Spy: The radio egos, the sexual slurs and the lawsuit threat

Mayor Michael Laws. Photo / Wanganui Chronicle

Precious treasure Michael Laws has spat the dummy - again. This week, he lashed out at comments made by RadioLive colleagues Willie Jackson and John Tamihere on their Tuesday show and fired back threatening a defamation lawsuit. Jackson, who had taken exception to an article Laws penned about Shane Jones' penchant for porn, made sexual slurs about the broadcaster on-air.

Laws heard of the remarks during his radio show the next day when an elderly caller named Jim phoned in. The Wanganui mayor was furious, lashing out with terse words of his own.

Laws responded: "If Willie Jackson said that, can I tell you now, if he said that, I will sue him for defamation. But I'll tell you that now, Jim. We will check the record, the logs from yesterday, but if Willie Jackson said that, he's going to end up in court. End of story. And if he did say that, something very odd is going on in Willie's life."

But Willie says he's shocked by Laws' reaction. "What's he getting upset about?" Jackson told Spy.

"He's called me a racist and a separatist. He ran down my mum the other day when she got her Damehood. He can give it out but he can't take it."

Jackson says he was only joking and he will apologise to Laws for any upset, because "it was just an off-handed comment. I didn't mean anything by it. "I think he's under a lot of pressure," Jackson added.

Another source described Laws as "feeling really vulnerable right now after the [Fowlie] decision. He finds it hard to admit when he's wrong."

This week Laws and his radio station reached an out-of-court settlement with the grieving parents of an 11-year-old Waikato boy killed in a trailbike accident, which the broadcaster mistakenly believed was a quad bike. He ripped into parents Heather and Stuart Fowlie,

An apology, noticeably delivered by station manager Mitch Harris and not Laws, was aired on RadioLive on Friday.

The Fowlies will receive $35,000 in costs and damages for Laws' offensive on-air comments.

As to Laws' threat of a defamation suit, Jackson had only fighting talk: "If he wants to go down that track, good luck to him. People would only question his sexuality if he did. We don't back away from scraps. My lawyer is JT [John Tamihere] and we'll defend it."

But Laws backed down on Friday, telling Spy he was only ever joking about a legal challenge.

Really? It didn't seem that way to me.

"I was never serious," Laws said.

"It was all a storm in a tea cup."

- Rachel Glucina