Rodney Hide's 'third woman'

Louise Crome - not Louisa Cleave - and Rodney Hide. Photos / Supplied

He still hasn't divorced his angry wife. He's been jetting around the world at the taxpayers' expense with a blonde girlfriend 21 years his junior - and now, Rodney Hide is revealed to have been sending text messages to a third woman.

No wonder the Act leader needs to work out three days a week at his Wellington gym.

A producer at TVNZ's Close Up show says she has received two text messages from Hide. One arrived at 7.45 one morning: "Miss you," it said.

Another time, he phoned her saying: "Your gorgeous boyfriend is going to be on Close Up tonight."

The producer did not take offence: she realised it was due to one of the traps of modern technology.

The producer's name is Louisa Cleave; Hide's girlfriend's name is Louise Crome. Hide had been texting and calling the wrong number, by mistake.

Compared to the mistakes he has made recently, the misdirected cellphone communications will seem laughable.

But yesterday, Hide and Crome weren't laughing. The fourth woman in his life - his mother Margaret - said he was staked out by cameras.

"I think it is the tall-poppy syndrome and because he has a young girlfriend" Margaret Hide said.

"But they are very happy together."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY