My young friend Paul Henry has written a new book. It’s called Outraged and I suspect many who read it will themselves be outraged. In typical Henry fashion Paul pulls no punches and systematically slaughters all the sacred cows you could possibly think of and some of which you probably haven’t. Labour supporters, and those of the green persuasion are quite likely to organise book burning sessions and even those on the centre-right are sure to find something to enrage them.
My sensitivities were bruised with the language and I told Paul that I would have deleted the expletives. He was also critical of church goers and hybrid car owners. Last time I saw Paul I took him for a short drive in my Hybrid from where we were to where we were going. His literary agent was with us and she was amazed he would lower himself, literally, to get in it. On the journey, which was mercifully short, he found endless fault with the car, mostly unjustified.
In the book you will discover that he has an unrelenting fetish for cars and boats. Some years ago he rang me from Auckland and asked if I would go and check out a Rolls-Royce that Majestic Motors had for sale. “Take it for a test drive and let me know if you think I should buy it” he instructed. I was delighted with the commission. I had never ever been in a Rolls-Royce, let alone driven one, so I did as I was instructed. What expertise I was supposed to have in the field of Rolls-Royce appraisals I wouldn’t know, but I reported back positively and he subsequently bought it.
Last week he emailed me to say that he had just taken delivery of Dodge Challenger SRT8 new from the States. It has a 6.4 litre Hemi V8 motor that would eat Hybrids he reckoned.
And yet he spends at least two pages of his new book complaining about the price of petrol!
The back cover of the book explains a lot about where he’s been and where his future lies so I’ll quote verbatim: “Since being kicked off TV in New Zealand, among many other things I have written a best seller, been kicked of TV in Australia, filmed a movie in Hollywood about myself, been offered what could have been the best show on TV and turned it down, turned down a political advance that would certainly have seen me enter politics, and spent a small fortune on both boats and cars. Luckily I have never been in such demand, so obviously I hunted down a network that had just gone into receivership and immediately signed on with them.”
The network in receivership of course is TV3 and The Paul Henry Show starts in the New Year screening at 10.30 each week night replacing Nightline. Cameron Slater, in his incredibly popular Whale Oil blog says: “At last we’ll have a reason to turn the TV back on.”
The book is embellished with drawings by his ageing mother Olive. Olive would know as much about illustrating a book as I would know about Rolls-Royce’s. However Paul reckons that as she ages her masterpieces, far from deteriorating in technique, have taken on a more Dali-esque quality. This is largely due, he says, to her failing eyesight, a crumbling mind, arthritis and a potpourri of medication.
The book is punctuated by Paul with afterthoughts using the same thick-nibbed felt pen Olive used for her artwork. The felt pen is also used for the page numbers which adds to the uniqueness of the publication.
Among other things in Outraged Paul tells us that Seven Sharp was ill-conceived and badly executed, that homosexuals should understand that they are not special just because they are gay, that Maori activists are ungrateful fools sabotaging a nation, that there are too many disability car-parks, that Sky City Convention Centre critics “queer the pitch” by misrepresenting the negatives and overlooking the positives, that we have too many tertiary time-wasters who are racking up bills at our expense and will spend decades trying to avoid repaying, that Muslims show little tolerance for other religions but are playing the long game of breed and infiltrate which will eventually bring success, and admits not all Asians are bad drivers, just most.
Something in it then for everybody to be outraged about, but I predict it will become another Paul Henry best seller bought by his critics as well as his admirers.
It was not that long ago that he was voted by the New Zealand viewing public as this country’s most popular TV personality and his outrageous speech at the award ceremony went viral worldwide on U-tube.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in that comparatively short time.
He is coming Masterton to promote the book next Wednesday and I will be interviewing him in a local bookshop endeavouring to flesh out the mystique behind the book.
But hang on; there’s no mystique behind the book, it’s just Paul Henry being Paul Henry.
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