A superhero in suit pants
Fair Go’s Kevin Milne talks birds and bust-ups with Bridget Jones as the show celebrates 40 years on screens.
Most of the time you are hoping the cameraman keeps rolling and he doesn't take off while you get smacked. And if you do get smacked, the only good thing about it is you know you've got good television - if you survive it. Kevin Milne
just bought four nuns. Not only are they too old, but they are the wrong sex.’’ Kevin Milne saw and heard almost everything during his 27-career working on Fair Go. Of course there were letters about dodgy second-hand cars, and complaints about shady plumbers. But for every insurance company giving someone the runaround, there was also a quirky bird-lover who didn’t let details get in the way of a good whinge.
‘‘A guy wrote me a letter and he was into pigeons. He was into pigeons so much, that he forgot to mention that ‘nun’ was a pigeon breed. I read this and clicked to the fact, but thought that it wasn’t a particularly interesting story and set it down in the pile,’’ Milne says.
‘‘Then, one day the boss said to me, have you got anything sort of light? And I looked at that letter and I wondered, could he actually come onto the program and forget again?’’
He could, he did, and it turned out to one of the funniest stories Milne was ever involved in.
And that, the broadcasting veteran says, is the recipe for Fair Go‘s success. A bit of light to go with the dark – or as he explains it, as long as you have a meaty main course, there’s freedom for something tasty and fun alongside it.
The consumer affairs show turns 40 this year, and serving almost three decades makes Milne, 68 and a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, a pretty good expert on why we still love watching regular folk who feel like they have been screwed over and forgotten by even their closest friends.
‘‘There has always been this kind of acceptance that if big business or a lawyer says something’s not on, then that’s it ... They are good at fighting, and they have never really been up against people who can tell them to get stuffed. I just loved all that,’’ Milne says.
And for the people at the centre of things, it’s a lifeline of sorts.
‘‘Suddenly, you get a call and someone you know from telly says they’ve read your letter and are interested in talking about it more because, if it turns out as you are saying, they want to go in to battle for you. Some of these people would break into tears because they had never had any support.
‘‘I think I was born, for some reason, a battler for the little guy.’’
A little bit like a superhero in suit pants, then?
‘‘A superhero would be a worry, that builds up the ego too much,’’ Milne says with a wry smile. ‘‘But we did know we were as powerful as anybody else. Nobody could tell us to just go away – and we never did.’’
He never auditioned for the role. Instead he was shoulder tapped – quite literally – one night while making the most of the in-house TVNZ bar, and asked if he wanted a new job. There was no hesitation.
The show had been running for seven years when he joined in 1983, which, to many people, meant he was signing his career death certificate. After all that time, how much longer could it have in it, really? But for Milne, the lure of the show, and then-host Brian Edwards, was too strong.
‘‘So if it meant I only got to do it for a year, that was fine by me. Brian was a hero to me, and the biggest TV star of the time, by miles. I still consider he is one of the most significant broadcasters we’ve ever had, him and Holmesy.’’
Of course, Milne is no slouch himself. He quickly made himself at home, and made a mark. In fact, he says when he added it all up, he and the team got back millions of dollars for viewers over the years from his cases alone.
He left the show almost eight years ago, but for many viewers, he is still the person they think of when they think of Fair Go.
‘‘[Being there for 27 years] felt unbelievable, and in a way, it was kind of embarrassing to stay in a job that long,’’ he says.
‘‘People say, if you want to stay sharp, you should get out of a job after five years, no matter what.
‘‘But you get better at a job the longer you’re there ... Good sculptors don’t leave after five years and take up something else.’’
Artist, bulldog, people’s champion, while his role didn’t change, the way he and the rest of the team did it, did. Remember, Milne started on the show before cellphones, the internet, even fax machines. He says it certainly effected the type of contact they had with their viewers.
‘‘With letters, people had to go and find the paper, then the stamp, then they had to post it, by that time they have cooled off.
‘‘When email arrived, it was a gamechanger. People could complain immediately. the number of complaints trebled, quadrupled almost overnight.
‘‘But these were really angry letters, it was just horrific ... We had so many, we could pick just wonderful letters.’’
With the letters came the cases. And with the cases came some of the greatest confrontations with powerful people.
Yes, those door-knocks. The make for great TV, but what are they really like, in the heat of the moment?
‘‘I was never hit by anybody, but I was always afraid of dogs. I was convinced, when that door opened and even if you were confronted by someone really nasty, that I could talk my way out of it. But a dog? No chance.
‘‘Most of the time you are hoping the cameraman keeps rolling and he doesn’t take off while you get smacked. And if you do get smacked, the only good thing about it is you know you’ve got good television – if you survive it.’’
❚ Fair Go at 40 screens on TVNZ 1, Monday, February 5, at 7.30pm