Jesse Mulligan in Tokyo.
When it comes to money, broadcaster Jesse Mulligan’s top tip is hard to argue with: read NZ Herald columnist Mary Holm.
“Do you know, I’ve been reading Mary Holm’s column for 25 years and everything I know about money, I’ve got from her Herald column,” he says.
As host of TV3′s The Project, RNZ’s Afternoons and Viva magazine restaurant critic, Jesse Mulligan is one of the biggest names in New Zealand media.
In a wide-ranging discussion on the first of the new series for podcast Money Talks, Mulligan talks to Liam Dann about growing up in Hamilton, wealth, poverty and what’s wrong with capitalism.
“Now she’s a guest on my radio show as well,” he says of HoIm. “I think New Zealand is so lucky to have her, this impartial, neutral, solid advice.... paying off debt before you launch a savings account, buying a diversified index fund, instead of picking certain shares.”
Despite doing a law degree at Waikato University, Mulligan made his way to the media spotlight via stand-up comedy, a path that was financially tough for a while.
Reflecting on the poorest he has ever been, Mulligan recalled a cut-price meal option that couldn’t be further from the fine dining experiences of his restaurant reviews.
“When I was a student and going away to the beach with my friends I remember how poor I must’ve been because my groceries for a week away were a jar of Dolmio and a loaf of bread,” he says.
“At night for dinner, I would spread the Dolmio sauce onto the white bread and eat that. It’s really tragic.”
Mulligan left school in the sixth form.
“I’d done pretty well at school and not having any kind of major ideas about what I wanted to do, I did the degree that I thought would be most valuable, which was a law degree in Hamilton.”
But the profession wasn’t for him.
“I did apply for a couple of clerkships and got knocked back, so I thought stuff it. I’m not going to be a lawyer then,” he says. “That was kind of my personality at the time. If I didn’t immediately succeed at something, I’d just flag it, which is a terrible personality trait and one that I’m trying to iron out of my children.”
Apart from a few hours a week in K-Mart’s menswear section, Mulligan’s first job was hosting a quiz night at a tavern in Hamilton.
“Then I got paid to do stand-up and did a bit of MCing and so I never really had that kind of job,” he said.
He is now very happy juggling his three media gigs and says he is very grateful for the roles.
“I think I’m probably the last generation of TV presenters, so I’ll keep going on free-to-air TV until it closes down and I won’t feel bitter at all when that happens,” he said.
“I think that’s true of media in general, take the jobs when they’re offered to you and don’t feel bad when they disappear and enjoy your moment of being wanted because there will be a day when you’re not wanted.”
Mulligan says it was on his OE in London that he developed a passion for reading well-written restaurant reviews, something he saw was missing in New Zealand when he returned.
“I used to read the restaurant reviews in London. I didn’t have much money, but I would always buy the newspapers on a Saturday. The writers over there were incredible. Giles Coren, AA Gill and Toby Young. You know, they would write reviews with jokes in them. They’d write reviews that were interesting enough for me, someone who would never afford to eat at any of those restaurants. And so when I came back to Auckland, I thought, there’s a space for that sort of writing here. And so that’s what I try to do.”
As a mainstream media figure, Mulligan tries not to let his views get too political.
But he is passionate about the need to do more on climate change and says he worries about growing inequality in the system.
“I think the system’s stuffed,” he said. “Even if you believe in capitalism, capitalism only works when it’s an even, even playing field. Even the purest capitalists, the purest libertarian has to believe that the playing field has to be equal,” he says.
“And, that’s what I think doesn’t make sense about a lot of the stuff we’re seeing in the [election] campaign is it hasn’t acknowledged the systemic problems that mean that if a child is born in Herne Bay, they’ll have so much more opportunity than a child who’s born in Papakura.”
Listen to the full episode below to hear more from Jesse Mulligan. Jesse can be heard on RNZ every weekday from 1 - 4pm
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
Money Talks is available on IHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The event is described as a series of aggressive sales pitches.