At a recent Auckland gathering of the Bumptious Bores Pudding Club, otherwise known as a fundraiser at Viaduct bar HQ to raise money for the mayoral flood-relief fund, the wine presumably flowed. So did the f-words. The wit, alas, did not.
There was a debate – to use the word in the very loosest sense of the word – with the moot “that all media are drongos”. The drongos reference came courtesy of Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown, who, while dealing with January’s Anniversary Weekend storm, excused himself from his weekly tennis game on the grounds that he had to “deal with media drongos over the flooding”.
Restaurateur and HQ owner Leo Molloy organised the evening. He stood, you might recall, for the mayoralty himself, before quitting the race and endorsing Brown. Memorably, in an otherwise wholly forgettable campaign, he proposed hosing down the homeless to move them on.
In particular, the hosing should take place around Auckland’s Fort St, which was where, he said, “the losers and the ratbags and the drug addicts and the alcoholics congregate at night. Clearly the solution is … to put some sort of spray, hose … cold water units up high that spray water out at night so you stop them congregating.”
In other words: let them eat pudding.
The Herald’s Simon Wilson – whose mugshot Brown threatened during the election campaign to glue to urinals if he won the mayoralty – valiantly accepted an invitation to attend the Bumptious Bores Pudding Club so that the rest of us didn’t have to.
He reported on the evening’s events, and what passed for witty discourse, with an admirable poker face. The “ex-journalist” Sean Plunket, who was the leader of the affirmative team, began with a made-up list of apologies for those unable to attend. Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau was absent, he said, because she was “pissed”, presumably a reference to her recent tipsy Friday night out, or maybe he just enjoys a bit of slander.
Plunket then introduced former All Blacks coach Sir Graham Henry as “not the sort of guy who would breakdance after an All Blacks victory”. A six-year-old boy, otherwise known as the Mayor of Auckland, interjected: “He breaks wind!”
What the hell was Henry doing there? Apparently, to make a limp joke about Molloy’s lack of sexual prowess. Titter titter.
National MP Judith Collins was there. At least she had a funny line, or possibly just a mad one. In response to Plunket’s claim of being an ex-journalist, she said, “It’s a bit like being an ex-parrot.”
Mayor Brown, who fancies himself as a musician, later took to the stage and sang, to the tune of Hit the Road Jack: “Hit the road Goff, better fuck off, right now …”, proving he’s still a sore winner. And a bad dresser. Wearing an ancient-looking, ill-fitting tweed jacket and a baseball cap, he could have been auditioning for a part in Last of the Summer Wine.
But this was as nothing compared with the pudding on the Bumptious Bores Pudding Club menu: an “Alf and Josephine’s chocolate-chip cookie shake”, a concoction named after Auckland councillors Alf Filipaina and Josephine Bartley, both of whom are Pasifika. The description of this charming dessert read: “Thick as wet cement and as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.”
Molloy, who was responsible for organising the event, told Newshub that “members of his staff had used ChatGPT to create the menu”. He later apologised: “If we’ve somehow managed to offend a couple of precious, fragile types with this particular roast, we apologise (sort of).”
The evening raised about $13,000 – and proved there is a fine line between fun and imbecility.
Too right
Welcome to the Heavyweight Championship of the World for the title of “Toughest on Crime”. In the right corner is National. Also in the right corner is Act. And they are both fighting, possibly to the death, to be the hardest bastards in town when it comes to young crims.
The Nats are proposing boot camps for young, bad buggers. Act is proposing again putting 17-year-old bad buggers into the adult justice system. As you’ll recall, 17-year-olds were excluded from the adult justice system back in 2016 by the then-National government – a change supported by Act. The rationale for Act’s flip-flop is the alleged rise in youth crime over the past three years.
Where does it stop? With 16-year-olds in the adult system? Or 15-year-olds? Or with hosing them down with cold water until they agree to stop ram-raiding vape shops?
The unknowable
In the olden days, when most people thought the Greens were freaks – hessian-skirt-wearing, ganga-smoking, compost-toileting, climate-change alarmists – at least they were fun.
We knew about Nándor Tánczos’ dreadlocks and his dedication to dope. About Jeanette Fitzsimons’ famous composting loo. About Rod Donald’s penchant for quirky braces.
The Greens were as colourful as Donald’s braces. They had that hard-to-define thing: personality. Does that mean that we knew who they were? And does it matter? Does it matter that the Greens might now be just a bit dull? We know that they are earnest. Which might be all you need to know about who co-leader James Shaw is.
RNZ National’s Mediawatch posed the question about the knowability of Opposition Leader Christopher Luxon. He has said, in a variety of ways: “People know what I’ve done. They still don’t know exactly who I am.”
To show who you exactly are might involve having to be a bit quirky. He recently showed that he can be a bit quirky via social media. He posted a mocked-up image of himself inside a Barbie doll box to coincide with the new Barbie movie. The caption: “Bald Ken.”
He posted a video of a day out door-knocking with his wife. His wife said: “Did they know who you were?” Luxon: “They did know who I were.”
Former US president Donald Trump recently, and scathingly, said of Ron DeSantis, his leading rival for the Republican presidential nomination, that he had “no personality”. The Mediawatch item asked whether the question of knowability is actually a valid question.
It’s a good question. We know who Trump is. And we know how voting for a “personality” turned out for the American presidency.
