2000: A comedy legend remembered
Iwas brought up to believe New Zealand had two things to be proud of – rugby and hydroelectric dams.’’ That was Christchurch writer AK Grant, who may still be the funniest man to have ever picked up a pen in New Zealand.
Two of his books, The Paua and the Glory and Land Uprooted High, were idiosyncratic comic histories of New Zealand.
He wrote: ‘‘The National Party ran a brilliant campaign in 1975 based on the need to let white men like the Springboks in and brown men, like Tongans, out. An electorate bewildered by inflation and two-channel television grasped these certitudes with certainty.’’ Grant was central to a comedy movement in the city that resulted in the TV series A
Week of It, McPhail and Gadsby and Letter to Blanchy, featuring his good friends and fellow sons of Christchurch, David McPhail and Jon Gadsby.
When Grant died in 2000, aged just 59, The Press paid tribute to the man who had also been one of its columnists.
‘‘The millions of words which filled most of Grant’s 59 years endure,’’ journalist Christopher Moore wrote. ‘‘That distinctive voice which could amuse, infuriate, and prick entire herds of sacred cows can be still heard in his writing. The Grant-isms which entertained and stimulated us have become the best of all eulogies. The laughter, however, camouflages the other faces of this profoundly complex personality.
‘‘Lawyer, author, columnist, poet, scriptwriter, journalist, Alan Grant was continually borne along by a heady tide of ideas, talk, wit, alcohol, and friendships, which ebbed and flowed but always endured.’’ ‘‘He was one of the most honest men I’ve met,’’ McPhail said. ‘‘You were never in any doubt where you stood with Alan.’’