KEY POINTS:
In the final debate of the election campaign, both John Key and Helen Clark took the chance to make a few last-minute confessions.
A question about whether the public display of tobacco should be banned in shops led to Helen Clark admitting she had indeed "had a puff".
She hastened to add it was in her teens and "which teenager hasn't?"
John Key, as it turned out.
Mr Key said he had never had a puff - prompting Clark to further note that the topic was a "hoary old annual" and as she had commented to Paul Holmes in previous elections, she was a student in the 1960s.
A more serious misdemeanour for Mr Key emerged when he was asked if he had ever broken the law.
"I have actually," he said, pausing for dramatic effect before saying his great sin was to drive his car on a carless day when he was at university.
His excuse was that the car had to be taken to the garage. But he got off by the skin of his teeth.
"The police wrote to me but carless days ended about that time and they decided it wasn't worth prosecuting."
He swore there was nothing worse, adding "certainly nothing that would be worth dispatching Mike Williams to see anyway" - a reference to the Labour Party president's recent trip to Melbourne to see if Mr Key was involved in the H-Fee scandal.
Helen Clark took it in good humour, noting she wouldn't want National's president, Judy Kirk, on the warpath against her either.
Her own answer to the question of unlawful acts was perhaps slightly risky, given the trouble her speeding motorcade caused in Timaru. "I think I've had a couple of speeding tickets."
But anyone looking for any real verbal biffo was gravely disappointed.
Indeed, the conviviality got a bit cloying. Asked if she thought they would get on well if they weren't political rivals, Helen Clark said they might enjoy a beer or cup of coffee together. She noted she and Jim Bolger now got along quite well.
Mr Key told of a 7-year-old telling him he was "Helen Clark's boyfriend".
And although he didn't think they'd be on each other's Christmas card lists, "I think we can see the good in each other".
Helen Clark even leaped to Mr Key's defence in a question about his religious beliefs. Mr Key said he was not a deeply religious person, and did not believe in life after death. Asked if he believed there was "something up there", he said, "I don't really know. None of us really knows."
And while Helen Clark has often berated Mr Key for saying he didn't really know where he stood on the 1981 Springbok tour, the well-known agnostic chipped in to say she didn't know whether there was a supreme being either and it was better to say so.
After the debate, both leaders told reporters they thought people had seen a different side of them.
"You know, I think that's good," said Mr Key. "We are both very passionate about the future of New Zealand. We passionately want the job of being Prime Minister."
Helen Clark didn't think it was a tame debate, just different and probably more interesting for viewers.
- NZPA
