Mark Sainsbury ... non-star

The uncomplicated and cheerful Mark Sainsbury. Picture / Martin Sykes

The strange thing about Mark Sainsbury - possibly the only thing, damn it - is that he has been on the telly for almost 25 years and he's not strange at all. I mean strange in the telly sense of being a complicated mix of robust ego and fragile neediness. He's not like that at all. He is, I think, the most uncomplicated person I've interviewed.

When you arrive for interviews, particularly with people who also make their living doing interviews, there's usually a suspicious sort of sizing up which, if you're lucky, will ease. This is mostly nerves.

Sainsbury just starts talking as though he's continuing some conversation he started with you last time you met. I've never met him before.

This is nice because when people have been on the telly for years you do feel as though you know them. You mostly don't, of course. But Sainsbury says he doesn't think there's much difference between him on the telly and him off the telly.

I wonder if he has to be nice all the time and he says: "What do you mean? On the programme or just generally? I'd like to think I am nice all the time." His image, if he ever stopped to consider it, would be: "I think people think I'm a friendly person. I don't think people see me as a threatening person. People always want to have a yak about things, which is good. And they have a reason to come and talk to you which is far better than sitting there in the corner with no one to talk to, like some shocking loser."

I think he must do his fair share of starting the yakking.

As soon as I arrive, he starts going on about how he's hurt his back and "of course you look like an absolute tit. You need a big sign on you saying 'I have a bad back therefore I'm walking around like a cripple.' " When the photographer asks us to move inside, Sainsbury says he'll carry my coffee cup and moves off muttering, "don't you worry about my back".

He's supposed to be here to talk up his new talk show, About Now, because the first episode screened on Monday night. He's never had to do many interviews before because he has never, he cheerfully offers, been "a Paul or a Judy or a Simon".

He might as well put a big sign on his back saying: "Not a star." This would suit him.

For the new show he has to do promos that are a bit quirky. "Hey! Hey! Hey!" he shouts, doing quirky on cue. "The thing is, you could go 'oh, gee shucks' and all that sort of stuff. But if you're going to make the programme then you commit to promoting the programme and you've just got to suck on it and do it. There's no point going 'this is terrible'. But I do find that stuff uncomfortable and you do think: 'Oh, God. Am I going to look like an absolute wally?'"

That is about as close to angst as he comes. He gets the normal sort of nerves before any show. Mostly worries about getting someone's name wrong - a live interviewer's nightmare. But other than that, he doesn't fret about things like "what's going to happen or careers or dying".

I ask about the recognition that comes with the job and he says, mock-pompously, "it's a difficult thing".

He was at a school fundraiser recently and a fan approached him thinking he was Ewart Barnsley.

"That happens quite a bit and someone else said to me: 'I really enjoyed your coverage of the America's Cup.' I said: 'Cheers.' In some ways I quite like people to think I'm either Martin Tasker or Ewart Barnsley. So if you ever did anything truly despicable you'd just make sure you say your name's Ewart or Martin as you flee the scene."

He is not self-effacing, exactly. He has a healthy and cheery sense that what he does is a good thing to do both because he likes doing it and it's worthwhile. "You're there to tell a story for people who weren't there." It is somehow telling that the story he chooses to illustrate why telly journalism can be about doing good is about a kid with glue ear - that never made it to air.

What I really like about him is that he is not precious about being on the telly, or about the process of it. He tells me the show's name came about because nobody could think of one and it couldn't be anything with "late" in it, because "10 o'clock is prime time, Michele". The producer's hairdresser said: 'Why don't you call it Right About Now.' It's just a name." The original idea was to have a studio audience of nine but when the set arrived it was twice the size they'd ordered - so now there is an audience of 18 because "we couldn't have these people sitting there like Nigel No Mates".

He is so nice and cheery that there is no point in being even the smallest bit snarky, which is possibly what I am being when I ask him about the Dollar a Confession slot on his show. People turn up and pay a dollar to tell the camera something they want to own up to. I must have pulled a face, because he looks a bit hurt and says: "you didn't like it?" "Well, I don't know what it's for," I say. And I really don't - but I say it kindly because his moustache has gone all droopy and sad-looking. Oh, go on, have a free plug for the show, I say to make up for being mean. "Why should people watch it?"

"Why?! Well, because I think they'll enjoy it. I mean ... that sounds awful, doesn't it?" I don't think it does, I think it's quite sweet but TVNZ's marketing arm may not agree.

This is a bit unfair anyway. Because what's he supposed to say? That it's the best thing since the last thing like it. That is being mean. It has a beautiful set, for one thing. With a chandelier. "I love the chandelier," he says. But what is it supposed to say, that chandelier? "They wanted, I suppose, an almost smoky, salon type sort of thing. I mean, everything's been done in television so it's not like you're going to come up with something that, jeepers, nobody's ever thought of before."

What he should have said (I'll be sending the marketing people a bill) is that his show is like him: easy-going, chatty, nice. This is perhaps not sexy, but the thing is not supposed to be sexy. "Everyone's prettier than me," he says in response to something terribly sexist I'm ashamed of saying about a telly sheila. I blame him. He is "reasonably blokey" which is contagious and would have made a much better name for the show.