But Mr Key could spare 30 minutes in Kerikeri the next day to come to the Advocate and we'd be the only media to get that opportunity, insists the nice woman from the PM's office.
"Can't we do it somewhere else?" I squeak.
Apparently not.
I'm thinking a sit-down surely requires a cuppa. And I'm looking at the office cups. As sturdy as bricks, one is emblazoned with a car logo and the other one a mug of beer and the words "Beer ... helping ugly people have sex since 1862!"
With no time to ponder the glaring question (why only since 1862?), I dash out to buy four cheap cups - I grab a blue one, black one, red one and green one.
But the office accoutrements is of little concern to the PM's office security people when they come to check the place out. Three of them climb the steep, skinny stairs after having found our door behind a kitchen shop - and burst out laughing. "Is this it?" one asks.
But they have to make a plan. The PM will sit there, his media minders there, a security minder will stand there, another will be stationed in the carpark, the neighbouring shopkeepers will be asked to shift their cars.
Media stand up The next day there's the usual media scrum as Key and Communications Minister Amy Adams use the Kerikeri NorthTec campus to make an important announcement.
A few days before Transport Minister Bridges stood on a Northland bridge to break the news that 10 single-laned, dangerous bridges in Northland were going to be upgraded to two lanes. Media outnumbered the Nats on that occasion.
At the campus the Key party gets a short look in a classroom where students are doing something connected to the days's buzzword, "connectivity", then it's to another room to announce to health workers, educators, iwi, students, local government and businesspeople that they need better broadband.
Everyone politely accepts the information, which comes with the promise the Government will work more closely with Northland business and local authorities when choosing which path the bigger broadband footprint will travel.
A few minutes later at the stand-up, TV cameras, radio mics and smartphones vie for position and media ask Key and Adams what's new. That same announcement was made last September. Adams and Key are smooth as silk, unruffled. Now the process has begun, they say, smilingly.
The meeting Earlier at the office, Northland Age and Focus writer Sandy Myhre popped in to tidy up.
She brought some flowers, wiped the table, cleaned the loo and told me I wasn't to use it until after the PM left.
When his party arrived - himself, three minders and the Nats' local candidate Mark Osborne - I point out the flowers.
"Oh, that was very nice of her," The PM says as one of his people takes the vase off the table and puts it on the floor.
Mark Osborne, who I'm meeting formally for the first time, says he's quite comfortable about where he is in the scheme of things (it's no secret he's been thrown in at the deep end).
"The time's right for me to step up, I'm raring to go," he says earnestly. (They've all turned down my offer of a cuppa but I really think Osborne looks like he needs a cup of tea, and maybe a lie down.)
I ask about Northland's needs, the region's terrible showing in all the wrong indices. I'm thinking joblessness, poverty, health, education , crime, teenage pregnancy ...
"We actually think Northland's doing pretty well," the PM says.
He's talking about upwardly mobile figures showing the region's economy is growing - on the back of agriculture, so to speak.
"But, yeah," he says, "there are inherent issues in Northland.
"But there's been quite significant change in the last seven years since we've been in."
Er, that's been for about 40 years, I say.
"Well, it's not as bad as it was," the PM says.
A lot of the issues are intergenerational, such as low educational achievement, he says. Which reminds me of other kinds of schooling problems, like the Te Kura Hourua ki Whangaruru charter school. How could a Government sit back while one of its big ideas fails so badly?
"It's not a state school," he says.
And you wouldn't let that happen to a state school, I say.
"But it's not a state school," he says again.
We're on to the roads, and Bridges' bridges. Why now, why so out of the blue, and after two of the bridges, at Matakohe, were pulled from the top of the region's roading priority list only three years ago? And the Northland Regional Land Transport Plan is currently being finalised. How much dialogue and consultation was there with the local agencies before the bridge announcement?
"Look, all the bridges have been raised with us in the past ... it's not completely new."
But why now?
"Look, we're campaigning," the PM says, and shrugs. "We're campaigning our policies. It's what we do."
We talk about other issues in Northland. Did he see the Pipiwai Titoki roading group protesting outside the polytechnic when he left? We talk about dust, about primary industry - dairying and forestry - earning big bucks for New Zealand but the rural roads they have to live on and use not being up to scratch.
Time is running out, and the PM's minders are looking at us pointedly.
"Look," he says, "Rome wasn't built in a day and Northland's not going to be sealed in a day."
Or a century, I think to myself.
But yes, the announcements National is making at the moment are all about the byelection, the PM says. You get the feeling he'd like to say 'you're damned if you do and damned if you don't', but he doesn't.
"We're not hiding anything," he says. "These announcements would have been made at some time, they were projects we were working on, they are not bribes.
"And yes, there have been a few of us out and about in Northland. We do that in a byelection, particularly."
He stands by his decision not to sack Mike Sabin when it came to his attention - "on November 25" - there was a police investigation into the then Northland MP. But, he didn't have to sack him; Sabin resigned.
Sabin was, he thought, a very good MP. "It was my intention to make him a cabinet minister."
He describes the outcome as "frustrating".
And expensive? "Well, ah," he says, coming up with neither yes nor no ... but adds that democracy can be expensive.
And, National's possibly losing the seat; how does he feel about that? Winston Peters, in the Magic Bus, is getting great mileage out of the government having come to Northland bearing gifts. He's chuckling and sneering his head off as he covers - and makes - huge ground in the electorate.
"No-one's under any illusion about the safety of the Northland seat or the needs of Northland," the PM says.
"We're think we're in for a hell of a fight. We need our voters."
And it's over, bar the photos. We stand up from our sit-down. On the way out the Prime Minister sees the Je Suis Charlie poster on the wall, and we joke about whether to have it in the background of our photo.
"My daughter lives in Paris," he says, and grimaces slightly at what the poster evokes. He's been affable, patient, reeled out facts and figures like nobody's business, he's tired, and, yes, he's statesperson-like.
Shame he didn't want a cup of tea. I would have let him have the blue cup.
