So, Arnie - may I call you "Arnie"? - you plan to build a home in Queenstown.
Good for you, but I think you should know that dangers lie ahead. Specifically, there are some people here who may irritate and offend you, and I'd hate any of them to put you off this wonderful country. In particular, I wouldn't want you to suppose is that they are in the smallest degree representative of anyone apart from themselves.
The trouble is, Arnie, this is a very, very small country. Here the bubble reputation, won even in the cannon's mouth, can go unburst for years. Decades even.
You won't have met such people in California, or even in the wider US, because powerful mechanisms exist there to drive such people off the stage and into oblivion. In New Zealand someone like Sarah Palin or Tonya Harding has their fifteen minutes of fame and then, rightly, they irrevocably become part of the past. But here there is no New York Times, Washington Post or Los Angeles Times to send such people packing. No Daily Show with Jon Stewart. No Saturday Night Live even. We have few such prophylactic devices of this kind in New Zealand, and none with their expertise and power. The upshot is that assertive and shameless mediocrities can, and do, survive long past their use-by date.
As a service to you, therefore, and because I'm a big fan of your movies, I offer the following inventory of the worst of the current bunch. Should any of them should enter your peripheral vision, try to pretend they don't exist. As the rest of us do.
The Most Irritating People in New Zealand
* Helen Clark - Our most recently retired prime minister. Believes she was and is both a Pill We All Should Swallow With a Smile on Our Faces and a Colossus Striding the World Stage. (In short, she is a colossal pill.) Has temporarily left the country, and our lives, thank goodness, but will return.
* Michael Cullen - This person was until recently The Best Finance Minister Named Michael Cullen in the Whole World but has now all but completely disappeared from view. I mention him because his name will crop up from time to time in conversations - for example, someone may say within your hearing "Doesn't the world seem a much better place now that that venomous little insect Michael Cullen has departed from public life?", at which point other people will agree and say that sometimes they wondered whether the sun would ever shine again but now he's gone and life seems worth living once more. I wouldn't want your curiosity to be piqued by such comments, for were you to ask "Who's Michael Cullen?" that would almost certainly wreck the party, or whatever the social occasion was.
* The Green Party - This is not a person but a group of people who are permanent applicants for the (non-vacant) positions of National Conscience and Publicly Paid Miseryguts. You're probably in no danger of any kind from them, any more than the rest of us are, but you should know that, yes, the appropriate response is to laugh. In short, it's official, they are a joke.
* Kim Hill - I always think of this talk show host on National Radio (the equivalent of your National Public Radio: big here because this was once a socialist country) as a kind of Michael Cullen in drag. They are the same age, both were born in England, and both emigrated to New Zealand at about the same time (1960-ish). If you turn on Public Radio on a Saturday morning between 9am and noon there's an 85% chance you will hear Kim Hill. There's a 15% chance you will hear anything else because when you turn on a programme involving Kim Hill that's what you get: Kim Hill. Someone must think it's what we want. The simple remedy is not to turn the radio on on Saturday mornings. You probably have much better things to do with your time, anyway.
* Michael King - He's a dead historian, so his influence is swiftly diminishing, but he's really a category of people (Keith Locke, Jane Kelsey et al) who believe, inter alia, that:
- New Zealand should sever diplomatic relations with the United States
- there should be more police in prison
- if the North and South Island had Maori names the world would be a better place
- the bigger the state, the better off they will be (which is probably true)
And so on. Ignore them. They will go away.
* The New Zealand Listener - This is also not a person but a group of people who produce a weekly magazine. It propagates a view of New Zealand driven by lower middle class angst which will make you want to throw up. Buy it only if supplies of toilet paper run out in Queenstown, but as I'm not completely certain that it is safe to use as toilet tissue use it sparingly and only if there is no suitable alternative.
* Rosemary McLeod - I defy you (or anyone else) to explain why this egregious woman is paid to broadcast her intrinsically uninteresting views to the nation, or parts of it, each week. I simply observe that, notwithstanding the evidence which she constantly seeks to provide, the majority of New Zealanders are attractive, happy with themselves and their lives, self-confident, and fun to talk to and be with. Just like most people anywhere, really.
* Sam Neill - It's possible that you have run across this B-list Hollywood actor already as he lives in Queenstown. Don't get into conversation with him, if you can help it, as there is every indication that up close he is a terminal bore.
* Winston Peters - You may have missed this one and, if you have, you are a very lucky man. Take careful note of the name, however. Remembering it could save you a lot of pain.
Tom Scott - Oh dear, I do hope you don't run into this ghastly creature anywhere. If you are in a restaurant somewhere and find yourself in the same room as someone who talks very loudly about himself, and if this is a very portly, grey man (grey hair, grey clothes, a grey face mottled with red, like underdone beef) who looks as if he is metamorphosising into an elderly and malodorus walrus, that's Scott. Avoid.
Getting ready for lunch with Tom Scott:
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