New Zealand’s ‘Godfather of Christmas’ looks back on his life in TV and music.
When The Spinoff reaches Frankie Stevens, he’s in a festive mood. Christmas is barely two weeks away, and he’s riding the high of having emceed his local Waverley Summer Christmas Jam last Sunday while also looking forward to hosting the Upper Hutt City of Song this Saturday night. It’s been over a decade since he retired from hosting Christmas in the Park, a gig he had for 20 years and through which he became known as the “Godfather of Christmas”. Thankfully, the festive invites have never stopped coming.
When asked how it feels to be such an iconic part of a Christmas in New Zealand, Stevens says, “it’s really nice to know. It really is.” During our conversation, he talks a lot about the importance of family, and reflects on his own role in so many people’s Christmas memories, whether they watched from a rug on the grass or at home through the screen. “Christmas is a time where everybody is all about their whånau… if I can bring a little Christmas cheer into their lives, I’m very happy about that.”
What people might not know is how much work went into Christmas in the Park, especially in the early days. Stevens was sent the setlist of songs six weeks in advance, first on cassette and later on CD. “Rehearsal-wise, we put quite a lot into it,” he says. “There was the choreography stuff you had to learn, the positioning on stage, all at the same time as the music side of things.” Despite all the hard work, he still looks back as Christmas in the Park as “one of the special ones” in his show business career. “I loved it, it was a great part of my life every year.”
Still, he’s happy to continue spreading the Christmas cheer in the 900-person town of Waverley, quite a different audience to the 250,000 strong crowd of Christmas in the Park at its peak. “It’s a little community thing where we get a couple of thousand people… But the feeling is still the same – enjoyable and good for the community you live in.” While he might not be on our screens at Christmastime any more, Stevens was happy share his own life in TV, including his own big break on a talent show, being a judge on NZ Idol, and his brief stint as a Russian spy.
My earliest TV memory is… standing outside a shop in Upper Hutt that had one of the first TVs in the window. Me and other people used to sit outside and watch this unbelievable sight of black and white television. A lot of people would have done the same thing.
My earliest TV crush was… Hayley Mills. I think me a whole lot of teenage boys felt the same way. She was a very attractive young lady to young teenage boys. Haley Mills was my first movie and television crush, and remained so for years. What a beautiful, beautiful woman.
The New Zealand TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… The one with the dog – the Bugger ad. That kind of epitomises New Zealand humour to me. Oh and remember the early Toyota ads with Crumpy and Scotty? They were great too.
My TV guilty pleasure is… I don’t have a guilty pleasure anymore, because I think TV has become non-existent. It used to be that you’d sit down and watch television for the evening, and there was only TV One, TV Two, and there wasn’t even TV Three, and you’d map your evening out around those channels. But now, everything’s downloaded and on your computer and it’s taken away the TV thing.
But from my early recollections, Star Trek was most probably the one that I watched the most, especially as it became more proficient in special effects and everything else. In those days of watching television, when I would sit down and watch it with family, it was most probably my guilty pleasure and my upfront pleasure as well.
My favourite TV show of all time is… I think some of the great music shows that came out of the States and Britain years ago were fantastic – the Tom Jones Specials were always great, The Oscars were quite incredible musically. They did so well because of their great expertise and camera work and sound that we could never replicate here in New Zealand. We can now, because we’ve got pretty good at it as well.
My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… Opportunity Knocks in Britain. I won that six times and that kind of kicked off my career in Europe. It was hosted by a guy called Hughie Green. He lived in London and he was an ex fighter pilot from the Second World War. It was great to be on the show. It was fantastic. It was live and people voted for you, and the idea was to beat the person in front of you. You stayed on the show as long as you kept winning.
The person who won it before me was a guy called Bobby Crush, who became a very big star in Britain as a piano player. The people that beat me were called Candle Wicked Cream. That television show is how I got established in Great Britain, it’s like how kids today go on shows like The Voice. NZ Idol was the first of that kind of live talent show to come to New Zealand, then others like New Zealand’s Got Talent and all that sort of stuff came after.
The best thing about NZ Idol was… I really did enjoy being a judge, but it took a little while to get used to judging people. You had to do it in such a way that you didn’t try to destroy their dreams – although there was always that kind of judge who made a habit of trying to do that. New Zealand Idol was a great experience, and a new one for me, which at my age, even then, you didn’t come by too often.
Back in the day, New Zealand performers and New Zealand television got judged more harshly because they always compared our shows to what happened internationally. If it was not as good as that, it was “bloody terrible”. But it really has gotten better. People now enjoy watching New Zealand television and they enjoy listening to New Zealand music. Back in the early days of New Zealand music it was hard, because everybody just wanted to hear covers. Today, New Zealand music is as popular as anywhere else, and that’s because New Zealand performers have gone overseas and outperformed their international compatriots.
Christmas in the Park is on Saturday 14 December in Auckland Domain.
