Winston Peters with a Phil Collins DEEP CUT!

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If you’ve been living in New Zealand, at any stage since the Treaty of Waitangi was signed, you’ve likely heard of our longest-serving politician, Dame Winston Peters. He’s been at it for millennia.

The thing about ol’ Winnie is he gets knocked down. But, miraculously, he gets up again. It’s almost as if there should be a song he can use, free of charge, to encapsulate his astounding ability to arise, drunk-Phoenix like, with speed wobbles, from the crypt he keeps. If only there was a song…

Last week he told Anna Burns-Francis that she was a pinko leftie media scum-type. Or something like that. But it wasn’t just her. It was all of the media. Everyone. All lying idiots spreading misinformation like marmite on toast, reaching all of the corners and blanketing it thick.

And then, it happened, deep in the interview, and I wonder if some others missed it, Dame Winnie took a long drag down deep, as if a magical DJ-cigarette had been bestowed upon him, and he said unto Anna that she and the privileged media-scum geeks needed to listen not to Chumbawumba at all but to Phil Collins, so that they could “get both sides of the story”.

That famous Winston Peters smirk was there. Like crumbs after toast.

He’d just punned the shit out of us. And shown that his deep love of 90s music extends beyond Chumbawumba’s trojan horse agitprop punk-ethos art-pranking, and all the way to the Phil Collins deep cuts.

In the 1980s Phil Collins was everywhere. All over his solo albums playing many of the instruments, still touring stadiums as the lead singer and sometimes drummer of Genesis, he was on Robert Plant albums and he produced and played on the album Chinese Wall for Phil Bailey. It was basically the rules that you had to hear a Phil Collins song once every 45 minutes or Smashy and Nicey from the local radio station weren’t getting any actual wine in their wine cooler.

But in the 1990s, Phil Collins was the domain of the brutally uncool. Even some big Phil Collins fans don’t know the song, Both Sides of the Story, the opening track and lead single from the 1993 album, Both Sides. The first album where Collins indeed played every single instrument.

It is, to be fair, a bit of a banger. But Winston would know that, he was a 76-year old teenager when it came out 31 years ago or whatever.

I’ve always held onto the album like some secret shame, and also the very proof that I go deep when it comes to Phil Collins fandom. So, thank you Winston Peters, for raising yet another crucial issue. Why did Phil Collins appreciation seem to stop worldwide with 1990’s Serious Hits…Live tour, and accompanying album and VHS? There were so many gems to follow on Both Sides. Interesting that Winnie didn’t mention my favourite from the album, Can’t Turn Back The Years. I reckon if we raided his CD collection we could see that’s very much, in line with his policies, what he is absolutely trying to do.