Review, Metro, 2011
If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me "What's he like?" I might well be as wealthy as Paul Henry. A more interesting question to ask at the conclusion of this book might be: "Would I have liked to live this life?"
There is much vicarious pleasure here for anyone who thrills to hear him say the things they'd like to, if only they weren't so chicken. He gets tossed about in boats from Tory Channel to Tahiti, he faces imminent death by land mine, bayonet, pistol and family sedan, he drives into Iraq without a visa from the corrupt Mr Sadoon, and at the point when he is savagely beaten and incarcerated in an excrement lined cell even his harshest critics may consider his life to be in Karmic equilibrium.
There are insights here: about making good radio, for example, (if a guy turns up in a pixie suit, don't be scared to stray from your prepared question line); and about the spirit of enterprise and door-knocking that can bootstrap you out of meagre circumstances. There is praise and perceptive admiration for certain people, Derek Lowe, Brent Impey, Peter Williams, Pam Corkery. He wears what may be OCD on his sleeve: chapters end with lists of favourite people, cars, movies. He is surely the only man in Christendom who reveres Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds album, and this is clearly the point.
Henry wears his loner badge with pride, but it's plain that it's also a liability.
A sort of apologia comes at the close of the book, as witty self-deprecating memoir gives way to the part for which he seems to fancy the NZ Herald has brought popcorn. His ghost writer has handed him the keyboard. In an Albany mansion, surrounded by a moat of concrete and pavers, the author taps at his iPad, The Living Channel playing on a giant screen. He says he's not here to settle scores, but manages to cast Mark Sainsbury the size of a thimble. Are there really so many scores to settle? The portrait of TVNZ regretfully firing him more for show than principle rings true.
He seems unwilling or unable to see that as the influence of his producers diminished, so his tone grew less funny and more obstreperous. He declares that the tape will show that he was simply using an outmoded word - 'retarded' - to declare an undeniable truth about Susan Boyle. What he omits to acknowledge is that it was offered as mockery, with mirth.
He disparages the over-reaction of professional offence takers but seems unable to see that their objection was not so much to two specific incidents as to the sneering intolerance it exemplified.
There's a problem in our journalism. Henry, is an example, so are some columnists. What they offer as fresh and bold can only be so by ignoring the boring details and shadings that must be included to make the picture an accurate one.
Wistfully, the evidence of a failed marriage undeniable, Henry acknowledges he got it wrong. It's a pity he can't concede it more.
