JC - and never has his messianic initials felt more appropriate - stood flanked by his news making disciples. Just as he had throughout the facade of his review he asked the viewers to please watch his show. How many times has he fought for others? This time he was fighting for himself.
He wanted to go out on top, even though he'd already managed that. Number one for six weeks. It wasn't enough. He wanted to go out in a blaze of glory. Leaving an unassailable number behind him: 500,000 viewers. The crusader, crusading to the last.
The blubbing began before Campbell Live even started. Hillary Barry - well, we all knew she wouldn't get through dry eyed - smacked him with a teary "big sloppy kiss from everyone out there". The usually stoic Mike McRoberts voice cracked as he delivered the "breaking news" that he would too.
"Kia ora," John Campbell said. "Welcome."
And then he began to choke up.
"Here we are for the last time. It's been a big day. We're all a bit buggered. We're not gonna talk too much. Which is probably a good thing."
It was emotional. Tears flowed freely from his team who were standing by his side.
"Thank you so much for joining us," he said, voice wavering. And then, the kicker. "This is who we were."
We didn't see him much after that. Not live, anyway.
Instead the montage kicked in, much earlier than I'd anticipated and running almost the entirety of the show.
But those words, "this is who we were," rung out. Never has a statement been more true. Because they weren't about the show, or John Campbell or the people who had made it. For ten years Campbell Live had been about who we as New Zealanders were. All the good stuff, bad stuff and ugly, dirty, disgraceful, shameful stuff. All that icky, uncomfortable stuff that people don't want to think about it, or know about, or care about.
And now, I guess, they won't have to.
The montage was full of our faces: Smiling, crying, desperate, overjoyed, trapped, confused, eating, ripped off, drunk, angry, laughing, wounded, cowering, running away, rescuing, helping.
It was full of issues. It was full of reporters asking probing questions then repeating them again and again and again as they jousted with those who didn't want to answer them. Rogue reporter Ali Ikram sung Beatles songs to a chicken.
There was the wistful song with its tear inducing refrain; "You're gonna miss me when I'm gone".
But always, there was more faces.
And then the earthquake. The great tragedy we're all supposedly fatigued of. Fatigued by its enormity and footage almost incomprehensible in its agony.
But you can't end on a downer. And after that solemn moment JC was shown in all his long-voweled enthusiasm. Walking towards us, talking to us, giving us the double barreled thumbs up and hitting us with the gleaming full force of his big, goofy, school boy grin to end a montage that was ten years and almost 2500 shows in the making.
"You're gonna miss me when I'm gone."
"And now, for the last time ever," he said back in the studio, standing alone in front of a blurry sunset. "It's time for us to go."
He thanked his team. He thanked the people of Christchurch, he thanked the victims of child poverty and the families of the Pike River miners for talking to them.
He thanked "all the people who came to us because they believed we could make a difference," he thanked all the people who donated to Campbell Live's various causes over the years and he thanked "everyone who watched us". In short, he thanked New Zealand.
"But I'm off," he said.
The words weighed heavy. He lightened them.
"I started here aged 27 in a suit I borrowed from my dad."
And then, after that incredible 25 minute greatest hits montage through a decade of New Zealand's greatest tragedies and triumphs, his time was up.
"Ka kite ano," he said.
He was holding back tears as he said it. I was holding back tears as I wrote them down.
And even though it really, really wasn't, John Campbell, gracious to the end, looked at us all and said, "and a very good evening indeed."
