Posts by GemmaG
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Ah... you've come across the wondrous Jason Tagg then David?
[I've replied on this thread, GemmaG. Cheers, DH]
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Joey, eh, Philip? You too, Fiona? Tell me why, go on. He seems too dorky to be a serial killer to me. I've been convincing myself it's Scotty due to his high morals, but the idea of a Bollywood Wedding Hui is too good not to run with...
In my wilder moments (when I'm not thinking about feminism all day long) it's Yvonne, though not sure how she managed to get all those bods into the skip...
In any case, I am quite excited that we, the viewer, find out who it is a good few months before the Shorty St staff do. Great potential for hammy Panto moments on the couch at home ("Behind you!" etc). -
Che, can you come to my office next week for a development meeting please? There's a food show I'd like to discuss with you... Heh heh.
And ta for the link to the Nelson Arts Festival gig, Russell. Expertly filmed on someone's cellphone (managing to obscure Bret with Dan's double bass for the entirety of the song...). Not entirely sure what we did to be YouTubeNZ's number one pick, but we're not complainin! Russ - your name's on the door at the Classic tomorrow night...
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Julie Hill did a fantastic story once for Frontseat (RIP) about sports anthems... i.e. the songs that people go nuts for and which rightly get blasted across a stadium's PA following a try, or a visiting team's out-for-a-duck.
Many songs were offered as examples, but only Jordan's were consistently in the Top 5, and "Why Does Love Do This To Me" the unanimous No.1. There's a dude, Mark McLeod, whose job it is to programme the music at the Cake Tin - he said he'd never not programme an Exponents song during a game. Any game. -
I heard via a cellphone message from Jaquie Brown, as a car full of pals sped back to the city from a day out of range at Wenderholm, in Oly Driver's beautiful old set o'wheels.
Jaquie's message was both hilarious and horrified (she is English after all). I can still hear her voice in my head today ("Gemma! Princess Diana is DEAD!!"). Nobody believed me, so the phone got passed around all 6 people in the car in order for each of them to hear Jaquie's message. Oliver - actor-journo that he is - still refused to accept the news so he phoned the TV3 newsroom, had a short conversation, and confirmed to us that yes, "Diana and her mother Dodi have died". Jodie called the TVNZ newsroom to tidy up the facts.
A few minutes later, we drove past a side-of-the-road vegetable shop. It's chalk sandwich-board read "RIP Diana". So, it was true.
I was eight years old when Diana married Charles in 1981. My sister Jolisa and I kept a scrapbook of the entire event. Later that year, our family and the larger Irish family up the road won a special prize in the Holy Cross Parish Fancy Dress Parade as "The Royal Wedding". I was Diana (I was blonde then), and my best friend to this very day was Lady Sarah Armstrong Jones.
So I took the news of the Princess of Wales' untimely death with that 8 year old's bright-eyed view of royalty, coupled with a healthy dose of cynicism. I was devastated, but I was also relishing the juicy details and the nutty media coverage. I was producing 95bFM Breakfast, and my favourite moment of the whole week was Russell Brown, in his Hard News, holding forth about this being the result of nothing more than a very drunk driver behind the wheel. Hear hear.
That night, on the eve of the funeral, the same group of people from the Wenderholm trip held a commemorative "Princesses and Playboys" party. In a gorgeously-appointed Mt Eden lounge, Jaquie read a haikuesque poem she'd written for Diana (which finished something like this:
Diana
Die
Di),
Colin waxed lyrical about how she was the woman all pre-teen lads modelled their future wives upon, Oliver and Brett performed an interpretive contemporary dance to Dodi, and I wore my tiara with my tongue in my cheek.