KERRE MCIVOR
DIANA’S DEATH WAS AN EARLY WAKE-UP CALL FOR KERRE TO BE QUIET AND LISTEN
The 20th anniversary of Diana’s death is a month away and the tributes have already begun. Like most of you, I know exactly where I was when I heard the news. I was filming a cooking show for TV3 and we were in a demonstration kitchen in central Auckland.
There was a break in filming so I rang to see how my daughter was – she and her dad were spending the day together. Kate sounded very chirpy when I spoke to her. She told me she’d been to the park and then she and her dad had gone to a pet shop and had bought a guinea pig she was going to call Max.
“But I didn’t think Dad had any garden at his place,” I said. “He doesn’t,” she replied. “We’re round at our place.”
I do not like guinea pigs. I don’t wish them any harm. I just don’t want anything to do with them. Scuttly little things in their smelly little cages. I had never expressed any desire at all to keep a guinea pig in my back yard and I wasn’t about to have one now.
“Put your dad on,” I said firmly. But before I could launch into instructions as to what Kate’s dad could do with the little rodent, he interrupted. “Princess Diana’s been in a car accident. They think she might be dead!”
And with that, all talk of guinea pigs was over. The crew found a radio and in between shoots, we listened for updates.
It didn’t seem possible that Diana could die in something so utterly prosaic as a car crash. But it was possible and the news was confirmed, leaving two little boys without a mother.
I was only a month or two into my talkback career at the time, and the audience and I were still coming to terms with one another. Naturally, the lines were red hot with people wanting to express their grief.
All day and all night and the next day and night and the day after that, people rang in – men and women – many weeping and inconsolable.
To be honest, I found it most perplexing. It was very sad – of course it was – just as any death of a parent with young children would be. But the depth of people’s pain was extraordinary.
On the third night, I said to my producer we should probably find something else to talk about. “I don’t think so, mate,” he said. “That’s all people are interested in.” “But this is ridiculous!” I expostulated. “They didn’t even know her!”
So I opened the show by saying just that; that the mourning was over the top for a woman nobody knew or had even met. I won’t go on – I upset people terribly at the time and I don’t want to do so again.
The backlash was fierce and immediate, and I learned a valuable lesson that night.
Sometimes, on talkback, the host doesn’t need to have an opinion. The host is simply there to act as a conduit for people to come together and bond with one another.
And so I shut up and that’s what they did. Twenty years on, I have a much clearer understanding of why people were so upset and, I hope, a little more emotional maturity.
And 20 years on, it’s tragic to think how much she has missed in the lives of her boys, and how she is still so very much missed by Princes William and Harry.