Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Exclusive: Michele Hewtison Interview - by Michele Hewitson

Saucy in rare photo


What tribe are you?” I asked Michele Hewitson.

This just exploded out of my mouth like spittle. I had no idea where it came from except she had won columnist of the year at the Canon Media Awards in spite of fierce competition from her colleagues who took oaths they never entered themselves on pain of death. 

She’s renowned for not liking anything. Say hello to her at a bus stop? Sneer. Offer to buy her a drink? Sneer. Tell her you think her writing’s half-way great? Sneer, sneer, sneer, sneer as if well, that’s a given and who the damn hell do you think you are even daring to compliment the greatest living columnist writing for the greatest tabloid organ in this wonderful country called Aotearoa New Zealand. Stab and walk away is Michele.

We’re sitting in a tofu café near where I live in Mt Albert. Michele conveniently agreed to walk to meet me. She’s notoriously private about her own life. Check out Facebook and you will find, as I found, three Michele Hewitsons all spelled the same way. Could be a ruse? I tell her that’s ironic. She drawls why? I say because you pry into everyone else’s lives. She says no I don’t. I say yes you do. Don’t. Do. Don’t. Do. 

She says, “I’m a writer.”

I ask her what she’s that got to do with the price of fish. “You asked me what tribe I am,” she reminds me. Oh yes I’d forgotten my first question. I order trim decaf soy latte with extra hot no-chlorine water on the side. What will you have Michele I ask her? “I’ll have a Why Bother.”

I think that’s a bit rude but she’s known for being a bit rude so I let that one pass.

I say enough about me, let’s talk about you. What do you think of my questions so far?

She says you’ve only asked one question. Next. (Actually, I asked her if she’d like a coffee but that’s not really an investigative columnist question according to the Herald style book.)

I pick up her paws and ask her if she’s going to get nail extensions with the prize money and she says, “Ha ha whatever.” She is a very intelligent young lady of whom Dr Brian Edwards was first terrified then fell in love with when she interviewed him so I think I should follow suit and ask my second question (Third - Ed).

Did you have inappropriate relations with Brian? She sighs and slumps a bit, then points out his sentence which she has as a screensaver on her phone that says “Let me not bore you with the details of an interview that lasted for an hour and a half”. 

Michele says, “Make what you will of that but Sir Brian admitted he was terrified of me, called me a total bitch.”

I Google “bitch” on my phone under the table and find lady dogs with male dogs sniffing around. I guess Brian was pretty smitten by her then.

“I am also known as hugely talented, very perceptive, extraordinarily readable and amusing, according to the life of Brian,” she says. This is also on her phone. Handy research to bring along to our interview and I admit to being impressed.

I think to myself that this is interesting and perhaps the Canon Media Award columnist of the year was self-judged but then I quickly banish that thought from my head and ask her a philosophical question instead.

“Tell me Michele Hewitson,” I ask. “When Brian said he was pretty nervous about being interviewed by you and that no one wants to appear in print looking like a total arsehole…”

“Yeeeees,” said Michele Hewitson, patting down her hair and cocking her head to one side, looking like she was thinking hard about where this was going.

“Do you think that is because he is acknowledging he is a total arsehole and you may discover that and put it in your column?”

Michele Hewitson jumps and spills her blah blah blah drink down her pilled tights, burning her thighs I imagine, which makes me wonder if those are tears of pain pricking her eyes but no, just smoke drifting across from the nearby table where a skinny man in aviator dark glasses has been sitting, smoking nervously and keeping a close watch on our conversation, hiding behind the pages of a slim tatty magazine whose title is slightly obscured but which looks a bit like C-nva-.

I ask why she needed to have a go at all those departing politicians. Why didn’t she have a go at being a politician instead? Did it give her a good feeling of schadenfreude to see others’ pain when she gave them a good skewering on her back page? Was she proud of being described as being famous for her hatchet jobs?

“Well if I don’t give it to them,” she sneered down at me and demanded as she drew herself up to her full height of just five feet - eyes of sleet, “Who?”  

Editor - Michele Hewitson won columnist of the year at the Canon Awards despite her colleagues protesting she doesn't actually write a bloody column it is an interview.  Little is known about Michele.

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