Toxic and damaged - but not yet history

Don Brash, left, and Rodney Hide. Photo / Brett Phibbs

Two old friends entered together and sat down for the show. The office was cluttered with boxes of old election pamphlets, Act Party caps and one box labelled "historical - various".

Hide started with a "hi" and a wink to journalists he knew, delivered a party political broadcast ... and then finally got to the point.

But he could not quite bring himself to announce his resignation. Instead, he said he believed Brash was the best person to lead Act to success and he had his support.

Brash said they had been friends for 15 years and "in the last week or so I've put our friendship to very considerable strain, to put it at its mildest."

"It's nothing," Hide shrugged, as if that was not Judas sitting beside him.

Brash sang Hide's praises until he was reminded that just the day before he had described him as "toxic".

"No," he said. "I said his brand had become toxic." Hide, "for good reason and bad ... is tarnished in some way".

Hide was asked about Brash describing him as "damaged goods".

Brash did not quite hear this and turned to his good friend. "That you were what?" Brash asked. "I was damaged goods," Hide said. "Did I say damaged goods?" Brash wondered.

Hide tried to sound excited about Act's future without him at the helm. But he ignored Brash's hints that the cut should be clean. Hide said he "very much" hoped to stay on as a minister until the election.

He would not concede to Brash's analysis of his "toxic" brand or that he was "damaged goods".

When asked at what point he thought it had all gone wrong for him - when he used his travel perk for a trip with his girlfriend (now wife), or the resignation of David Garrett - he was clear: "Probably when Don Brash put his hand up."

At the end, Hide turned to Brash, grabbed his hand, and they both grinned at the cameras like a World Cup-winning team.

Hide gripped and gripped and grinned and grinned until an increasingly uncomfortable Brash ended the handshake.

Off they went, Hide quitting without saying so and having made it clear he wasn't ready to be filed away in the "historical - various" box just yet.