"It's that extra 'hi' in there which gets you, isn't it?" Paul Henry was on his best behaviour this morning, as he debuted his new multi-platform morning show, and waited 37 minutes before making fun of a non-European surname. Warriors second rower Sebastine Ikahihifo was the lucky winner of Paul's signature trick, but it was at the benign end of the scale, with no snickering or overt racism.
Instead the debut of Paul Henry, his eponymous morning show went by both quickly and slowly, three long hours of breakneck-paced television divided up into a thousand little pieces. There was a jolly interview with John Key, who calls Paul 'Pauly', and a bizarre one with singer Brooke Fraser, which was mainly focused on bodily functions. After a section discussing their mutual "problems in the lower part of the torso", Henry had another itch which needed scratching. "All of a sudden I want to know if you've vomited today," he said, a little furtively. "Have you? Has it been a day of vomiting?"
While Fraser looked uncomfortable, such moments were what made the show worthwhile. Henry's strength as a broadcaster is his unpredictability - his willingness to venture off script and into other people's personal spaces in the interests of entertaining himself. It's mostly endearing, though frequently creepy too.
"I don't think you were wearing any undergarments at all," he said to Maria Tutaia of the previous time they'd hung out. She took it with good humour, but there seemed something a rather gross about this old chap spending such a long time discussing Tutaia's gruts situation on national television. Especially so early.
