Rocked the Nation 2: Top 100 NZ Pop Culture Stories – 100 to 82

The Bushwackers reckon Americans knew all NZers weren't like them, they just thought we had the same personality...

The Rhys Darby-hosted Top 100 NZ Pop Culture Stories looked promising on the ad. And in the end, it wasn’t too bad.

It was too rushed on the stories that were most interesting (a punk suicide bombing the original Wanganui Cop Computer, WTF?), and had a few stories that should have been edged out for something more entertaining or just plain funny.

Rhys Darby was a great host (to the taxi driver at the airport: “No, I’m not Te Radar”), but was outshone by his very own 2degrees advert which is just superb.

Here’s the list from the first show, 100 to 82.

#100. Star Wars – Bros in Space

Bounty hunter Jango Fett is played by actor Temuera Morrison. He is cloned and becomes every storm trooper in the galaxy. This is just too much for New Zealanders to handle and in cinemas around the country we either laughed out loud, or sat stunned as deeper psychological damage took place.

Celebrity opinion included Dave Gibson, who said that it was ‘pretty hard for us to watch that objectively, to take Maoris in space seriously’. Hearing thick, unadulterated Maori accents in the Star Wars universe was simply too much for us to handle.

Scribe recounted that when he was a kid he owned a storm trooper figurine. When he took the little helmet off, the guy was white and so it ruined everything for him seeing Tem as a storm trooper. This was one of the best personal stories of the show.

#99. Beige Brigade

It was interesting to hear that Dan Vettori was partly responsible for the resurgence of the beige outfit back in 1999 when he bought a uniform in an auction in the UK and brought it home.

Also, I didn’t realise that the Australians designed the original beige uniforms for a series over there, and that many consider it to have been a bit of a cruel joke.

Great story, well worthy of the top 100.

#98. Ladies Night

This story was a bit average. Ladies Night is the most successful New Zealand play of all time and was the biggest play in England for four years running. It was also a strip show. Who cares – A couple of sex-starved hairdos from the 80s?

Of greater interest was the out-of-court settlement when the creators of Ladies Night sued the creators of The Full Monty for copyright infringement. The show didn’t say how much because clearly they didn’t know – nice journalistic detective work Bernstein.

#97. Bushwackers – Wrestlingmania

Great pick, had to be there.

Our very own WWF superstars, Luke and Butch were watched by thousands every week. One of the celeb commentators said that they should be considered ‘national heros, there should be a statue of them’.

This story yielded a few other gems: Scribe does a great Bushwacker gorilla arm thing; The Rock went to school in Auckland for a year when he was 7; ‘The Pakuranga Pukeko’ would be Rhys Darby’s wrestling name.

#96. Visitors to NZ – they hate us

This was a bit of a strange one, not really a story per se, but turned up a couple of classics I’d never heard before.

1. In 1834 Charles Darwin was pleased to leave New Zealand which for him was ‘not a pleasant place’.
2. Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones called Invercargill the ‘asshole of the world’. Fantastic! How many times do you hear some southerner wank on about how special they are for being so far away from everything else (ooooh, the Dunedin Sound – fuck off). Good on Keith Richards for telling it like it is: ‘No, you’re not special or unique, you’re the sphincter of the world’.
3. The Dalai Lama refused to get off his plane at Christchurch airport because the vibes were so bad. He’d probably just sharted and didn’t want to be found out.
4. John Cleese slagged off Palmerston North saying it’d be the place to visit if you wanted to kill yourself but lacked the courage. In retaliation, Palmerston North renamed their rubbish dump Mt. Cleese. Wow, snap.

#95. Wanganui Computer – Big Brother

In 1976 an embarrassingly large computer was built for the police at Wanganui. Apparently we were terrified by the thought of a giant computer built to hold everyone’s personal details (actually, films like Sleeping Dogs make more sense in the context of this climate of paranoia).

A punk (as in the movement) called Neil Roberts strapped explosives to himself and tried to blow it up. I’m not sure he actually damaged the computer, but he certainly blew himself up. There was amazing news footage from the time of his wanky, self-righteous mates all looking very New Romantic and saying how proud they were of him, and generally being try-hard, anti-establishment twats.

Tellingly, the celebrity reflection was provided by Dave Dobbin. My theory is that he secretly incited Neil Roberts to blow it up.

I would have gladly watched a 2 hour doco on this story alone! How could I have never heard this before? It should have been compulsory in history at high school.

#94. Hero Parade (Big Gay Out)

Apparently, it was still illegal to be gay in NZ until as late as 1985. So having Joe Sheepshearer turning out by the thousand to applaud gay people celebrating being gay was quite a turn around in just a few short years.

The best celebrity memory was the recollection that Auckland councilman Les Mills hadn’t been supportive of the Hero Parade when his gyms were kept in business almost exclusively by the gay community. It was ‘Gay-a-rama’ at Les Mills. A great point – Les really dropped the medicine ball on that one.

#93. Animal fixation

I suppose this story is pretty justifiable. The media does love to con the blue rinse demographic into loving stupid animal stories. Paul Holmes and a three-legged cat comes to mind, I have no further specifics on this memory and wonder if it came from a lame early-90s comedy sketch show.

A story I missed because I was living overseas at the time was Jin the Otter. One of the celebs said it is funny that at the same time as the whole world was out looking for Osama, we sent our army out to look for an otter.

Rhys Darby had a great little rant about Opo the Dolphin’s untimely death by dynamite: ‘Typical… an animal loved by kids and visitors and some dick features goes and blows it up’.

#92. Rocky Horror Picture Show

The best bit about this story was when they ‘skipped over’ the fact that convicted pedophile Gary Glitter had a stint over here playing a lead role in the play.

Due to my mistrust of theatre, I’m always going to hate stories on NZ plays, but I concede that this one’s a must-include because Robert Muldoon starred as the narrator for a while.

#91. Huffer T-shirt

This was a story that passed me by at the time, but was pretty entertaining. Orlando Bloom and Chris Martin wore the I Huffer NZ t-shirt and made us feel cool by association. A quintessential pop culture story.

#90. Gliding On

I’m always interested in old NZ telly shows and films. Saying that Gliding On was the original Office, albeit with a little tongue in cheek, was annoying.

Roger Hall pulled the plug on Gliding On after 5 years saying that he didn’t want to be remembered only for this sitcom. Yeah, sure you did Roger. Revisionist much?

#89. Zoe Bell

I like Zoe Bell. In every interview I’ve ever seen of her she says fuck at least twice per sentence. Also, that she so ingratiated herself – as a lowly stuntwoman – with Quentin Tarantino that he wrote a whole feature film just for her, makes her my hero.

#88. Goodnight kiwi

Jon Bridges was good value with his insane conspiracy theories on what was really going on in the cartoons.

#87. Back of the Y

I missed this whole thing somehow. Are Matt Heath & Chris Stapp the guys who more recently did the ‘dicks’ spot on Jono’s New Show? They had some good insights and gags but their whole presentation just ended up annoying me.

#86. Playschool

This story was really all about Manu. The Maori presenter was hilarious when he recalled trying to favour Manu because of her Maoriness but struggled because she looked so un-Maori.

Shavaughn Ruakere had the most incredible celeb recollection of the evening when she revealed that the What Now props guys (not Props Boy) unwittingly blew up the original Little Ted when their story called for a teddy to cop it.

#85. Te Maori Exhibition

‘New Zealand realises that Maori art is great art. But only after the Americans tell us so.’

C4 failed miserably to sex up this story and made it the most dull of the show. Surely they could have pursued the enormous schlongs on the male statues angle.

#84. Tui Billboards

I guess it was interesting to hear the origin story, but even this wasn’t very clear. I think they said the idea was born in 1984 at some drinking session, but was it work drinks, or a guy from the marketing team with his mates?

#83. Bloopers

This was an excellent pick. We saw Neville Purvis say fuck for the first time ever on New Zealand television – Important cultural history. Apparently, he was instantly unemployable in NZ and had to go to Aussie.

Even better was when Danny Watson dropped the bomb live on What Now, the kid’s show. Apparently, they only got about 3 calls of complaint. Danny’s take on the incident was that adults who saw it immediately mentally erased it – their brains simply couldn’t accept it as having actually happened.

They showed the fabulous Thingy blooper when his eyeball fell out. The way Thingy’s operator makes him freak out and duck out of view is perfect.

#82. Ingham Twins

The infamous Ingham Twins stowed away on a Malaysian ship and caused all kinds of trouble.

They showed the legendary appearance by the twins on Holmes’ Christmas party. What a train wreck. It’s excruciating viewing, seeing them freeze and die like they did. Really, what was the best Holmes was hoping for?

Jon Toogood from Shihad said “why do you want to know what they think, they’re fucking morons.” True, but still I’d rather hear the Inghams stumble through an interview on just about any topic than suffer through another sportsperson interview.

Then came the juicy tidbit that someone’s making a movie about them. I’m so there, the whole row bought out so that no-one can see me cry.

This is another story I would have happily watched a full documentary on.