That Guy: By normal hangi standards, this one was disaster

Photo / APN

Well it was only a matter of time, I suppose, before my Great Uncle Troy passed away.

When the final moment came he was surrounded by close family, friends and fire.

Tragically, last Tuesday, Great Uncle Troy's 89th birthday celebration turned into a raging inferno after Aunty Norad's highly flammable shoes burst into flames, a direct result of her standing and chatting on top of a hangi pit that was laid a little on the shallow side.

Hangi are a lot like barbecues in the sense that you should never really offer advice to the man who is running one, even if you think you could do better. And you certainly shouldn't put in your two cents worth if you are a Pakeha and the man laying the hangi is of Maori descent - and, by all accounts Great Uncle Troy's mate, Tane, was.

It is hard to gauge a hangi's success or failure merely by the taste of the food, as it always tastes awful, but witnesses said Tane was an experienced operator and looked like he knew what he was doing right up to the final moment.

Hangi, of course, are tapu and don't have to adhere to Occupational Safety and Health regulations, or even common sense, so you could argue it was only a matter of time before something went wrong.

The fire brigade's report stated Aunty Norad's sports shoes were high in a flammable material called plastic. The right shoe combusted first, then the left, which set fire to her dress. This set alight the oxygen bottles alongside Great Uncle Troy's bed. The oxygen-fuelled fire incinerated Great Uncle Troy in an inferno of orange and blue flames. There was little anyone could do. It was all over in under 15 minutes.

Aunty Norad had minor burns to her feet, but an inquiry has already been highly critical of her wearing such flammable shoes in that environment. It is also critical of the hangi being indoors but, as I mentioned, due to the tapu nature of the situation they didn't really want to go into that.

Great Uncle Troy lived a full life but suffered ill health in later years. A rare disease that confuses brain signals in the frontal lobe of the brain saw him having to live with the feeling he was blind in one ear and nearly entirely deaf in both eyes.

Taste was the only sense he could rely on, so to better sense his environment, he began using his tongue in a darting fashion like a slithering Komodo dragon.

This occasionally landed him in trouble, usually when being served by attractive female shopkeepers. He was often arrested on charges of perversion, but that had occurred frequently before he ever had the condition.

Those close to Great Uncle Troy say that in later years he often talked about wanting to die, though few would suggest he would have opted to go out the way he did.

In his heyday, he was an innovative entrepreneur, and that's how most of the family, certainly the ones that saw him die, choose to remember him.

Legend has it that he literally made hundreds of dollars from securing the contract to on-sell the second-hand carpeting from the inter-island ferries. If it hadn't been for massive dry-cleaning fees to remove the odour and particles of vomit, some say he would have made thousands and could have retired far earlier than he did, just two weeks earlier.

He had a brain that tended to get ahead of itself and, often, financial advantage would fall by the wayside.

I once heard that Henry Ford had the type of brain that could come up with the concept of the production car, while Great Uncle Troy had the type of brain that would skip past this stage and simply come up with a less lucrative concept such as Motat, before the car had even been invented.

Under controlled conditions, Great Uncle Troy will be cremated again on Monday.