Photography: Kellie Blizard.
At an outdoor café table, across the road from the building where he now works, Garth Bray has quietly broken out into waiata. Moments earlier, the amiable broadcaster was recalling filming the last- ever episode of TV consumer show Fair Go – the swansong of his long working life at TVNZ – before coming off set in tears.
Colleagues clapped as Garth walked down the corridor to a guard of honour. He felt moved to sing a spontaneous song in te reo.
He explains, “The song basically said to others it was now their responsibility to look after this house. It doesn’t matter what’s going on – everybody needs to stay true and faithful to do their job because people are counting on it.”
That’s not to say the longtime journalist isn’t still a little bitter about the show’s cancellation, which was part of cost-cutting measures following declines in TVNZ’s revenue.
Starting over after the split
“I still think taking it off air was a terrible call,” shares the 53-year-old, who likens leaving his former workplace of 27 years to a divorce.
“I’ve been married for 18 years, but I imagine that’s what it feels like, when all of a sudden it’s over and not on your terms,” he says.
“I’ve had a job since I was 15, so I don’t like not working. That’s when I started to question myself – was I actually any good? I had to find myself a little bit again.”
No longer shackled by the traditional office nine- to-five but trying to discover a new future as a business reporter elsewhere, Garth riffed on a long-held ambition of a career in comedy. In person, it’s not hard to fathom – he’s super-smiley with a sharp wit.
So eschewing his fairly serious on-air persona, the father of one signed up for five weeks at the New Zealand Comedy School.
A bold leap into the unknown
“I thought, ‘What the hell? I have no ties now,’” he tells.
“And it’s fascinating the people you meet – a woman who’d just finished at Fonterra, a stuntman and a Russian mum – all these people giving it a go. “And I found out stand-up is a lot like journalism – you’re sharing your story, but you’re just trying to get laughs out of it.”
The graduation involved students doing a set at the Classic Comedy Club in front of about 80 people.
“That’s a bit of a blur,” he admits.
“I talked about phones and cats. I may have licked my armpit at one point. It was terrifying, then once it’s over, you want another go.”
He quickly wrapped up his comedy career. Garth is back at the coalface of storytelling and the host of NZME’s newly launched business programme Herald NOW Business with Garth Bray.
Telling the stories behind the brands
“Business journalism is this whole other language,” says Garth.
“I’ve had a lot of experience talking to business people and customers previously, but not in this way of understanding financial ‘dolphin-speak’. “For the show, we want to share the stories of people behind the brands and Kiwi businesses doing some cool things. Whether it’s big powerhouse CEOs or someone starting a small company, if we can show the variety of voices that will help people connect. “I’m really looking forward to doing more of what I’ve been doing for the past six months with Ryan Bridge on his show Ryan Bridge TODAY and it’s not all serious. We gently take the mickey out of each other… well, him more than me.”
Garth’s own upbringing helped him see first-hand the challenges small business owners face. Raised in Kaitaia, in the Far North, his parents owned a dairy, while his father also ran a plumbing business.
“Then he stepped away from the plumbing to run the shop with Mum,” shares Garth.
“I know what it’s like to grow up in a house and hardly see Dad because he works six-and-a-half days a week as there’s so much to get done. Sunday night, he’d be sitting at the table with his calculator doing the accounts and sending out invoices.”
A full-circle moment years in the making
While helping his parents at the dairy – in between playing Dungeons & Dragons – Garth reveals his first real job as a teen was working at the local petrol station. A month into the job, he accidentally poured petrol over someone who would go on to feature prominently in Garth’s future as a political reporter.
“I didn’t notice the pump was on free flow and it shot petrol on this guy’s back,” recalls Garth.
“He turned around and it was Hone Harawira [who entered Parliament in 2005.] I said ‘Sorry!’, but he gave me a big glare. “Then a year later, at 17, I got a volunteer job, broadcasting at an iwi
radio station, which it turned out he ran. Hone remembered this brat who’d sprayed him with petrol by accident.”
On election night 2014, Garth covered an event where Hone led the Mana Movement party.
He says, “We’re in the gymnasium of the full-immersion high school, standing in the spot where I did the radio show from 25 years earlier. And I’m saying, ‘Hone, it looks like it’s over for you…’ And
he’s saying, ‘Yup, it’s done.’ It was the weirdest moment for both of us.”
It’s a small world after all
Throughout his career, Garth has seen firsthand that in New Zealand, high-profile people have sides the public rarely sees.
Case in point, when his grandfather arrived in this country as an immigrant child from Wales, with his parents and five siblings. They shifted up to Northland, but had nowhere to live.
“And this lady was like, “You’re Welsh and we’re the Jones’, so we must be whānau,’” explains Garth.
“It was MP Shane Jones’ grandma, who gave my great-grandparents a house to live in, right next to their marae. So every time I see Shane, he goes, ‘Just remember we looked after you.’”
Garth served as the TVNZ Australia correspondent between 2006 and 2008, before his later role as the Europe correspondent from 2012 to 2013. He counts himself lucky to be the only journalist to land both coveted international roles. Chasing stories around the globe, he found himself in many dangerous situations.
The most harrowing assignment came in March 2011, when Garth covered the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, Japan. The direct cause was a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and the large tsunami it generated, which resulted in electrical grid failure.
Garth went to a place called Izumi to connect with a Kiwi family trying to escape and to report on their rescue.
Reporting on the edge of disaster
“We were just over 50 kilometres from Fukushima when two reactors there had blown and a third was about to,” he recalls.
“It blew as we were leaving the area. All of a sudden, word came through that [then-US president] Obama had declared an 80-kilometre exclusion zone for Americans, so we were thinking, ‘What does he know that we don’t?’v“I’ve never checked the weather more to see which way the wind was blowing,” he admits.
“The situation was pretty freaky – I had terrible nightmares after that. I remember rolling out of bed screaming one night. I didn’t realise it had affected me as much as it did. “Eventually, I tracked down the head of the National Radiation Laboratory in Christchurch. I was that nervy, and told him that the cameraman and I were freaked out. “He said, ‘To be honest with you, you probably got a stronger dose of radiation on the flight over.’”
For Garth, it put his mind to rest knowing that doing his job didn’t mean his family would pay a high price later. It’s clear that Garth’s family and his job are where his passions lie. When the conversation veers there, he lights up.
The family behind the man
At every step of the way, he’s been supported by his wife Celeste Sterling, 53, an artist who works with flowers and plants, and their son Kellan, 16. The couple met at Auckland’s iconic pub Empire Tavern through a mutual friend. They dated for about five months before Garth was posted to Australia. Happily, Celeste decided to shift over soon after and Garth proposed to her in the Blue Mountains.
Now Garth says he’s surrounded by “supermums” both at home and on the job. His talented colleagues working behind the scenes on the new business show – Sarah Bristow, Sharon Fergusson and Erica Lloyd – are “managing me gently”, he jokes.
He explains, “I feel like I’m a racehorse, and they’re handing out the sugar lumps and telling me, ‘You just run fast, okay?’”
Old contacts, new chats
So how will he feel about meeting up again with business people he’s had run-ins with while on Fair Go?
“Don’t worry, we’ve already had those chats,” smiles Garth.
“One name was mentioned where I went, ‘Oh, he’ll still have my number from the last time that I was in touch!’”
Herald NOW Business with Garth Bray airs at 6.30-7am weekdays on the NZ Herald website and YouTube. It will also begin screening on Sky and ThreeNow later this year.
