Citizen Holmes lives the dream

He's humbled, really, and proud, and, frankly, just a little uncomfortable with one's implied greatness.

Broadcaster Paul Holmes has been burdened with his greatest accolade yet - an award for corporate citizenship from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a branch of renowned think-tank, The Smithsonian Institute.

Mainly Holmes is pleased. Chuffed. Just look at the company he's keeping.

"There are some amazing honorees, as they call them, there are some amazing names connected with this around the world and I'm chuffed to be in that club."

Previous winners include Ted Turner of Time Warner, Henry McKinnell, chairman of Pfizer, and Sherry Lansing, former chief executive of Paramount Studios. The award will be presented in January.

Holmes is the first New Zealander to win the citizenship award. US-based expatriate Peter Watson, former National Security Council adviser at the White House, won the award for public service.

The centre highlighted Holmes' compassion, willingness to ask tough questions and to champion the underdog. It said: "New Zealand is fortunate to have as enlightening, engaging and informative a personality as Mr Holmes."

Holmes, who infamously called United Nations chief Kofi Annan a "cheeky darkie", said: "There are probably many New Zealanders who could accept this award, I think, but I think I have handled hard physical and mental workloads in a prominent position commanding considerable responsibility for a long time."

It's a corporate award and Holmes has, he says, done much for the corporates he has worked for.

"As for the citizenship part of it, I would like to think I have had a good and generous and considerate attitude to the people I've broadcast to. I like to use the roles I have in a positive way for people."

Holmes, 56, is a polarising figure and this award is likely to fire up those who love and hate him. It's this appeal that has generated the ratings to survive 19 years as morning host on NewstalkZB and 15 years as frontman for TVNZ.

It's a little ironic, too, because former US President Woodrow Wilson, for whom the centre was created, was a scholar and the Holmes show was clever but never terribly scholarly. As Holmes says, it was always there for the "strugglers... those who don't find voice easily", an attitude that "probably earned us some contempt within the intellectual classes who didn't quite see what we were doing".

He has no regrets, still, about leaving TVNZ - two years ago next month - over a contract dispute. His 7pm current affairs show at Prime has been canned. He now has a one-hour interview show once a week.

Holmes believes Prime's former owners Channel 9 failed to fulfil promises behind the fledgling channel.

Expectations were also inflated, he acknowledges, by Prime's aggressive stance at the outset. The battle against TVNZ was always going to be "a very long struggle".

It goes on, and Holmes is not above taking the odd swing, even though he sugar-coats it.

"I have gone out of my way not to dump on TVNZ," he says, then: "It has to be said TVNZ does that very well to itself.

"I don't want to talk about the people there but I will say there is no way those current news ratings are sustainable for TVNZ. They're not high enough to attract the revenue the company needs."

He doesn't know how he kept up the "grind" for 16 years, and knows there has been a cost. "Only in the sense that broadcasting as I do it is to a great extent giving of yourself. That uses a lot of energy, which is a flash way of saying I've probably worked too hard to have much to give when I've got home."

Holmes' life has been busy and public. What will "they" say about the award, he asks. It's odd that he should wonder when so much has been said about him over the years anyway.

It is, perhaps, a sign of how unusual this award is and how much he treasures it that he does worry.

"In the end, I lived it, others dreamt it," he says. "That's Hinemoa's [former wife Hinemoa Elder] line actually. I said 'look at this, oh woe, poor me, look what they're saying', and she said 'don't worry about it, you live it, they dream it'.

"I look back now and see she was entirely correct."