoir (28 page)

On the evening of the day it blew up, I had to go to a fundraising event on behalf of the first Christchurch earthquake. The Prime Minister and various Ministers of the Crown were there. Some people were surprised that I had turned up because I had been keeping a low profile and refusing all comment.

The first person I saw was one of the TVNZ board.

‘Oh God, what kind of a day is this?’ I said.

‘I’ve suffered slings and arrows for you today,’ they told me.
‘But it’ll be fine. Don’t worry, it’s just another storm.
Everything’s
cool.’

Numerous MPs slapped me on the back and told me not to worry about it. This was informed advice because I knew what I was going through was what they lived with every day.

Pita Sharples put his arm around me and gave me a big manly hug.

‘You’re one of us now,’ he said, meaning I think, someone on the receiving end, not just dishing it out. I was touched by that. Two days later he was publicly calling for my sacking.

John Key walked in. Normally he would have come over and talked to me but he just moved past. I was talking to Gerry Brownlee at the time, and it was noticeable that he acknowledged Gerry and just kept on walking. I fully understood that and had no intention of embarrassing him by going up and talking to him.

The next day I read a statement on the show:

‘I’d like you all to know I have the greatest respect for Sir Anand Satyanand. I don’t know him personally, but I understand his reputation is beyond reproach.

‘He is highly respected in both judicial circles, as a former judge, and as the Queen’s representative here in New Zealand. He has done a very fine job as Governor-General and I am sincerely sorry if I seemed disrespectful to him. That was not what I intended, and I certainly didn’t intend to sound racist. It was wrong for me to ask the questions that I did.

‘Sir Anand was born in New Zealand. His lineage, as far as I can ascertain, is far more dignified than mine, which makes him a better candidate for Governor-General than me.

‘Most people think I’m British, but the truth is much, much worse than that. Like the Governor-General, I was born in New Zealand, however, I am at least half what they colloquially call in Europe, a gyppo.

‘So, let me make it quite clear, I will never apologise for causing
outrage, however I will and do apologise sincerely for causing real hurt and upset to anyone, no matter what their background, who works to make this country a better country.

‘So, in that spirit, I apologise unreservedly to Sir Anand and his family. He is a very distinguished man and I am a gyppo television presenter.’

That just seemed to fire people up more. When the
programme
ended I was called upstairs to see the head of news and current affairs, Anthony Flannery.

‘This is gaining momentum and we need to find some way of stopping it,’ he said. ‘We need to go and have a chat with Rick.’

At 11am we went to see Rick Ellis, TVNZ’s chief executive officer. I was surprised that when we got there the decision to suspend me had already been made. We talked about it briefly and I could see that for TVNZ it was a good idea.

‘Why don’t I just walk out now?’ I said. ‘I won’t go back into the newsroom, I’ll head out and I’ll go to Napier and hang out at my beach house for a while.

‘Let’s actually dock my salary,’ I said. I was getting quite enthusiastic. We made it clear I would be suspended without pay so they could say that. I didn’t even take holiday pay, a considerable amount of which I had due.

Before I went to Napier I had to come back home where I was confronted by journalists from the
Herald
. They were on my property, having passed ‘Unauthorised Entry is Prohibited’ signs, and come down a private right of way. I went in and they knocked on the door moments later.

‘I’ve got no comment,’ I said, ‘I’m not interested in saying anything.’

A few minutes later I walked out and the photographer was back on my property taking pictures.

‘You’re trespassing,’ I said. ‘Leave.’

I went back inside. After another 20 minutes I drove up to
the top of the private road leading to my house — the road I own part of and pay the rates for. And the photographer and two journalists — the fact there were two told me just how slow a news week this was — were still there. Now I was annoyed. I told them to fuck off. I went inside and rang the
Herald
.

‘I don’t want any of those photos used,’ I told the editor. Of course, they were used along with an account of my tirade, with no acknowledgement of the fact that the tirade occurred because they were trespassing and had ignored my requests to leave.

While there, they had interviewed all my neighbours so can rightly claim to know them much better than I do. I can’t imagine what they hoped to learn or what questions they asked: ‘So, have you seen Paul Henry being racist much?’

They had also been to my local dairy. I’m not sure, because I have never asked them, but I think the people who run it may be of Indian descent. The journalists — and I can see them congratulating themselves on their cleverness when they had the idea — went in to ask the couple how much racial abuse they receive from me in an average week. Unfortunately, though I don’t go in there very often, I get on very well with the pair. The husband sent me an email telling me the story. He was highly amused.

I was on the front page for the whole week. TVNZ led their news with the story. TV3 led with it. TV3 were very measured in their handling, although when you’ve got screaming banshees demonstrating outside TVNZ, you don’t really have to sensationalise it.

Other people were very kind. I got offered flights away to take a break. Someone else put his super yacht at my disposal. ‘The crew is on board,’ he said, ‘best wine in the fridge, just go.’

I didn’t comment because I was suspended. I was still an employee of TVNZ so it was not my place to do so. I had an unimaginable number of calls and texts coming in on my cell
phone, nearly all of which I didn’t answer. Napier was good for giving me some distance and perspective. It was a shame the rest of the country couldn’t have been there.

A couple of days later TVNZ rang and asked me to come in again because it didn’t look like things were going to die down.

The Foreign Affairs official who volunteered an apology to India without any official sanction managed to inflame matters further. New Zealand had not been asked for an apology and, indeed, should not have made an apology at government level. I thought that was rich given people in India had been burning a New Zealander in effigy the week before — Mike Hooper, the Commonwealth Games chief executive who had questioned Delhi’s readiness to host the Games.

But someone had decided that my comments threatened a pending free-trade agreement with India. I find it hard to believe that a hard-headed Indian businessperson would have boycotted New Zealand for the sake of Sheila Dikshit.

We planned to meet at Rick Ellis’ house on a Saturday morning. At the last minute I got a call to say the meeting would be at TVNZ because ‘the media are staking out Rick’s house’.

For TVNZ, I knew, there were just two options, both awkward. They could let me go and alienate all those people who wanted me to stay. Rick Ellis had shown me a pile of emails a foot high, apparently just one of several, demanding that I be retained. They weren’t just from fanatical Paul Henry fans, but from people who were saying things like ‘We actually think he probably did overstep the mark this time, but you don’t suspend someone for saying something like this. We’re intelligent enough to be able to understand that not everyone is going to say the right thing.’

The other option was to keep me on and drive the crazies even crazier.

I would never want to work anywhere where they didn’t want me. I am not a hoop jumper. If I was told I had to cross a road in
order to keep a job, I would not cross that road. There were a few other factors to consider, not least the pressure on my family. I could, on one level, stand back and enjoy the entertainment value of the whole scenario, but there was no way I could enjoy the death threats to my mother and my daughters.

Letters had been passed on to the police, one of which specifically mentioned my mother, where she lived and her name. It also mentioned my daughters and the throwing of acid. It was almost more of a threat to them than to me. There was another occasion when the press were outside my mother’s rest home, which I found unsettling. Given that I was not going to jump through hoops to keep the job, and that I had the idea of leaving in the back of my mind anyway, the decision was not hard to make or accept.

My youngest daughter, Bella, was turning 18 at the time and having a celebration at a bar in Queen Street. I was advised by TVNZ and the police not to go because, irrespective of any threats, the moment anyone saw me they would ring the media, photographers would turn up and the evening would cease to be about Bella and be about her annoying father instead.

I thought about the matter overnight and we met again on Sunday.

During my career I had never once gone to a meeting about my work with a lawyer or agent or anyone at all. I have been very relaxed about my work conditions and handled things myself. I have never had a ‘support person’. HR people know to keep their distance from me. But this time, because everything was going so fast and the circumstances were so exceptional, I took a lawyer and a friend.

In light of everything, the only option I had was to resign. For it to be of any use to TVNZ, it had to be done quickly to make them look decisive and so it could lead the news that night. Journalists had seen me go in and they were blocking exits. It 
was a very long meeting, but it was extraordinarily amiable.

At one point, I noticed Rick had a paper bag on his desk.

‘What’s in there?’ I asked, and he took out a muffin which he carefully cut into eight pieces and shared among everyone there. We were all hungry.

There was a feeling around the table that something was happening that no one wanted to happen. Everyone was trying to snatch a little bit of victory from the jaws of defeat. In a negotiation like that, the two sides would normally be entirely at odds but there was so much common ground, and we walked out with the situation entirely resolved. We left the meeting with best wishes for each other. In fact I hugged Rick and he hugged me back, and I don’t get the feeling he’s a natural hugger.

My legal person is involved in matters like this every day and he said he had never experienced a situation where a group of people were negotiating the parting of the ways when they obviously got on so well and respected each other so much.

We left through an exit not normally open on the weekend, and I slipped away while Rick faced an onslaught from his own and other journalists. To be honest, having gladly stood by TVNZ for seven years, I was surprised and a little disappointed that they could only stand by me for a few hours. Such is life.

I left for Napier and had hit Tokoroa when the 6pm news went to air and a tsunami of calls started. A cameraman working on
One News
that night was the first to ring. He was a freelancer who worked on
Breakfast
, and he left an amazing message, almost in tears. The phone continued vibrating until it ran out of battery.

I got a text from Lucy: ‘I’m unbelievably proud of you, love Lucy.’ Bella sent me a slightly more pragmatic text: ‘As long as we’re going to be OK for money I’m cool with this.’ Sophie’s message was: ‘This is the only way a career like yours could end.’

John Key phoned me to check that I was okay. ‘I feel really
bad about it,’ he said. ‘I know I shouldn’t and I don’t need to but I feel really bad about it and I hope you’re okay.’

‘John, what’s happened to me will happen to you,’ I said, ‘because whether you’re in politics or in the media, if you’re in front of people, your achievements are singular, your failures are cumulative and sooner or later the people who thought they were going to get you last time and didn’t will side with the people who want to get you this time, and the numbers will be against you.’

Although I had nothing but contempt for the people who were accusing me of being a racist when nothing could be further from the truth — I actually hold all races, genders, nationalities, sexualities, occupations and hobbies in equally low esteem — it is a nasty label to have flung at you. Even with a skin as thick as mine, it is not pleasant to be unable to turn on the radio or TV or open a newspaper without hearing that particular piece of misrepresentation.

There were, however, occasional compensations. One of these took place when I was test driving an Aston Martin for a magazine. Obviously this was during a time when I was trying to keep a low profile.

One of the keys to being a successful test driver is to keep the gas low because you don’t want to be returning the car full of petrol that you’ve paid for. Sophie was with me when we needed to put $5 worth in the tank and pulled into a service station in Onehunga. Why we were in Onehunga I have no idea.

Sophie was cowering down in her seat long before we stopped. She predicted correctly that when we did heads would turn at the sight of this beautiful car. It was a bonus when people realised the Aston Martin contained me. It quickly became obvious that at least 90 per cent of the people on the forecourt and 100 per cent of the people inside were Indians.

Unusually for a service station, this one provided service,
and one of the staff approached me. ‘Oh, Mr Henry, can I help you?’ he said. And that was awkward because I have a small quirk when it comes to service stations, which is that I like to do everything myself because then you know it has been done properly. I have had a couple of instances a long time ago where expensive cars have been slightly scratched, not on purpose but because other people are never as careful as you. My problem was that if I said no he might take it as yet more proof of my notorious racist attitudes, especially when it came to Indians.

However, since this was a very expensive car, obviously brand new and not mine, I took the risk of damaging my reputation and declined his offer. Then I went inside where there were two people serving at the counter and two lines of customers, all of them, so far as I could tell, Indian. Finally, after what seemed like an inordinate amount of time standing there waiting to pay, I got to the head of the line.