Marc Ellis

um media labs on officer in the all blacks but you just trust him implicitly i'd trust him with my life and so yeah um and and sports cafe was a sitcom right rick was the boss my job was to try and them off my job was to you know think that lana liked me even though she didn't and then graham was just the quirky bugger who i could laugh with over and so it all and then lee came on yeah yeah then the gimp came on board and the human cannonball all of whom were my mates

And so it was just freedom, really.

Well, you kind of got away with it back then because the world didn't take itself so seriously.

There wasn't a cancel culture and it didn't seem to be –

Well, it wasn't, you know, back then, if somebody asked you, are you good at anything?

You'd say, I know, not me, mate, nothing to see here.

Whereas now everyone who's not good at anything is trying to show you who they wish they were.

And look how brilliant I am.

It's just like, that's a diametric change in the New Zealand psyche in a space of 15 years, 20 years, less than a generation that we've gone from being humble to being fully Americanized.

We're out there trying to, as an influencer or, you know, really?

Yeah.

I mean, sure, there are some people who do a great job of that, but not as many as I think, as I suspect they believe.

Well, luckily, the show in question, I can't remember.

So I'd phone up the next day and say to Rick,

Have I overstepped the mark?

And he was actually a little bit concerned.

And I said to him, look, well, mate, let's just tell TVNZ that I was acting.

Yeah, yeah.

Because it's one of those shows where you're going to prove otherwise, you know.

And there were no phones back in the day, so nobody could prove otherwise.