Kim Hill eases back, a bit warily

WARREN GAMBLE finds the edgy queen of National Radio is apprehensive about giving up the danger of her daily show.

Kim Hill sits down, stirs her fifth black coffee of the day and sighs: "I don't know what there is to say, really."

This is not false modesty. It's a journalist's hatred of being interviewed -we ask the questions! - mixed with puzzlement over why people would care about her new job.

For a moment my hatred of interviewing another journalist, let alone the country's best interviewer, is replaced by a bigger fear - returning to Auckland with no interview at all.

Perhaps sensing the end of my career by not talking about hers, Hill takes pity.

Why is she giving up her award-winning weekday nine-to-noon slot on National Radio for the calmer airwaves of Saturday morning?

"Nine years, you know," she says in that smoke, whisky and honey voice.

"I haven't done a job for nine years before, and I became a little terrified about doing it forever ...

"I think people do need to change. I mean, I would rather leave before I get stale, rather than get stale and then leave.

"It's not as if I'm not enjoying it any more ... In a way it's because I was enjoying it so much that I thought it was probably a good time to kind of use that energy to skate off."

Energy? Kim Hill could be an alternative and sustainable resource.

Earlier this day, in her small, characterless Radio New Zealand studio, she is in constant motion.

Her arms and hands fly, sometimes like a referee, sometimes a novice aerobic student, sometimes a poi dancer, sometimes as physical punctuation marks when she makes a point.

So it's surprising when she confesses over coffee that she's a "very, very, lazy person".

"My ideal holiday is lying flat on my back in the sun on a beach with a book.

"I need the daily deadline to give me a pick-up to be there."

"There" is a place where few other New Zealand broadcasters have been able to tread. Hill's breadth of knowledge is formidable, her recall lightning. She is as much at home talking American politics as discussing Wellington's festival, skewering politicians or skewering vegetarian kebabs.

In the first manic news hour of the morning show she empathises with Teresa Cormack's grandmother, delves into marae protocol with Donna Awatere Huata and presses Merepeka Raukawa-Tait on her new Christian Heritage calling.

The debate with the head of Women's Refuge unleashes some of Hill's trademark weapons: the laugh that says "you obviously cannot be serious", the "oh hello" and "oh puh-lease" of disagreement, questions full of small, sharp words.

You know it's good radio when you sometimes feel sorry for the politicians.

Some, however, are beyond pity. One of her legendary on-air battles was with English author Jeffrey Archer soon after she started her show in 1993.

A bristling Lord Archer, warned of Hill's reputation, came "armed and dangerous" and blew up without provocation.

"He's now in prison - what can I say."

Her interview with Monica Lewinsky three years ago was a highlight, notable for the former White House intern's sharp intake of breath when Hill asked if it was wise to have performed fellatio on the President the first day she met him.

"She was kind of stupid. Like, she'd done it with the President of the United States and she's still kind of shocked by that?"

Hill doesn't know how she will cope with easing back on the sense of danger that daily hard news brings.

"It's a bit like a drug. It's a bit like cutting back on your coffee or something.

"The trouble with this job is that there is no way that I can even think about doing something different while I'm still doing this job."

Her present schedule is: drop 11-year-old daughter Hannah at school, get into work by 8 am, go home after work at midday, research interview subjects, skim-read the book (sometimes two books) featured on the programme the next day, pick up Hannah, dinner, more research, more reading.

What does she do to relax? "I don't do relax." But she hopes the new job can change that - let her spend more relaxed time with her daughter at nights.

"I've been working really hard for a long time and I don't want the kid to remember me as always busy.

"And even though I spend a lot of time with her now, I would just quite like to stretch out a bit more."

At least, she laughs, before Hannah gets over her mother and goes nightclubbing, leaving her at home with the dog.

The dog, Mangu (Maori for black), is a spoodle - a spaniel-poodle cross - and a compromise between Hill's desire for a non-moulting poodle and Hannah's for a spaniel.

The five-month relationship has turned from indifference to devotion, with Hill even taking Mangu to work, giving him a run in the carpark during news breaks.

Her previous pet, Roger the rat, given by a listener, ran away.

So what happens after she starts her new job next month and wakes up midweek with nothing particular to do?

The garden at her Brooklyn home has not been touched for six months, a pile of skim-read books await proper attention, or she might just stay in bed. And there is always, she says, outrageously, daytime television.

But seriously? Despite her dislike of how she looks onscreen, she had a ball doing an arts documentary last year and would consider other offers.

She will soon appear in a Wellington production of The Vagina Monologues, but says she is too old (46) to get seriously into acting.

She might even learn the cello. She will not write a book.

Hill is certainly not going into quasi-retirement. Hosting the new Saturday show, replacing TV3 journalist John Campbell, will take a lot of her time and energy, and as always she is apprehensive about it.

I suggest that Campbell might have been too cheerful for weary Saturday morning heads, and realised the mistake too late.

"Ah ha, that's right. I want to introduce a measure of misery to your Saturday mornings. I want to make you feel just fleetingly bad about life.

"Yeah, I ain't going to be cheerful." (Contradicted by another burst of laughter).

What she really wants to do is keep some of her regular guests, keep her book and poetry reviews, and still cover some hard news issues in a longer, more in-depth way that will not turn off weekend listeners.

Politicians will not be off the hook. As if to prove the point, former Prime Minister Jim Bolger walks by and they snap back into interviewer/subject mode for a minute.

She fires questions about Kiwibank and the United States; he adopts prime ministerial tones.

He congratulates her on the new job and says she will do well. She is not so sure.

"I don't worry quite as much as I used to. And then I worry about not worrying, so I'll just be apprehensive for a while and see what happens."