Alex Casey looks at the best of the worst of John Key on the commercial radio circuit. Caution: contains entirely too much information.
It’s hard to know at this point in time what we will miss the most about John Key. Will it be the time he said that gender quotas in Cabinet were stupid? Will it be him yelling about “backing the rapists” at actual rape victims? Will it be his repeat harassment of a waitress via her ponytail? Hmmm.
Whichever moving legacy you find the most moving, it’s important to remember that there’s another valuable commodity that has taken even more of a plunge than the New Zealand dollar did yesterday – perhaps one even more precious.
The banter stocks.
With John Key setting sail for the longest Johnny English marathon of his life, who is going to jovially bounce from wall to wall of every radio station in a polo shirt, saying things that your seven year-old nephew would deem ‘a bit much’? Let us never forget how hard our brave leader fought against the greatest threat to modern New Zealand society: dead, banter-free air.
Shower piss-up on Radio Hauraki
John Key visited the Radio Hauraki den for a round of ‘Thank You For Your Honesty’, and managed to deliver a higher dosage of unwarranted personal information than an overly-enthused pornbot on a quiet Twitter afternoon. He doesn’t trim his “downstairs”, he’s never sent a dick pic, he thinks Wendy Petrie is sexy.
But one crucial question remains: had the leader of our country “fed the chickens” [masturbated] in the past month???
“I’m afraid to answer for fear of being sued by my wife,” he laughs, as I begin proceedings to try to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind-myself of the whole exchange. Just so we’re all 100% clear on his policy, if the PRIME MINISTER OF NEW ZEALAND wanks, he ONLY wanks near his wife. And that’s the final word, Mister Speaker. I’ll see myself out.
Gay red top on The Farming Show
I don’t know much about The Farming Show, or much about what is sitting on that plate in front of JK. Is it some kind of delicious ravioli? Homemade chicken jerky? The dried out husk of people country-wide as they remembered we have a Prime Minister who uses homophobic slurs?
“You’re never going to make it mate,” Key japed at host Jamie Mackay about his golfing skills. “You’re munted.” Never one to stop himself from talking by forcefully shovelling whatever homemade pasta might be sitting in front of him, Key went on. “You’ve got that gay red top on there.”
After enraging many New Zealanders (even Sir Gandalf, the wisest of us all), Key told the Herald he had picked up the newfangled word from his children, and that he intended “gay” to mean “weird”. Which is obviously 100% fine.
Well contained within the padded walls of the madhouse, John Key was given the option to choose between doing headphone karaoke or giving the ponytails of some The Edge team a ‘friendly tug’ – because nothing is funnier than the most powerful man in New Zealand repeatedly harassing a young woman.
“That is one hell of a ponytail,” Key mutters through his teeth, before throwing his hands up and announcing “NO MORE PONYTAILS”. This is cool because that’s pretty much how the rest of us have been operating the whole time without even being the premier of the country. Key gets even more excited. “IT’S A TAIL FREE ZONE,” he crows, cheeks red and eyes almost crossing into one.
But at the end of the day, he’s a stand up bloke, so chooses to sing Mariah Carey’s ‘All I Want For Christmas is You’ a cappella because that’s we want in a leader. “That is going to be awful,” Key says remorsefully. “Bring back the ponytails.”
Fresh out of The Edge’s ponytail party, Key made his way to The Rock – who still has this on its site, just by the way – to get imprisoned in more ways than one. Trapped inside a cage with The Morning Rumble’s Tom Furniss, Key was asked to pick up the soap – a clear allusion to prison rape.
It caused about as much outrage as it deserved. Key’s people said that he didn’t pick up on the connotation at the time – perhaps he was still figuring out what “gay” actually meant from earlier – and Mediaworks were forced by the BSA to pay $1,000 and make an apology on air. Can’t put a price on banter though.
Just in case you were wondering, John Key definitely wears Nat blue underwear. Si, Gary and Johnny have a chat about the “man code” on More FM after Si observed John Key’s fly was undone. According to Gazza, eternal guardian of the bloke galaxy, the man code insists that “you always say to another bloke that you are at half mast.”
Key then jibed at Si for looking at his crotch in the first place, and said that he is normally careful, because of the envy that his open fly would create. Just think about that for a second. Let it wash over you like a lovely Prime Ministerial wee in a shower. Now imagine if Helen Clark talked about her genitals like that, or any other woman in the public eye for that matter ventured into any of this terrain that our dear leader once tread? Makes me bluer than a pair of JK briefs (sorry).