John Oliver reveals the official Metalbird sculpture of the winning Bird of the Century. Photo / Screenshot
John Oliver reveals the official Metalbird sculpture of the winning Bird of the Century. Photo / Screenshot
The long-running saga of John Oliver and the Bird of the Century has finally come to an end - and has now been immortalised in the form of a Metalbird sculpture.
In a nod to the talk show host’s involvement with the campaign, iconic New Zealand brand Metalbird has created a special metal sculpture of the pūteketeke, featuring an attachment in the likeness of none other than Oliver himself.
The chat show host unveiled the sculpture on Sunday night’s episode of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, available to watch on Neon in New Zealand. The Pūteketeke and Friend sculpture includes a mini Oliver perched on the bird’s back.
The talk show host could barely contain his excitement, asking viewers: “Would you like to see the sculpture of this year’s winner? Because here it is ... the magnificent pūteketeke with, as you can see, me riding on its back, like one of its babies.
“And as the website points out with a helpful animation, the John Oliver part can be removed if you so choose, which is magnificent. Would that we all had that option.”
Finally, he appeared in the now-iconic pūteketeke costume, saying: “I want to thank everyone who voted when we first decided to campaign for the pūteketeke, having randomly stumbled across it after googling ‘New Zealand bird weird’. We never could have anticipated the outpouring of support.
“Pūteketeke today, pūteketeke tomorrow, pūteketeke for the next hundred years. We did it.”
Metalbird founder Phil Walters with the pūteketeke sculpture featuring a mini John Oliver.
Along with the grand reveal during the show, Oliver gifted a sculpture to each audience member on the night and pointed bird-loving viewers to the website to buy their own.
Metalbird, founded by Phil Walters, creates a sculpture for each winning Bird of the Year, with 30 per cent of proceeds from sales going to Forest & Bird to help their conservation efforts.
And since the episode aired, activity on the Metalbird website has “gone through the roof”, according to Walters.
“We have raised more for Forest & Bird in the last 12 hours than we have in total each year for the last four years - and it’s not slowing down,” he told the Herald this morning.
Forest & Bird chief executive Nicola Toki said the interest in the campaign had been “overwhelming in the best way”.
“Forest & Bird’s purpose is to give nature a voice, and the exposure courtesy of John Oliver has given us a global voice on nature here in Aotearoa – allowing hundreds of thousands of people to learn more about our amazing wildlife and fall a bit in love with it too.
Forest & Bird chief executive Nicola Toki and Metalbird's Phil Walters.
“I was amped to see what our friends and longtime supporters at Metalbird were going to come up with, so when they came to us with the idea of the Pūteketeke and Friend sculpture, we were delighted. They have really nailed this!”
It comes after Toki appeared on Breakfast last week to announce the winner - after addressing the “mass voter fraud” the competition had seen.
Speaking to Anna Burns-Francis, Toki revealed more than 700,000 people from 195 countries voted in this year’s election, which “complicated things enormously”. Especially as one very enthusiastic person in Pennsylvania put in 3403 votes – equating to one every three seconds.
Unfortunately for the bird lover, they were disqualified. But it’s not all bad news, more than 350,000 voters did things the right way and were able to be verified, giving us our winner.
