Loved, loathed but not ignored

By JULIE MIDDLETON

Whether you think he's the cheeky-chappy champion of the Kiwi battler or he makes you grind your teeth in irritation, broadcaster Paul Holmes is hard to ignore.

For 15 years, he's run a dual career - hosting Newstalk ZB radio from 6am to 8.30am on weekdays and the Holmes show on Television New Zealand's TV One at 7pm. That double act will continue once Holmes starts at Prime next year.

His career started in the early 1970s with the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation in Christchurch.

During an overseas stint he worked in radio in Australia, Britain, the Netherlands and Austria.

Back home, he did two years as a talkback host in Wellington.

But Holmes started becoming a national figure in March 1987, when he replaced the legendary Merv Smith as breakfast host of 1ZB in Auckland.

The dual career started when the Holmes programme was launched in 1989. Pitched as a current affairs slot, the first edition featured a rocky interview and the now-famous walk-out by America's Cup skipper Dennis Conner.

Holmes, now 54, has been polarising people ever since.

Journalists will tell you the mercurial Holmes is not a thoughtful seeker of facts.

He is, they say, a downmarket entertainer who sometimes just happens to produce a serious interview.

Says Weekend Herald columnist Gordon McLauchlan: "Holmes is not so much about what's happening, as about Paul Holmes. He should be hosting a late-evening talk-show where he can cavort with celebrities, or lament with those among us who consider themselves victims."

Even Prime Minister Helen Clark has an opinion. Yesterday, she was reported as saying: "Paul's had some great moments and he's had some appalling moments."

Holmes once told the Herald: "First I'm a journalist, but a lot of what I do is a performance - relating to people, amusing them."

That appears to include his private life. Holmes is a shameless self-publicist - selling his stories to women's magazines while complaining of a lack of privacy, penning a titillating autobiography, and recording an easy-listening CD in 2000.

At times he has become the news: surviving a 1989 helicopter crash into the sea off the North Island's east coast, which killed a colleague.

His marriage to television personality Hine Elder was also widely reported. So was his marriage-wrecking affair with journalist Fleur Revell, and her public betrayal of him. He is now married to Deborah Hamilton.

We know he has battled the bottle. We know, in detail, about his skirmish with prostate cancer.

And he has reached deep into the nation's living rooms. After this year's devastating floods in the lower North Island, a special edition of Holmes raised more than $2 million.

Holmes is the highest-paid journalist in the country, enjoying an executive lifestyle complete with vintage biplane and Hawkes Bay estate.

Until he fell off the TVNZ payroll yesterday, Holmes was the top-paid TVNZ staffer, earning between $730,000 and $740,000 - more than his boss, Ian Fraser, and the Prime Minister. That doesn't count his radio income.

Various tasteless pronouncements - he calls them "satirical" - have prompted complaints in the past two years.

Last year alone, his on-air jibes prompted 12 complaints to watchdog agency the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), and started speculation that he was well past his best.

The greatest outcry came last September when he called United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan a "cheeky darkie" on his radio show.

The BSA chastised him but didn't impose a penalty. Holmes' employer, it said, had already come down hard enough. Holmes sponsor Mitsubishi pulled its $1 million support.