This Is The Fucking Review! — On Paddy Gower’s Back-Issues…

Wednesday is about books and reading. Today, Paddy Gower’s recently released memoir.

Yesterday, Paddy Gower’s memoir hit the shelves. I rushed out and bought a copy, read it overnight. Allen & Unwin never thought to send me a copy, but also, I never thought to ask. Paddy won’t get a whole heap of my dosh from the sale, but we say we do such things “to support” the person in question. In a couple of months I’ll hope that he will repay the favour and buy my latest book…

And I guess I can expect that, with something more than just false hope, because I do know Paddy Gower. I mean, the whole country ‘knows him’ at this point. But I can say I knew him before he was “Paddy Gower”.

Victoria House, Wellington, 1995

That’s not a flex, or if it is it is absolutely a ‘strange flex’, it’s more the declaration that I’m friends with Paddy. We met in our first year at uni, and we’ve been there at weddings and 21sts. He’s a busy man these days, as you’ll read in the pages of his book, but I absolutely consider him a friend. One of the best. One for life. So if that biases this ‘review’ I’d rather call it out myself straight away.

Perhaps the best review I can give his book is that I read it in almost one sitting. Glued to it, I turned page after page last night, and then very early this morning after a break to have dinner, interact with my family, and grab a smidge of sleep.

Paddy’s book contains no stories about his friends from the past — none are named. No mention of his family beyond mother and father, and it is not a story about his life. It is the story of his work. Which is his life. And has played a huge role in almost derailing his life. So we read about depression, grieving the loss of his mother, burnout from work, a detached retina, alcohol addiction and then sobriety, and a lot of this we know from his Paddy Gower On series of docos.

But Paddy, wisely, is saving some of his self for himself. Steve Braunias didn’t like that but mostly did like the book. But there’s an irony there because the Braunias you meet in person is a skulking coward compared to the bravado of his brilliantly written pages. Whereas the Gower you meet for real is the same brave, eccentric loon that can charm the hell out of almost anyone, and can certainly disarm people in positions of privilege and power. Paddy has a way with a question. And I was reminded of that very recently with his new work for Stuff where he asked a bunch of young school kids their Kiwi dream.

No one could get the reaction Gower netted, nor the answers. His bromantic sparring partner Duncan Garner would be hopeless in this situation, his more earnest colleague Corin Dann would be the wilted spinach on the side of this dish. Guyon Espiner would whistle-rasp and look almost creepy, but here Paddy is posing for the selfies as requested, answering to “Uncle Paddy” and just generally being adored, all the while appearing human, empathic, and natural. This is his gift.

And when you read his book you will learn about the graft that he put in to earn that. He slogged as a journo on a night shift, then as a crime reporter, he took whatever assignment was going before he stepped in as a filler for the Press Gallery and in that time transitioned from print reporter for The Herald to nervous cub TV reporter for 3News and onto Political Editor for 3/Newshub; not leaving the Gallery for a decade, until burnout.

We know that in that time he was the subject of a viral meme on the back of a skit’s blooper — from which he takes the title of this book and his now somewhat annoying, ubiquitous catchphrase. I cringed as Stuff colleagues of his bleeped themselves all over Linked In about being “f&*king stoked” or whatever to welcome him. Fair play on the catch, good get. But please, children, use the word “Fucking” or don’t use it. This old school $$-bleeping is ridiculous.

But in the book Paddy explains better his own slight cringe toward the line and the moment, and then his ownership of it. So I’m letting him off the hook there. He should have monetised it at the time. It’s part of Paddy’s great shtick that he’ll find a way to monetise it now, ten years on, when no one else could.

The best bits of this book are stories you possibly know already, at least in set-up. But Paddy plays this like a Greatest Hits and gives you some bonus content too, including some really good backstage gossip. So we get the John Key that rings up five minutes before the live news cross as a bit of an intimidation tactic, and the Winston Peters that goes out on a bender with Gower, then shows up next day as if nothing has happened while PG is spent and struggling.

Alcohol is spilled all across the pages of this book, right up until Paddy’s personal eureka moment. But he’s not preachy like Guyon, nor unctuous like Lotta Dann, hasn’t made it his whole new personality. Instead, there’s this reminder of the chaos of alcohol as the acceptable drug all across Kiwi culture throughout the 80s and 90s and 00s (in terms of Paddy’s timeline of interacting with it).

But you’ll also read about how our unlikely hero lobbed questions at Obama and Trump, reported from the Queen’s funeral, and jumped on a plane on his own dime as soon as the shootings in Christchurch were reported that dark day in 2019. What followed was a one-man roving reporter masterclass running on a shoestring budget, the old fashioned gumshoe that Paddy has always resembled and identified with; his hunger for the story moving over the years from political attack dog to empathic gatherer of authentic Kiwi stories.

It is fair to say we did not share the same opinion on the music of Lorde

I love Paddy. To bits. I don’t see him for years on end. I hear from him sporadically. Reading this book felt like a catchup in a way. But it is also an amazing assemblage of the stories he’s been across and around from across a decade and a half. He’s seen loads, shared a heap, broken stories, broken parts of his soul to deliver them, and been tremendously lucky. You feel his gratitude for that here, and you know that his ‘shtick’ is no shtick at all. That’s why he can get a wind-up out of Don Brash one minute, and pose for selfies with school kids the next. That’s why he was there when the dildo hit Steven Joyce’s face, as well as when(ever) the rubber hit the road.

Always on. Camera or otherwise. And when the camera is off, and the social media memes have dimmed we are none the wiser about what Paddy does with his time, and who he spends it with. Unless we do truly know him. I love that he kept that bit for himself. A strong act of self-preservation.

But the takeaway here is that the book absolutely sizzles, with scandal, with reflection, with great leaps through so many of the political and social-impact stories of the last two decades. And we can feel Paddy’s growth, from trigger-happy reporter to the fun uncle of the nation. He owns every bumble and stumble along that path, and alcohol or otherwise, there were many.

Only one fact needed checking in my read of the book. He reckons he did his yardie at his 21st in “under 2 minutes”. I was there, and so I have to presume there was a typo there and a digit was missing. But neither of us drink at all now, so it really doesn’t matter.