Auckland move damaging

Press, 30 August 1988, Page 19

Auckland move damaging

Grant on television

Down here in the south we have long known about the damaging effects of moving to Auckland: how your values go all to pot as you begin to measure everything in terms of size, speed, and, particularly, money. The latest example of this process in operation is Paul Holmes, IZB’s top D.J. I only have a slight acquaintance with Holmes, but I know him to be constantly veering between the potentially and the actually anarchic, a fine broadcaster and a most amusing person. In the fashion programme “Lookin’ Good,” screened on Two last Friday, he appeared modelling various items of male attire, and all he could say about them was to tell us what enormous sums of money they had cost.

No doubt Aucklanders are impressed by the colossal sums Holmes chucks in the direction of clothes designers, but a recitation of price tags is fairly boring for anyone not an Aucklander by residence or spiritual inclination. Not that “Lookin’ Good” itself was boring. It had a

bit of razzle, appropriate to its subject. The two women presenters try too hard: Stephanie Overton radiates thousands of kilojoules of excessive energy, directed at the viewer through her eyes, and Kim Buchanan does her fronting using the technique whereby every THIRD syllaßLE is unNATurally stressed. Fashion is ephemeral to be sure, but that is no reason why it can’t be relatively calmly dis-

cussed. The programme gave us a chance to see the fabled Patrick Steel, Auckland fashion supremo, who has perfected the art of wearing spectacles each lens of which is as big as his face. And there was a parade of male underwear, which excited some ribald comment from my wife and daughters about how I would look wearing some of the numbers. I bore this with my usual dignity. But when I come to power I am going to repeal all the sexual harassment legislation and make it an offence for people not to consider other people as sexual objects. The well-known Christchurch solicitor and media mogul, Mr I. B. Prolix, has entered the P.R. wars which have been raging recently between TVNZ and TV3 over who has got what major overseas network’s output all sewn up. Prolix, chairman, managing director, principal shareholder and, when the time comes, continuity announcer and weatherman for TV l claims

that his channel has “stolen a march” on its two rivals by signing with Iceland Television for two programmes: a monthly entertainment spectacular called "Light Music from Reykjavik” and a weekly news round-up with a North Atlantic perspective, “World Affairs As We in Iceland View Them.” Iceland has no satellite transmission facilities, and so tapes of the programmes will have to be posted to New Zealand, but Prolix maintains that this does not matter: “These two shows are timeless in their appeal,” he says, “and the news programme in particular will benefit from the fact that the events it describes will have happened so long ago by the time the tapes get here that they will seem like fresh news to an audience sated by the febrile immediacy of news on the other two channels.” Prolix would not confirm or deny that he is also negotiating to buy Iceland Television’s hit soap opera, “What We Get Up To In The Long Winter Nights.”