So sweet, so fine, so polite – who?

Pop CultureMay 11, 2023

Who is she: A quest to find the women behind some of NZ’s most famous song titles

Senior writer

So sweet, so fine, so polite – who?

Many of the great New Zealand songs have one thing in common: a woman’s first name as their title. Alex Casey went on a mission to find the real women who inspired them.

She keeps me waiting in the morning by tying ribbons in her hair. She’s just so sweet, so fine, so polite too. She’s oh so nice and easier to love than I.

She’s one of the many women who have been forever immortalised through the majesty of New Zealand song, her name sung off key during many a drunken night out.

She’s Lydia. She’s Sophie. She’s Cheryl Moana Marie. She’s Victoria.

But who is she, really?

‘Cheryl Moana Marie’ by John Rowles (1970)

Is she real? She’s bloody real!

Despite multiple attempts to contact the Rowles empire, I was unable to get anyone to talk about this song for my investigation. Luckily, better journalists in the past have managed to unearth the truth. Get ready: she’s real but… she’s also his sister. Talking to the Dominion Post in 2014, Rowles said that he came up with the song from his hotel bed in London. “I just thought for a while and my sister’s name came to me, Cheryl Moana.”

He already conjured up the lyric “there on the shore she waits so patiently,” the story goes, but needed to add something to her name to make it rhyme. Stealing another one of his sister’s middle names, Marie, he created the hybrid name for a slam dunk 1970s Kiwi classic. “For many people it’s a song they love and they connect with special memories,” Cheryl told Stuff in 2014, “it’s lovely he wrote something like that and I’m connected with it.”

Let’s ignore the Lannister vibey lyrics and crash onto the next song.

‘Maxine’ by Sharon O’Neill (1983)

Is she real? Real person – but not her real name.

Speaking to me over the phone from Australia, Sharon O’Neill was more than happy to reminisce about the enigmatic woman who inspired ‘Maxine’. “I was based in Kings Cross with my band in 1980 and we were doing a lot of touring that took us out of town. We would be getting back quite late at night and that’s when I noticed her – pretty much every night we would get in and she’d be there.”

Despite never talking to her, O’Neill found herself scribbling down an imagined version of “Maxine’s” life. “She was working small hours of the morning and in those days it was very rugged for street girls – every conceivable scenario unfolded up there, a lot of underworld crime, so I really felt for her.” Keen to take her time with writing it, she sat on the song for a few years. “It was one of those things that I really didn’t want to rush.”

The name Maxine came from a woman O’Neill met through one of her male castmates during a pantomime production in her hometown of Nelson, many years prior. “I always thought it was a really cool name – as soon as I met her I thought that.” Returning home after the single was released, her former castmate came to the gig to tell her that he had since married and had kids with Maxine. “I still tell him to give my love to Maxine,” she laughs.

As for the woman who inspired the story in the song, O’Neill has no idea what happened to her. When the video for the single was filmed in Kings Cross in 1983, the real Maxine was nowhere to be seen. “Everyone knows that song and everyone still sings along to it, so I have a lot to thank her for,” says O’Neill. “All I can hope is that she’s still alive and she got out of there. Maybe she found her own Richard Gere, that would be nice.”

‘Victoria’ by The Dance Exponents (1983)

Is she real? Real person AND real name!

Due to the rich vein of ‘Victoria’-based content out there already, I don’t even really care that Jordan Luck didn’t respond to any of my requests for comment – it’s fine actually, I don’t think about it at all. Ever. Not even now. Anyway… VICTORIA IS REAL!!!!!! “I recall lots of stuff but I don’t recall paying rent,” Luck told lucky old Stuff in reference to his flat in 1980s Christchurch. “Our landlady, Vicky, did not seem to mind us.”

Part escort worker, part landlord, that same Vicky became the central character in what is largely considered one of the greatest New Zealand songs of all time. Although Luck reflected in the same Stuff interview that the domestic violence theme in the song could have been made stronger – he feels weird singing it at weddings – Vicky herself was happy with the song after it was released. She even put large promotional poster for the single on her wall. Iconic.

‘Glorafilia’ by Zed (1999)

Is she real? Not in the slightest :(

“I’m sorry to tell you this but Glorafilia is fictitious,” says Ben Campbell from Zed. “She’s inspired by different people and frustrations, but the name itself doesn’t specifically reference an existing human.” As a punter who rocked out hard to this song at the Masterton Summer Hummer in 2001, this one stung. Campbell penned the lyrics at the tender age of 17 after staring at his parents’ bookshelf for inspiration. “I randomly grabbed one called The Glorafilia Needlepoint Collection.”

He was instantly charmed by the name. “It had an interesting roll to it phonetically, it created a hook instantly as soon as I sung it. That whole chorus just came out in one go, and then the verse came out. It was one of those songs, just like most best poppy songs, that comes really quickly.” Fellow bandmate Nathan King came over later that afternoon and helped him finish the last verse. “We never even questioned the name Glorafilia. It was just a girl’s name to us. Except it absolutely wasn’t.”

According to my professional Facebook stalking and a fruitless, confusing call to Births, Deaths and Marriages, there is nobody in New Zealand who has been named Glorafilia since the song was released. Nonetheless, her blonde-dreadlocked legacy lives on. “It’s part of my history and I’m proud of it,” says Campbell. “I love it for what it is – a very sweet and innocent and naive love song written by a 17-year-old. Plus, she got us a record deal and a career in music.”

I asked if he could imagine what Glorafilia, our national manic pixie dream girl, would be doing now. It really felt like he had already been thinking about it for a long time. “She’d have to be a milliner or a curtain maker now. I think she’d be like Josie from the Giant’s House in Akaroa – Glorafilia has definitely spent most of her life making mosaics.”

‘Lydia’ by Fur Patrol (2000)

Is she real? Yeah, nah, not really.

“Lydia is an amalgamation of a couple of situations,” Fur Patrol’s Julia Deans tells me. “I’d say she’s like a dream character, like someone who is a little bit of yourself and a little bit of someone you know and a little bit of someone you’ve never actually met before.” Deans wrote the song in her early 20s, while she was trying figure out the intricacies of relationships and rejection. “What I was trying to get at was – even though that shit hurts, there’s no point in holding onto bitterness.”

She remembers the song coming to her incredibly quickly one afternoon. “It really felt like the song just fell out of the ether and straight into into my guitar and mouth. I literally wrote it in about five minutes, it was one of those moments as a writer that you just live for. I still have no idea where it came from, so it’s incredibly humbling that it’s still around.” As for the name? “I just plucked it out of the air. There’s something about it that allows you do that kind of ‘ugh’ schoolgirl emphasis on it, which I love.”

To this day, people come to Deans and tell her that they were named after the song. “I think that’s really sweet but then a part of me is like… is that a nice idea?”

‘Sophie’ by Goodshirt (2001)

Is she real? YES YES YES YES 100% YES!!!!

Skin my knees and throw me to Fiji, baby, because Sophie from ‘Sophie’ is about as real as bloody climate change. “I was a teenager and there was this girl in my drama class that I liked, so I thought it would be quite edgy to write a song about her,” says Gareth Thomas from Goodshirt. “I managed to sound out the alliteration early on – she was sweet and fine and polite so that quickly became the chorus.” He liked the song, but he didn’t tell anyone about it for years.

What he didn’t manage to keep secret were his feelings for Sophie. After writing the song, he finally built up the courage to ask her on a date. It was a special date too – a romantic dinner for two at a posh restaurant that he had won through a radio competition. “I was so shy,” he remembers, “she was the first girl I ever took out to dinner.” He walked her home, but there was no kiss and no second date. They both went off to university and never saw each other again.

It was years later when Goodshirt formed that the song resurfaced again. “We had just got together and we needed some songs to play, so I brought out ‘Sophie’.” The rest of the band liked it, the record company liked it, and it was set to be their first single. “It was a real shock at first,” says Thomas, “but then it became a really good feeling because I was finally able to let go of this song.” By 2001, the song was out in the wild and everyone was singing about Sophie.

The question remains: what does the real Sophie think about the song? Thomas recalls one instance where a radio station tracked her down, but she denied it was about her. “She was so modest,” he remembers, “it definitely was.” The Spinoff made several attempts to find Sophie, but she clearly got the same memo as John Rowles and Jordan Luck and did not respond. Although Thomas has since moved on with his romantic pursuits, he’d still love to talk to her again.

“I just hope she’s doing well. She’s helped me pay off my student loan, so I’d really like to thank her for that.”

This story was originally published in 2019.

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The main characters from The Last of Us with a yellow banner reading "audio description unavailable" underneath

Photo: HBO / Design: Tina Tiller

Pop CultureMay 10, 2023

No Succession or The Last of Us: What TV is like for the visually impaired

Chris Schulz

Guest writer

Photo: HBO / Design: Tina Tiller

Audio descriptions open up a new world for those that can’t see the on-screen action. But some of TV’s biggest shows still remain off-limits.

A while back, Thomas Bryan was travelling. Stuck in a motel on his own for the night, he decided to watch some telly. “There was a program called Person of Interest, a futuristic, spycam-type show,” he says. Airing on TVNZ 1, and starring Lost’s Michael Emerson and Amy Acker, it tells the story of police using an all-seeing AI machine to help them predict crime.

After a while, Bryan realised the show wasn’t for him. “This is rubbish,” he thought, and turned it off. When he got home, his wife told him she’d recorded a new TV show for him. It was the same episode of Person of Interest – only this time, Bryan could watch it properly. He’s visually impaired, and has been for most of his life. He can make out shadows, bright lights and doorways, and that’s about it.

The version of Person Interest he watched at home was very different to the one he saw in the motel. “It was … a totally different program,” he says. “It’s just so good.” That’s because of audio descriptions (AD). The format, available on select TV shows and streaming services, offers an extra layer of audio beyond a show’s audible action and dialogue.

An extra voiceover, narrated in the gaps between dialogue, informs the visually impaired of things they might otherwise be missing. “They tell you things of interest or [describe] the expressions on people’s faces,” says Bryan. Sometimes, it might help visualise the background, or describe handcuffs being placed on a criminal. “It’s another dimension that fills in all the gaps.”

It wasn’t available to him in the hotel. But at home, AD allowed Bryan to understand what was really happening in the FBI thriller he was watching, giving him an immersive experience similar to those with sight. “If there’s no words and someone’s creeping up the stairs, or they’ve got a knife in their hand, they’re painting that picture for you.”

He loves a good English detective story, a classic whodunnit, and shows like Downton Abbey. But there are plenty of shows Bryan can’t watch. He hasn’t seen HBO’s prestige TV hits like Succession, The Last of Us or Barry. News shows can be an issue, as can sport. He got in touch after reading The Spinoff’s ranking of the top 20 streaming services to point out Neon – our number one – was essentially useless to him as it has no AD options. Other streaming services are sporadic with AD. Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and Apple TV+ have AD available for some shows. But the quality varies. When The Spinoff tried watching the Netflix film Don’t Look Up, a robotic voice providing bland descriptions quickly got annoying.

Bryan says the best option for the 180,000 visually impaired New Zealanders is to stick to the strict timetables offered by linear, broadcast TV channels TVNZ 1, TVNZ 2, Three and Prime, which offer AD for most shows. (The accompanying streaming services, TVNZ+ and ThreeNow, do not.) He’d love to be able to watch more, and keep up with all those watercooler TV moments. But right now, without AD, it’s just not possible. “It’s very hit and miss,” he says.

Doors are closed, curtains are pulled, voices are hushed. Up eight floors in a grey office block off Symonds Street in Auckland, a lot of TV is being watched. Clare Wilson sits in front of a pivotal Shortland Street scene and promises me to secrecy – she’s busy viewing an episode of the local soap that’s not due to appear on our screens until next week.

This is her job. She watches each episode, writes an AD script, then records it to fill in the gaps for viewers who can’t see those things take place for themselves. Each episode takes her around 90 minutes or so – more if there’s lots of action, or a Christmas cliffhanger. “Every AD-er will not AD the same way,” she says. “We are not robots. We don’t have a standard saying for every situation because media is so diverse.”

The importance of her role isn’t lost on her. About 7% off New Zealand TV viewers rely on AD, including the visually impaired, and those with neurological or attention deficit problems. Wilson carries a torn, faded note with her at all times from a fan who wrote in to thank her for her work on The Luminaries. That was a knotty show that took her the best part of five weeks to provide AD for. “It was one of those moments … ‘Ah, I did that’,” she says. “And that person has been able to enjoy that show.”

Able's Claire Wilson recording an audio description track — Clare Wilson (Photo: Able/Supplied)

Nearby, inside another soundproofed room, Paul Harrop is working his way through an episode of Survivor Australia. A wave crashes over a beach in Samoa, but with no dialogue, he’s decided to get out his poetry pen and go for it. “A misty veil of grey cloud drapes over the island carpeted in tall palm trees,” he says in a calm, soothing tone. “Waves violently crash against a bank of dark rocks sending spouts of white water fountaining into the air.”

A show like Survivor makes his job easy, he says. There’s plenty of dialogue and the story’s edited to make it obvious who’s backstabbing who – he just has to fill in the gaps. Sometimes, it’s trickier. He recently provided AD for the film Blade Runner 2049 and found the lack of dialogue tough work. It’s not his job to explain the film’s visual metaphors, just to help put the director’s vision in front of those who can’t see it. “I don’t want to tell them how to feel. I don’t want to tell them how to think,” he says. “I [only] want to tell them anything that a sighted viewer can see.”

After 10 years, Paul’s been providing AD at Able longer than anyone. Since spinning out of TVNZ to become its own thing in 2011, the not-for-profit has just kept growing. With NZ On Air funding, it provides captions and subtitles for the hearing impaired, and has seven full-time AD staff doing descriptive work for more than 80 hours of content each week.

Paul in the studio recording an audio description track — Paul Harrop (Photo: Able/Supplied)

But with a lack of local streamers offering AD, Able’s AD founder Virginia Philp says there’s potential to be doing plenty more. “We just go where the broadcasters go,” she says. “We follow their schedules and try to be consistent.” Yes, she admits it’s frustrating their work isn’t available across more platforms, but all their AD work is saved in a library and hopes it will be available to everyone soon. “There will come a time when we feel like our archive, our inventory, can be put to good use.”

Thomas Bryan, a member of Able’s board, can’t wait for that moment. He believes he, and everyone else that uses AD, will take as much content as they can get their hands on. (Neon didn’t respond to request for comment; A spokesperson for TVNZ said: “Our current video player does not have the ability to host audio-descriptions. We know this is disappointing for blind and low vision audience members, but we do not think we will be in this position forever.) Yes, things have come a long way since its early days when only Coronation Street came with AD. “People, even those in the blind community, just don’t know about audio description,” he says. “Audio description paints such a wonderful, colourful picture of what it is that’s happening.”