One night in Taupo

Clint Brown at his home in Red Beach. Picture / Bradley Ambrose

Clint Brown ended his night crumpled between a blue rubbish bin and a red fast-food caravan.

He told police he didn't remember what happened and TV3 bosses he wasn't drunk.

He's been told not to comment further - but yesterday, frustrated at not being allowed to defend himself, he returned the Herald on Sunday's calls.

"I don't want to just fob you off," he said. "I'd love to tell my side of the story and one day I will... I'm just trying to save my bacon here. As soon as TV3 sacks me or does something, or we sort out the situation..."

Still bearing the black eye he got on that night out in Taupo 10 days ago, Brown said he couldn't remember anything of the latter part of the night and wouldn't comment on his injuries.

TV3 has suspended Brown and hired a private investigator to establish what really happened.

"The media keep bagging the crap out of me," Brown said. "Everyone is just having a field day with my name, my reputation. At the moment I'm fighting for my job."

His amnesia, he said, was brought on by his head injuries and was not alcohol-related. But locals in Taupo say they have little doubt that the man they saw being "obnoxious" and "abusive" must have been intoxicated, or as they say, "absolutely off his tree".

Several witnesses spoken to by the Herald on Sunday say Brown spent almost 20 minutes yelling abuse before one small man threw one big punch that Wednesday night, breaking Brown's eye socket and leaving him concussed on the concrete. The presenter was then allegedly kicked on the ground.

The witnesses say Brown had targeted two Maori women outside a pub, calling them "Tainui bitches" and "Tainui whores" before someone told him he had the wrong tribe.

Then it was "Tuwharetoa bitches" and "Tuwharetoa whores". They ignored him. He screamed louder. One woman strode across the street and asked him what the problem was. "You're all f... ing bitches, f... all you black bitches," he allegedly spat at her. "I've got Islander blood. You don't know who I am."

It was that woman's partner who locals say decked Brown just a few minutes later.

Brown said yesterday there were two people who were with him that night who had a very different version of events, but he had promised them he would protect their privacy.

"The stuff they told me is basically a lot different than what's been in the media. I can't remember anything, so I can't defend myself."

Senior Sergeant Tony Jeruissen said police were still deciding whether the behaviour "of anyone involved" in the incident warranted intervention.

Jeruissen said he was worried that Brown was apparently able to get so drunk in a Taupo restaurant. He refused to say whether any official complaint had been laid.

The small man with the powerful punch was still wary of being charged and would not speak to the Herald on Sunday. But witnesses to the attack say the events before it make them believe Brown was a scrap waiting to happen.

Deb Brabender ran five taxi vanloads of people home while Brown sat outside the Tuwharetoa St taxi stand that night. She says he abused every load of customers.

"He was saying things about 'Where's your mosque?' 'Where's your towel rag?'."

On her fifth trip, he slammed the taxi door shut and kicked it as she drove off.

"I said, 'What's the bet he's going to get a hiding soon, I know he is, the way he's carrying on.'

"I was quite shocked with his attitude, you know, being a person in his profession."

The first media report about the incident, last Saturday, said Brown had been bashed, "set upon by at least two men" in an unprovoked attack.

He decided not to lay charges, the story said, as he didn't want the drama of a court case and didn't think there was much chance of catching the two mystery attackers who fled.

He'd be right there, say locals who claim they know the man who decked the Fight for Life star.

The funniest thing, grins Matt McDowell, a wiry earringed chef who works the grill at Finn MacCuhal's Irish Pub, is the size of the man they say hit Brown.

"I know for a fact the guy [that he believed punched Brown] wasn't a big fella. He wasn't at all, eh."

McDowell spent that night in Finn's fairylighted courtyard, drinking with a friend who was leaving for Australia.

From there they had a great view over Taupo's entertainment mecca - four pubs and two Italian restaurants on their side, a taxi stand and hamburger caravan on the other.

About 20 metres separates the courtyard from the bench where Brown ate his burger, " abusing everyone".

McDowell says Brown spent about 15 minutes yelling at the two women. He heard Brown's "black bitches... f...ing whores" response when the woman crossed the road to confront him.

"We were all sitting there going, 'Whoa, look at this!'.

"I didn't even realise it was him until the next day when they said it was Clint Brown off the news."

McDowell didn't see the punch, but Kazbar owner Peter Paul did.

Paul told the New Zealand Herald that Brown was turned away at the Kazbar door because he was too drunk.

Paul asked two of the bar's regulars to take him over the road for a burger.

"The guy that knocked him over warned him about four or five times to tone it down and then when Clint [approached] him he knocked his wife down in the process," he told the Herald. "If Clint Brown hadn't knocked his wife over I don't think the guy would have [punched] him."

But still there are the gaps. Brown, who was in town for dinner to discuss the A1 Grand Prix motor race, says he remembers nothing after leaving the On Tap restaurant with a group of businessmen. No one knows exactly where he went but if anyone had a view of the end of the night, it was fast food stall owner, Marilyn Khan.

Khan says Brown bought a toasted sandwich. He came back later for a burger. She got a good look at him from under the awning.

"I looked at him and thought, 'Man, he looks familiar'. Then my staff member looked at him and said yeah, he looks like Clint Brown - but he's too white!"

They had a good laugh about that.

Brown perched himself back on the bench.

That's when he spotted the women across the road.

Khan doesn't want to repeat what Brown said. "He was so... he was just, he was obnoxious. He was just yelling. He was calling them Tainui. The idiot hasn't even got the right tribe."

Brown and the woman's partner yelled at one another for a few minutes, she said - then Brown stormed off down the road, before suddenly turning and running back.

That's when he apparently barged into the couple. She fell over and her husband punched Brown.

"You see them on TV and they look really good," says Khan. "If the young kids saw them... when they're that bad... they'd have no one to look up to."

CanWest chief executive Brent Impey said the matter was now an employment issue that was the subject of a full investigation.

Brown had not yet been spoken to, and Impey did not know when that would happen.

"Like Clint himself, it's obviously not the sort of thing that you like - Clint was bashed up here," he said.