Prime Ministerial wit captured in book

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 4

Prime Ministerial wit captured in book

By

CHRIS MOORE

It seems that literary talents are blooming in the hothouse atmosphere of Parliament Buildings. London had the Bloomsbury set, Paris its Left Bank intellectuals. Now New Zealand politicians are forming a Lambton Quay literati Sir Robert Muldoon, Richard Prebble, Mike Moore and a former member of Parliament, Marilyn Waring, have all dived into the heady world of publishing and writing. Not to be outdone, the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, this week entered the literary world with a new book “Gliding on the Lino — the Wit of David Lange.” ■ Compiled by David Barber, the 43-page publication contains a closely packed series of assorted Prime Ministerial quips, japes and asides. Of course, it may be

pure coincidence that a General Election is rising like the morning sun above the Beehive. It may be that David Barber seeks to demolish the myth that New Zealanders are a humourless collection of Calvinists. It also seems that Mr Lange was among the last to hear that his wit and humour were trapped between soft covers. The book’s title comes from another nugget ... “Will the United States pull the rug on New Zealand? The answer is no. They might polish the lino a bit harder and hope that I execute a rather unseemly glide across it.” The Prime Minister, its compiler reports, misses the elegant, well honed magisterial wit of the courtroom. But you cannot keep a good lawyer down even when he happens to occupy the top floor of the Beehive.

“There are not many things that happen in the life of a boy from Mangere that sort of turn you on,” Mr Lange told a press conference last year.

With ballpoint at the ready, David Barber has noted it all down, from Rainbow Warrior (“The French are never more intractable than when they are 100 per tent wrong”) to A.N.Z.U.S. (“a moron in a hurry could see that it wasn’t a security guarantee”) and beyond.

“Gliding on the Lino” slides across the wit and times of David Lange, and its subject has the last word.

“If I am not absolutely rolling about with laughter, I am described as verveless. And if I smile at a time of a 1 per cent interest rate rise, I am a recklessly effusive uncaring cynic.”