Mike Hosking is a king of breakfast radio, a lover of blazers, and deliverer of opinions via his long-running online video series, Mike’s Minute. José Barbosa absorbed three months’ worth of those opinions in one go, and lived to tell the tale. Just.

To be honest, I hadn’t thought about Mike Hosking for quite a while. The last time he sashayed through my cone of vision was when, on air, he bagged a TV show I was working on. He bagged it, then admitted he’d never seen it. Before that, there was the time he got in trouble over a commercial arrangement he had with the SkyCity casino, and the time got papped vacuuming his Ferrari. Another time he called a 60-year-old preschool teacher a moron.

He’s often praised Don Brash, indulges in stereotyping people on welfare, and opposes Māori wards. The on-air Mike is a sort of evolved version of the guy you’d see at a barbecue opining about something he’d read on the front page of the paper. Mark Richardson is in the same genus – everything is so clear to these guys, if someone would just listen to common sense everything could be solved.

All of which means there are plenty of people who practically self-combust at the very mention of Mike Hosking. Could I be one of those people? I spent lockdown trying to answer that question, by watching months’ worth of his video series, Mike’s Minute. I hope it was worth it.