A word with:

Jesse Mulligan talks cycling, Lycra and celebrity interviews.

When asked to describe himself in three words Jesse Mulligan’s response is, ‘Very, very busy’, and with a schedule like his it’s no wonder. While raising three kids – Hazel, seven, Daisy, five, and Felix, two – with his wife Victoria, 38, Mulligan, 42, juggles full-time gigs in radio and TV with a couple of part-time ones as a food critic and MC. He is also a keen cyclist and can be spotted biking around Auckland between recording his weekday Radio New Zealand show and filming Three’s The Project. He talks to Cass Marrett.

You’re a keen cyclist. What’s your take on the driver versus cyclist debate?

Do you know what? I’ve had no problems cycling around and whenever I’ve seen cyclists complaining about getting cut off and knocked over and stuff, I just think I must have gotten really, really lucky. But the other cool thing about it is I do so many cool interviews about mindfulness, and how good it is to have these little mini-breaks in the day, and I reckon that 10-minute slot of biking from radio to TV is just the ultimate mind-clearing, meditative, mindfulness thing.

Do you prefer wearing Lycra or a suit and tie?

I haven’t actually tried any Lycra on because of something I agreed to at the beginning of my marriage. So I tend to just go casual on the bike actually and put up with the occasional trouser tears as a result.

How important is it to maintain a sense of humour when looking at current affairs?

I think when you care it’s really easy to get angsty and outraged. I think there is a time

for outrage but also you’ve got to be able to communicate your message as well, right? You’ve got to be light as well as dark or everyone just sees you and goes, ‘There goes Mulligan again’.

What’s the most memorable interview you’ve done?

Maybe David Duchovny. He was pretty amazing. He came out here touring his music show and even though he was talking about his music and he wasn’t ‘The X Files guy’ there was still something magnetic and massively famous about him. He’s probably the one person I’ve talked to where I’ve felt a little bit star-struck. Also Ricky Gervais. That was a cool interview as well because he’s like a comedic hero of mine. I biked into work at 10 o’clock at night, waited by the phone for this call to come through and then it rang and I was like, ‘Hello...?’ and he was like, ‘Hi, it’s Ricky Gervais here,’ and we just had this really long chat from his flat in London. It was cool.

With three kids and two full-time jobs, what do you do in your downtime?

Reading is number one priority, but I’ve got to say cooking. Like if I have a Sunday to myself, it’s pretty much all spent in the kitchen making stocks and slow-cooking stews. And yeah, for me, the eating is a good part of it but I actually think the cooking as a process is probably something I enjoy most of all.

What is it like being married to a psychologist?

It doesn’t often come up, but from time to time if her and I disagree on something and then we chat about it and I leave, five minutes later it’s like, ‘Hey, she just changed my mind and got what she wanted and I didn’t even realise she was doing it’. I hate exercise, and I was determined not to do any exercise, and then one day she was like, ‘If you bike to work you can save some money on parking’ and I was like, ‘Wow! I’d love to save some money on parking’. Now I find myself biking around the city for half an hour everyday getting all this exercise that I didn’t even want in the first place.

What’s something people don’t know about you?

I’m extremely good at Scrabble. Very good at Scrabble. Occasionally, in interviews on The Project, I’ll mention my Scrabble prowess. Then, by the time they get to the final broadcast, I find that they’ve edited the references out so I’d thank you to leave this part in.

In a movie about your life, would you be a hero or villain?

I’d like to think that I was a hero, but then maybe when you got the DVD there would be deleted scenes then you’d be like, ‘Ohhh that makes a lot of sense’.

What would be in those deleted scenes?

Well you’d have to get the DVD.