Truth laid bare
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Jay-Jay Harvey has spent the past decade waiting to lose her job, gamely smiling and giggling as she worked her backside off, sometimes while naked. And yet, at 42 – stressed and tired ‘‘all the time’’, her keen interest in what’s cool with the kids beginning to dull — she is the loveable linchpin of the country’s highest-rating radio morning programme, The Edge Breakfast with Jay-Jay, Dom and Randell.
Still. She almost can’t believe it.
‘‘I think about [the future] a lot because obviously I’m getting older,’’ she says, picking at a fish burger and chunky cut fries that she almost instantly regrets ordering (‘‘These won’t be any good for my carb-free diet’’).
‘‘I love The Edge, I know the Edge, I feel safe at The Edge, but I think maybe I’m burned out, maybe people are sick of me – I’m sick of me! – but our ratings are the highest they’ve ever been.’’
Happy, happy, happy
It is noon, and Harvey has already done her four-hour morning shift, spent two hours in the office preparing for tomorrow’s show (she will do more prep at home), changed into ‘‘dog-walking’’ gear (a T-shirt, black pants, and trainers), and has chatted merrily with the Richmond Road Cafe staffer who brought her a pot of tea.
She is ‘‘on’’, laughing and joking, and appearing to have a great time.
And perhaps she is having a great time, but Harvey longs for a summer break, longs for sleep-ins and lazy days that are not scheduled from 4.30am – when she drags herself out of bed – to 9.30pm – when she falls back into it.
She longs for days when she can have conversations with cohost husband Dom Harvey that don’t centre on funny pranks for the show, and what weird thing Clint Randell should eat next (a dead tarantula, bugs in mud).
‘‘We don’t have many deep and meaningful conversations about much, to be fair,’’ she says.
‘‘Honestly, when we get home we’re on a computer a lot. We’re just done talking, we email each other.’’ So, yeah, she’s tired and she needs a holiday and maybe in the not-too-distant future, a different job.
In the meantime, she will straddle the knife edge of her physical and mental limits because it’s entertaining and, beyond everything else, Harvey is a committed entertainer.
About the nudity . . .
‘‘I have a very immature side to me, which helps me being at The Edge,’’ she says. ‘‘Sometimes when you are on the air, to create the entertainment you have to exaggerate a lot of things – not the truth – but sometimes we exaggerate our excitement, and sometimes I have to take a side that I don’t believe just to balance out the argument in the studio, or to create the conflict that will wind up the listeners.’’
Sometimes to entertain, she has to do something that terrifies her.
A video of a shaky, blotchyfaced Harvey trying to psyche herself up to jump off the Sky Tower two weeks ago has already had 56,000 views. Whenever she gets her kit off in public – which has been a lot, for someone who finds it mortifying – The Edge website and Facebook page go bananas.
Sharing personal stories is a winner too. She revealed on air this week that she moved out of the family home for nine months while she finished her new book, Life on the Edge, because she was suffering from depression and needed space. Depression has been a problem for Harvey for years, and she admits her self-care is practically non-existent.
A person who gets bored easily, has a great capacity for work, and hates to disappoint, she will keep going until she can’t cope.
‘‘Even though it sounds like we are having a great time every morning, sometimes I’m crying when the songs are on because I am having a shitty morning for some other reason.’’
Harvey says her long-time boss Leon Wratt keeps an eye on her, to make sure she can manage her load without dissolving.
‘‘It’s certainly been tough,’’ says Wratt, who’s known Harvey since she was 17.
‘‘I’ve seen her ups and downs and I’ve seen her learn how to cope better with the pressure.
‘‘She’s pretty honest and true and open, and I think that vulnerability allows listeners to connect with her,’’ he says.
Jay-Jay the writer
Harvey’s last book, Misconception, focused on one of the great heartbreaks of her life, her inability to have a baby and the grim march of multiple unsuccessful IVF treatments.
She has moved past that phase now, has resigned from her post as an ambassador for Fertility NZ, and says, ‘‘I don’t want to talk about infertility any more’’.
Life on the Edge is a whistlestop tour of her 22-year radio career, and a few personal-life highlights – like convincing Economic Development Minister Steven Joyce, in his radio manager days, to endanger Palmerston North’s most popular breakfast show by moving host Dom to Hamilton to work with her.
It is a book packed with jolly japes and capers (Two Strangers and a Wedding, Hug a Ginga Day, Pash for Cash), and a few touching passages about close friends who have moved on.
Mike Puru, who came out on air with the support of Harvey and Dom, left The Edge last year to focus on his television work.
Harvey’s first co-host, ‘‘Butt Ugly Bob’’ Reid, ended his life at 27. Jason Reeves, a co-host who was ‘‘like a brother’’, quit suddenly after one of Dom’s pranks went wrong.
Life with Dom
Dom Harvey is notorious for his pranks, especially those involving high-profile women: Sally Ridge, Teuila Blakely, Alison Mau. Living with the man who photographed Chrystal Chenery’s crotch when she was on Dancing With the Stars is not always love’s sweet dream, as you might imagine.
‘‘What I find most frustrating is that people put us together when one of us does something, usually him, and I amnot the same person as him and I don’t back him up all the time,’’ Harvey says over lunch. ‘‘Publicly, of course I will, but I have given him lectures that you have not seen about things he has said or done.
‘‘He knows what I think – some things he has said or done have been inappropriate and I knew they would upset people. But I can’t change who he is, and he likes to shock people.’’
She also says that Dom is easily hurt, and takes it on board when he upsets people. ‘‘He beats himself up over it.’’ Nonetheless, he does stupid things, and sometimes his wife pays the price.
In 2010, he wrote an explicit parody song about broadcaster Alison Mau’s new relationship shortly after she came out, and was suspended from work for it. Days later, Harvey went to TVNZ for some reason that she can’t remember, and was in the makeup room when Mau walked in.
‘‘She said, ‘I’m glad your husband’s not here,’ and then threw her lipstick and stormed out.