KEY POINTS:
The day I see Phil Keoghan there is torrential rain, thunder and lightning. It's weather made for a scripted line. So I say to Keoghan, "I was going to say miserable weather, isn't it? But miserable's probably not in your vocabulary."
He doesn't do miserable. And, of course, he loves the weather because you don't get weather in LA, where he's now based. He is all about being upbeat and making the most of life. NOW, or No Opportunity Wasted in full, is the title of his book and the telly show he's here filming. It begins on TVNZ next Sunday and is about getting people to face fears and test limits and take leaps of faith.
On the cover of the book - subtitled Eight Steps to Getting the Most Out of Life - is a picture of Keoghan leaping in the air, arms outstretched, mouth wide open in what presumably signals the ecstasy of sheer being. I'm exhausted just looking at it.
He's best known for hosting The Amazing Race, which involved people competing in a sort of round-the-globe treasure hunt for big bucks. It is all very motivational and competitive and about pushing personal limits and so on.
The publicist asks whether he should book me in for two hours with Keoghan. And perhaps I'd like to do something with him? No, I would not. Because doing something with Keoghan is bound to mean something involving going up hills or in water where there might be sharks, or, God help us, bungy jumping. And one hour will be ample, thank you. There is only so much relentless ra ra a girl can take.
Actually, he looks quite normal and relaxed when we meet. He's a little fella, "ropey", as somebody said. He looks as though he spends a lot of time in the gym, or doing other extremely torturous things to his body, but he's not at all ra ra really. He has those American teeth - you couldn't be on the telly there and not have those teeth, and, to me, he sounds American. But he says to Americans he doesn't. "They still say: 'where are you from?"'
He had to Americanise his accent to get on American telly; he couldn't get work. He was shortlisted to host Survivor but he's glad now he didn't get it. Well yes, I say, it would be really boring saying "the tribe has spoken" over and over. He says "from a personal standpoint I would rather this job because I get to travel the world and he [host Jeff Probst] gets stuck on an island".
He is not annoyed with me for raising his accent but he says it sometimes "pisses me off a wee bit because, you know, some people don't like that [he has that American] accent. Well, it pisses me off because they think you're less of a New Zealander if you have an accent."
I don't know why he'd let it bother him because he's rich (presumably, he has the Kiwi attitude to money which is that he doesn't care to talk about it) and successful and has four Emmies. But it does a bit because "I'm proud to be a New Zealander and I don't think it comes down to an accent".
He'll never not be one when he's at home because here he'll always be the bloke who was on the kiddy show Spot On. Taxi drivers still ask if he was that guy and he loves that.
I didn't ever see him on Spot On but I can imagine what he was like. He is 39 but the child is barely suppressed. He likes adventures and trying new things and you can easily imagine him making mud pies with gusto. In his book he has a list of "miscellaneous childish" things that he would like to do. One is: "Enter and win a hot dog eating competition." I ask him how his inner child is and he says: "Ha, it's all good." They're in touch and talking to each other? "I feel like this is a therapy session." He has only himself to blame for that, doesn't he. "Do I now? You're the one asking the questions."
He is good natured, not like a big time American telly star at all - he says he's better known in Canada - and can take any amount of teasing about his earnestness.
Somebody wrote a story about him once and called him a guru. He says he doesn't remember that and "I don't know - what does guru mean?" A guru might write a book like his. "I don't see myself as a guru. There's nothing in that book that is highly original. All it is, is just life lessons. Everything in that book is about stuff I've learnt from other people."
It isn't quite true that I was the one asking the questions. He likes to debate things, rather than give answers. We got into a wrangle over a charity competition in which, he said, he was one of the judges but wasn't allowed to award first, second or third prizes.
"We had to pick 20 winners. Now the difference between the twentieth and first was so night and day it was like somebody designing a jumbo jet and another a rubber band plane."
I remind him that he has already been going on about how as long as people strive to do their best, that's better than good enough. So, it was the best rubber band plane someone could do. Isn't that good enough?
"But why not judge it for what it is? I mean everybody can see it's blatantly obvious and some people put in a lot of effort and some people didn't, so shouldn't you reward effort? Don't you think? Do you disagree with that point? I'm happy to be argued out of it."
I'm not about to enter any competition, even in the form of an argument that I can't win - this sort of stuff is catching - so I try to move him on by asking another question.
But he isn't finished by a long shot and we get stuck in the jumbo versus rubber band plane argument for another 10 minutes.
In the end he says: "Look, it's not a big thing. I'm just saying to you it just surprised me."
It sounds like he thinks it's a big thing. "Well, because you keep asking questions."
"I tried to move on. You would not be moved. Are you ready to be moved now?"
"Yes. Yes. I'm sorry. I'm drunk on coffee."
The question I've been trying to ask is about how he's been described as a fierce optimist. "Yeah, it gets me into trouble sometimes too. Cos, I think I'm stubborn sometimes. Can't you tell? I have a feeling you're stubborn too."
We will, I tell him, see who is the more stubborn here, "won't we?"
He says: "Is that a competition?"
Note that "enter and WIN a hot dog eating competition".
We also had a little polite chat about the merits or otherwise of bungy jumping, which he sees as a valuable tool in awakening the senses or something and I see as stupid. What's the point of it? I say. "Exactly," he says. "I had this conversation with my dad. My dad said, 'What the hell has a bungy jump got to do with life?'
"And it's just my opinion, but my opinion is that I believe that inherently all of us want to be scared in some way. We all want to stretch our minds in some way.
"Our lives have become safer and safer. What we used to do as kids, we don't allow our kids to do any more."
His own big fear is of being buried alive. He was, and is still, badly claustrophobic.
"Oh, I'll always be claustrophobic. When I talk about face your fear, I don't mean conquer it necessarily, just face it."
To face his fear, he went diving in deep underground caves in Mexico where he had to squeeze through tiny gaps and know that there was all that earth above him. So no surprises there.
Fears, he says, "serve as a metaphor for how you live the rest of your life, meaning other fears in your life seem more manageable because taking yourself to your ultimate fear means: So, I've been to here so here's ok."
I'd toyed with the idea of getting him to jump in the harbour for the picture but I liked him too much by the end to attempt to make him do it.
He probably would have - except that would have meant I'd won.
We settle for getting him to balance on top of a post on the edge of the wharf. He starts mucking around, doing the cover of the book act, on one leg.
"For God's sake, don't fall in," I say.
"Oh, you care about me now?" he says.
Let's not get carried away. But, he's all right.
And being a Kiwi he'll understand that this is meant to be a term of endearment.
