Duncan Garner crashed into journalism with a poo-shaped 21st birthday cake. Older, wiser and bruised by life, he’s raring to do the 3am starts as TV3’s new breakfast host, reports
Alan Perrott.
It says much about Duncan Garner that he couldn’t wait for the letter he was half-dreading, half-gagging for to arrive, not when he knew it was out there, somewhere.
So out came the trusty 10-speed and he began scouring Birkenhead’s leafy tributes to past Governors-General in search of a tardy postie. After ticking off Holyoake and Porritt, he turned into Blundell Place – a dead end, not the greatest of omens – and lo, there she was.
‘‘Hey, hey… you’ve got something in there for me…’’
And then it was in his hand, the letter from the then-Auckland Technical Institute. He disembowelled without hesitation: ‘‘I just saw the first line, ‘‘Congratulations, you’ve been accepted…’’ and remember thinking ‘‘cool, this is the start of what I want to do.’’
Journalism here I come, ready or not.
But why? To meet him is to encounter something of a bull in a china shop, the sort of bloke who’d shoot first, then second, and maybe third – just to be sure – before wondering if he might have tried flowers. There’s a good reason why, while working at TVNZ, his colleagues celebrated his 21st birthday with a cake shaped as a giant brown turd.
Maybe it’s why he’s such a survivor. Of those who made up the TV3 news stable during its pomp, Garner is pretty much the last man standing, even if it’s seldom in the same place for long. Let’s see, he’s appeared on News, The Nation, 3D, sundry election specials, Story, and now The AM Show, Mediaworks’ reboot of the Paul Henry breakfast show that he launches alongside Amanda Gillies and Mark Richardson on February 13. And let’s not forget his opinionated, drive time show on Mediawork’s wireless flagship, Radio Live and his equally opinionated Stuff column (stuff.co.nz).
But if this suggests an ongoing search for the right vehicle, Garner would prefer to see his showjumping as an evolution. Especially as life has delivered enough setbacks to teach him the wisdom of taking opportunities while you can, a don’tfence-me-in attitude first demonstrated in primary school when he took the class rabbit home and promptly let it go free.
Still, where did this stickability come from? His parents were conservative enough and, after his father was transferred from Wellington while Duncan was still a toddler, he seemed to fit into the North Shore’s suburban lifestyle with ease.
Sport was his thing and he played halfback at the Takapuna Rugby Club through to age grade rep level – two of his best friends were Adam Larkin, who was No 2 to future All Black Carlos Spencer in the 1995 New Zealand Colts team before a long career at Ulster, and future America’s Cup skipper Dean Barker.
It was his father, Grant, who was his biggest influence. A BNZ banker and a man of his time, if they played things his way, then life went smoothly for his three children. If not... well, he had ways of bringing them round to his way of thinking. The pair often sparred, sometimes literally, yet Garner makes no bones of the (still raw) fact that his dad was his best mate, one who never discouraged his son from bounding on to the marital bed at sparrow’s fart of a Saturday to check the Golden Kiwi lottery numbers while demanding a spot quiz in geography.
So Garner’s youth revolved around sport and family, family and sport. Politics had no place outside of the ballot box so his first inkling of its existence was the 81 Springbok tour. The family were at church in Birkenhead when the priest announced his stand against the tour. He’d been talking for some time when Garner’s father leaned over: ‘‘Look, bugger this, I’m going along to support (captain and brother-in-law) uncle Andy (Dalton).’’ A plan for the pair to attend the third test was dropped when dad saw the carnage that took place before the tour game in Hamilton was abandoned, a decision borne out when he returned from Eden Park with his shirt stained by thrown tomatoes.
‘‘But Mum never went to the games. Maybe she didn’t agree with Dad, I don’t know. I was 7, I didn’t have a clue what was going on.’’
By now his sport fixation was taking a new course. His growing love of sporting trivia had him hellbent on commentating, a wish that may yet be realised if the TAB follows up on a promise to hand him the mic for a horse race. It wasn’t until his sixth form year at Westlake Boys that teacher Paul Ferner introduced him to sports journalism.
‘‘I don’t think he’d thought of it as a career before then,’’ says Ferner, now director of guidance at Mt Albert Grammar. ‘‘But he became fired by this enthusiasm. We had a school newspaper and he’d be the one who stayed behind at interval, lunchtime or after school if something had to be done. He was certainly goal oriented and he worked out pretty quickly that if he said yes to everything and