Marc Ellis

It was a decent payout.

But it was decent enough so that I could go and play rugby and sort of be there or thereabouts.

I mean, I had built my life sort of here at that stage, or at least sown some seeds, and all my university friends had sort of come and lived in Auckland with all their commercial aspirations.

And so, to me, a city's more about the people who are in it than the actual city, and my people were here.

Did you have kids at this point?

Nope, nope.

And then in my last year playing rugby, we started Charlie's down on the waterfront.

Oh, yeah.

And how did that come about?

Well, my best mate, the guy used to tell me, you know, don't worry about the moves.

Look at your father on the sideline.

He played centre for Welling College, Simon Neill.

He was working up here.

At a bottle store, and he was the smartest in the room.

And I said, mate, why don't we, well, he said, or we agreed that we should try and replicate what had happened in Wellington with Stefan Lepionka from Stefan's Orange Juice.

Oh, yeah.

Who was Catholic.

Yeah.

And our mate, the Hoggards, who had opened the Daily Squeeze, who were on our side.

We used to have massive, massive wars between the schools, right?