“OMG, look at my hair! What am I wearing? I’m so ridiculously young. Oh, do you remember that story?”
That’s the chorus from Kevin Milne, Kerre McIvor and Liane Clarke as they glance through old photographs from their days on Fair Go, at our special reunion photoshoot. There’s lots of shrieking and laughter as they catch up and remember the way things were.
Fair Go is one of this country’s most-beloved TV shows and now it’s celebrating 40 years of battling con artists and making sure Kiwis get what they pay for.
Over that time, many well-known broadcasters have been part of the Fair Go team, among them a young Kerre. She was 21 and fresh from a stint presenting Video Dispatch, a 1980s current affairs slot for young people, when she landed a job on the far more grown-up consumer show.
Kevin with reporters Judy Callingham, Philip, researcher Manorma Ram, Kerre and producer Keith Slater.
“I was woeful, absolutely woeful,” she wails. “I had very little experience and wasn’t on a par with the calibre of journalists I worked with.”
She may have come across as confident to viewers but inside Kerre was quaking and made up for her nerves by being loud and bolshie.
“I was so scared, but rather than admit that to anyone, I put my chin up and talked a lot. I was like a noisy wind-up doll!”
It was a high-stress show and behind the scenes there were a few tensions. Kerre admits to struggling with the far more serious investigative journalist Philip Alpers.
“I chafed with Philip. He and I didn’t get on. I have the utmost respect for him, but I found it really hard in the office.”
Carol Hirschfeld, Kevin, Kerre, Anna Kenna and Philip Alpers.
Philip was so rigorous, he even had all his pens lined up by colour in his desk drawer.
“I used to mix them up just for the hell of it,” confesses Kerre. “That’s how childish I was!”
But Kerre brought an element to the show that is just as important as its integrity – and that’s entertainment. From the moment it was created by presenter Brian Edwards and producer Peter Morritt, Fair Go was always a blend of humour and serious reporting.
The first show went to air in April 1977 and from the start it rated with viewers.
“It was quirky and anything went,” says Kerre. “There was nothing else like it on TV.”
By the time Kevin came on board, Fair Go had been running for seven years.
“We were slightly looked down on by the rest of the current affairs team because we were doing funny stuff as well,” recalls Kevin. “But people watched our show, unlike some of theirs!”
Kevin spent 27 years on Fair Go. He recalls important stories, such as the one about the effectiveness of a commonly used fertiliser called Maxicrop that saw broadcaster TVNZ embroiled in a long-running court case.
But he was just as likely to find himself investigating complaints about a lack of hokey pokey in someone’s ice cream.
The things that got the biggest response from viewers very often weren’t what he expected.
“I’d get to the end of the show expecting to be congratulated for my wonderful investigative piece and instead people would be writing in saying, ‘Oh, my God, what was Kerre wearing?'”
Kerre laughs as she recalls some of the outfits she put together.
“When I first started, we didn’t have stylists or any budget. You had to buy your own on-screen wardrobe and I was on a junior’s salary. I remember once wearing a shearer’s singlet with a big, wide belt.”
Liane Clarke (52) credits Kerre with paving the way for her on TV. She was another bolshie young woman and auditioned for Fair Go in the early ’90s having worked as a journalist for Radio New Zealand.
“For me, it was an iconic show,” she says.
“I wanted to make my mum proud. And my nana and grandad, aunts and uncles, who all watched the show religiously – everyone knew someone who had been helped by Fair Go.”
From the start, she was popular with viewers. In the days before email, all the letters would be delivered in sacks and be tipped out into a big pile.
“Half that pile would be for Liane. She had this huge rapport with the audience,” remembers Kevin.
Liane can’t remember getting any negative feedback – it was all fan mail.
“I think it was the first time lots of people had seen someone on TV who looked like they did,” she says.
“So I’d get a lot of letters from the Maori and Pasifika community, and an awful lot from women who were size 18+ who wanted to know where I’d got what I was wearing.”
Kerre also broke new ground when she appeared on TV while pregnant with her daughter Kate, now 29.
“I was the first unmarried pregnant woman on TV and there was an outrage. I remember sitting by two ladies on a bus and they were saying, ‘Did you see Fair Go? She’s shameless.’ I just tapped one of them on the shoulder and told her I was very happy to be bringing my baby into the world. Then I came back to the show for a year after Kate was born – still unmarried!”
For all the Fair Go team there was a risk that knocking on the door of someone accused of a rip-off would result in a stoush. Reporter Sean Plunket famously had a ladder hurled at him while filming a story about dodgy house painters, and Liane found herself accused of assault after a run-in with a Southland farmer.
At first, the judge struggled to believe she was acting in self-defence.
“He was a tiny, little wiry farmer and I was 10 times him in every direction!” laughs Liane.
The threat to go to Fair Go was a potent one. Many stories never went to air because simply getting a call from one of the team was enough to spur a guilty party into making amends.
“The show was the last recourse for many people back then as there was no social media to complain on or find out whether anyone else was in the same boat,” says Kerre.
By the time he left, Kevin admits to feeling like he’d heard every complaint under the sun. Now 68, he’s happy to see the show continue without him and he’s enjoying semi-retirement, writing his Weekly consumer column and making the occasional radio appearance.
Meanwhile, Kerre (also a Weekly columnist) has gone on to huge success in radio and next year will take over Leighton Smith’s morning slot on Newstalk ZB.
Liane retrained and works as communications and marketing manager for the Auckland Kindergarten Association.
Looking back, all three are proud to have been associated with a show that for four decades has done so much for so many people.
“I don’t miss television, but I do miss Fair Go,” admits Liane.
“The chance to help people and the great team who put the show together – it’s the best job I ever had.”
