Victorious Clark full of laughs

Helen Clark stands yesterday among election campaign signs of the past at her Auckland electorate office. Picture / Richard Robinson

What a jolly mood the Prime Minister is in. This is not necessarily a good thing, although it is better than her being in a bad mood and doing her death's head stare, which, once encountered, is never forgotten.

The bad thing about the good mood is that it makes interviewing her like talking to a brand-new bath towel: You could pour a bucket of water over her and she probably wouldn't notice.

We know why she's so chipper: to the victor, the laughs. And how she laughs. Mostly at the misfortunes of the National Party.

This is in vivid contrast to the Clark we saw on election night looking grim and exhausted. Today she's wearing a salmon jacket and black pants and looks invincible. Her office asked whether I'd like to watch her read to children at Maungawhau school before our interview.

I thought it might be instructive to see her in action with the littlies. Meanly, I hoped they might not know who she was or that she might be really bad or that she might frighten the hell out of them the way she frightens the hell out of me.

After the reading, which she is quite good at, she does actions and everything - when I tell her this she says "I am quite good at it" - the rest of the kids line up to shake her hand. It was worth going to hear a teacher saying, "she's just like the Queen", I get my own back by following in Helen Clark and Phil Goff's wake, shaking hands and saying, "Hello. I am the assistant to the Queen."

This fantasy appointment would have been short-lived. I sneak a fag, and she walks past and sniffs me. I say to her press secretary, "she just sniffed me!" It would have been an affectionate sort of sniffing, he says.

When I say to Clark, "I didn't get away with the cigarette, did I?" she says "I was going to say 'Someone's been smoking'." Which, on reflection, wouldn't have been quite as scary as the sniffing.

Later, in her electorate office I ask her about adoration and dealing with it and how she is just like the Queen. She chortles away.

"I wouldn't want to draw that conclusion. Someone will write in and say 'She thinks she's the Queen'."

Still it must be hard not to get swept up in it.

"I've never let it go to my head."

But how does she know?

"Oh, because I think I stay pretty down-to-earth with other people and with myself. And, you know, I stay living in my own modest little home. I drive myself out to private things that I do at weekends. I keep very closely in touch with my elderly parents. I just keep my feet on the ground."

Anyway, you'd have thought, given that face on election night, that she might be feeling a bit chastened. This is a stupid line of inquiry.

"Why should I be? I came within 0.1 per cent of the 2002 result."

And on the night?

"Oh well, I just didn't think the mood from me should be one which was triumphal at all. It was a tough campaign. ... It obviously wasn't a straightforward outcome so you have to pick your way through the issues very, very carefully and delicately."

She never entertained the notion Labour might lose?

"No."

Never?

"No."

We talk for a bit more about this, then I say, "Really?"

"Yip. Absolutely."

There was never a time anyone else - friends, family, staff - mentioned the possibility either?

"No. Everyone has to stay totally positive."

This means they were too scared.

"They may well be," she says, much amused.

Right, so I'll just cross out any other questions along these lines. There is more laughing. I'm glad she's enjoying herself at the expense of me and my questions.

"There's no ifs," she says, to finish the topic for once and for all.

She is, also, by the way, just as popular as ever.

"I think things are pretty much exactly as they were, if you look at the ratings."

This, I think, is what makes her so intimidating to lesser mortals: her complete lack of doubt or none that she ever shows.

"There is no room for doubt in this job." And the way to remove doubt is to "believe in your ability to do it [the job]".

"I've been in this field for many, many, many years and you have to build up the resilience and I'm a very resilient person."

We did Winston Peters and Peter Dunne. I asked her if she thought she could work with just about anyone. She says she thinks she can.

She told me one revealing thing: She is fond of Sweden and the Swedish people. They're like her, really. "Yeees. Yes. Similar people."

She makes mistakes.

"Of course one makes mistakes. But I never identify them for the pleasure of the media."

Why not?

"Because there's plenty of people paid to point them out."

I am working up the courage to ask her about the infamous speeding motorcade and whether she thinks now that she could have weighed in behind her drivers. This really is silly. She has already said she doesn't do second thoughts. And now she says "no. Never look back".

A further question is one too far. It earns me the stare.

"I don't even wish to comment on it. It's gone."

Well. She was so nice, too, during the campaign, despite some of the daft stuff she has to do. That Paul Holmes interview for example. She has only recently watched it, with husband Peter Davis and her parents, and she says she didn't cringe at all. Neither did Peter who did it "under sufferance".

But, really, what was that bit when she stroked Peter?

"Oh, I can't remember."

Well, everyone else can, I say. But nobody has teased her. Again, too scared, I bet.

"No. No. People thought it was lovely. People like to see more relaxed interviews."

She says she liked playing dress-ups for a women's mag too.

"You're allowed to do something frivolous once in a while. Even in this job."

It's not her usual sort of reading though.

"Oh, I don't read it normally, no. The only issues I read are the ones I'm in. Ha, ha, ha."

I wonder whether we see another, slightly heightened, version of her when she's out electioneering and charming. She says not, that that's pretty much the person her friends see. And, of course, she doesn't set out to be intimidating - who would?

I'm pretty sure she doesn't mind intimidating journalists, though. She's got a good nose for it. All she has to do is sniff them.