In episode four of Get It to Te Papa, a Lightbox Original made by The Spinoff, Hayden Donnell goes on the hunt for Auckland’s infamous winking, come-hithering Giant Santa.

Watch Get It to Te Papa on Lightbox here.

As we headed in to interview Mayor Phil Goff for this episode, a call came through to our producer Amber. It was the communications spokeswoman for Heart of the City, the central city business organisation that owns Auckland’s Giant Santa. She wanted to know why we were still pursuing Santa. Her organisation’s chief executive had turned down an interview on Santa. She thought that would be the end of the matter. That we’d drop the case and pick another subject. Amber explained that Santa still mattered to us. We wanted him to be a part of the show. Then the spokeswoman dropped a bombshell: She knew what we were doing. She knew we were about to interview the mayor. There were eyes on us inside council. We’d been asking too many questions about the Santa, and people were starting to take notice.

Things had started out so well. Auckland’s Giant Santa is a unifying landmark, and finding people with a connection to him is easy. He’s remarkable, mainly because he’s both an overbearing, obvious presence, and a bizarre mystery. Why does he exist? Even if you could find the precise series of decisions that lead to its creation, you could never recapture the inexplicable mindset that led scores of otherwise normal working professionals to craft a Santa twice the size of a humpback whale.

It’s now been 58 years since the Giant Santa was first erected on the Farmers building on Hobson Street in central Auckland. Like several of the artifacts in Get It to Te Papa, he has woven his way into New Zealand’s cultural fabric through sheer resilience. At first he would have been an attraction. Then a curiosity. Now he feels like part of Christmas itself in Auckland, as if the festive season will not arrive without a giant Santa beckoning it in. He has been in our collective life for so long, he’s become part of the city: familiar as the Sky Tower; eternal as Rangitoto.

Still, many of the people we interviewed had mixed feelings about him. Masterton resident Marama Fox told me the Santa was “shit”. Wellingtonian creative Toby Manhire dripped with scorn. Even many Aucklanders had mixed feelings. They remembered Santa’s iconic winking eye and beckoning finger – both of which were removed in a 2009 renovation – with a degree of suspicion and even, in some cases, fear. Comedian Michele A’Court said the beckoning finger was creepy. She was glad it was gone. So were Spinoff writers Alex Casey and Leonie Hayden. They performed impressions of Santa’s slow wink and “come hither” finger, laughing unkindly.

But there was one group who still showered Santa with uncomplicated, unmitigated love: middle-aged white men from Auckland. When they saw Santa, it was with the innocent eyes of a child. They never projected adult angst upon him, refusing to concede he was ever “creepy”.

Stephen Hanford, who bought Santa for $1 and met the challenge of erecting him when Farmers refused to in 1998, was filled to the brim with affection for Santa. In many situations you could mistake him for another dry businessman, but as soon as he talked about Santa, his eyes lit up like he was talking about an old friend. Hanford was genuinely hurt by the accusations of creepiness. “They don’t believe in the spirit of Santa,” he said, angry and incredulous.

Gary Young, construction manager at Mansons Property Developers, was less demonstrative, but still clearly touched by Santa. His company shoulders the annual cost of storing and erecting this mammoth Christmas landmark. He said they were doing it so that people could revisit their Santa memories, and so they could take their kids to the city to create new ones. “We think we’re doing the right thing here.”

Santa was innocent. Santa was pure. You had to believe in Santa. If you couldn’t believe in Santa, what could you believe in?

Why then was Santa causing us so much angst inside Mayor Phil Goff’s office? It’s something I’ve never resolved. Maybe the answer is entwined with the weird case of Alex Swney. The former Heart of the City chief executive was convicted in 2015 of swindling the organisation out of $2.5 million, which he did partly by creating false or exaggerated invoices.

Swney put the cost of storing Santa in the non-festive season at $180,000 per year in 2014. A reliable source told me the actual cost of storing Santa now amounts to only half the figure quoted by Swney. Could Santa have been at the centre of some economic mismanagement?

Maybe the answer is a little more simple though: Santa is at risk. He has been at risk, on and off, for decades. He’s huge. Storing him 11 months a year is a big ask. Putting him up is a big logistical and economic challenge. At the moment, that cost is met by Mansons – but is it reasonable to expect a private company to shoulder the burden alone?

The truth is Santa belongs to every Aucklander. He has winked his way into all of our hearts, and reassured us all that Christmas is on its way for more than 50 years. Surely it’s time for Aucklanders to repay the favour, and jointly take on the cost of ensuring Santa lives on forever.

Read more about Get It to Te Papa and its genesis in Hayden Donnell’s brain right here.

Get It to Te Papa is a Lightbox Original, made by The Spinoff. Episodes 1 – 4 are streaming now on Lightbox.

It has been announced that Celebrity Treasure Island, the iconic New Zealand reality show that almost killed Mountain Dewer Lana Coc-Kroft, will return next year. Sam Brooks peers into his dollar-store crystal ball to predict the contestants.

It’s coming back. The show that introduced us to celebrities… again. The show that almost killed our most famous Lana. The show that was Survivor but for semi-famous people. TVNZ came out roaring with their 2019 slate last night, and nothing had us at The Spinoff more excited than the return of this true Kiwi classic.

But who are the contestants going to be? Lucky for you and me, I went down to LookSharp this morning, got me an off-brand crystal ball, and did some seeing into the future, and I’ve got these 14 celebrities locked down exclusively for you all*

*All, some or none of these celebrities may be on the show.

Erin Simpson

The former What Now host and current Red Carpet TV-slash-Zac-Franich-significant-other makes perfect sense for Celebrity Treasure Island. She’s at a level of celebrity where people know her name, but not necessarily what they know her from. And here’s the solution: She will henceforth be known as the woman who maintains her blonde highlights throughout a season of Celebrity Treasure Island, and good on her for that.

Renée

If you’re not familiar with the recipient of the 2018 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement – Fiction, let me give you a brief education, courtesy of Creative New Zealand:

“Renée (formerly Renée Taylor) is a dramatist and fiction writer. Born in 1929 in Napier, she is of Ngāti Kahungunu and Irish-English-Scots ancestry.

“Renée left school and started work at the age of 12, working in woollen mills, a printing factory, a grocery-dairy, and as a feature writer and reviewer. Renée started writing for the stage at the age of 50 and has also written a short story collection and numerous novels. Her most loved work is Wednesday To Come, the first in a trilogy of plays about four women of four generations in a single family. Her most recent work These Two Hands: A Memoir tells the story of her eventful life.

“In the 2006 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Renée was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature and drama, and in 2013 received a Sir Kingi Ihaka Award recognising lifetime contribution at Creative New Zealand’s Te Waka Toi Awards.”

Needless to say, I can’t wait to see Renée go toe-to-toe with our nation’s finest in for the privilege of shitting in a flushing toilet.

Sue Fleischel

One half of Fleischelschneider, The Great Kiwi Bake Off judges, Fleischel has emerged as the star of the pair. She says ‘pretty’ about three hundred thousand times an episode, and I can’t wait to see her make a dozen cupcakes out of coconut husks, sea water and the masticated corpses of her fellow contestants.

Astar

She made flowers for the Sultan of Brunei and sent her CV in a trashbag to Good Morning; do you think Astar is coming to the island to play? No, she’s coming to win. This is a woman who can MacGuyver a fiftieth anniversary party out of your office’s week old recycling bin, and do it with a smile. Do you think she can’t fashion a shiv out of a charred stick without chipping her manicure?

Dominic Bowden (again)

There needs to be a pretty city boy to round out the team, and who better to fill this role in 2001 than Dominic Bowden?

And in 2018, who better to fill this role than… Dominic Bowden also, I guess? The man is ageless in spirit if not in time, and I have every confidence that he will bring as much slightly under-qualified enthusiasm to the island in 2019 as he did in 2001.

Ben Mitchell

I have no doubt that at some point in his life Ben Mitchell has raved to his mates/surrounding humans that he would be the absolute best at Survivor, and he’d win easily. I would bet a lot of money on it, in fact. He seems like the kind of the guy who thinks he’d be amazing at Survivor, but hasn’t slept outside in the past decade.

I wish him well on Celebrity Treasure Island, and have no doubt that like the last time he was put on camera without a script, he will say incomprehensible things about men, women and our modern culture.

Dame Susan Devoy

Both seasons of Celebrity Treasure Island featured a lot of sports people, and who better to fill this role than former squash world champion and Race Relations Commissioner Susan Devoy? (I know very few sports people, and my crystal ball knows even fewer, so I am reaching a little bit here.)

Sally Ridge (again)

In 2001, Sally Ridge was mostly known for being Matthew Ridge’s other half. In 2018, Sally Ridge is mostly known for the physically short-lived but culturally long-lived reality show The Ridges. I think we’re all set for a Ridge comeback, and what better comeback for her than the show that made her famous originally? It’s like Roseanne, without all the unfortunate racism and Twitter meltdowns.

Jordan Watson (How to Dad)

The first two seasons of this show were chock-full of personalities from home renovation shows, and by my scientific calculations the equivalent of that in 2018 is social media influencers. And who better to represent that echelon of culture and society that the man with thirty thousand kids in a knapsack?

Leighton Smith

Leighton Smith will be officially unemployed/retired at the end of the year, and there’s no better way to keep active in his midnight years than a stint on an island with a bunch of people he’s never heard of, and another bunch of people he considers inherently lesser than himself.

I give him two weeks before he’s clutching coconuts to his ears, taking calls from invisible people who, despite not existing, are still racist and upset about things being too PC.

Anika Moa

Anika Moa makes amazing television. Put her on K’Road, put her in front of our prime minister’s husband or the deputy leader of the National Party, and she sparkles. Why wouldn’t she sparkle on an island full of other famous people whom she can make fun of constantly, until they are driven into the sea with the shame of her shade? And who on earth is going to vote Anika Moa off?

Jesse Ryder

It’s been a while since Ryder played in the Black Hats, and while I understand (Wikipedia understands, I read) that he’s been playing cricket around the world since then, the bad boy cricketer seems like a good fit for a show which seems to encourage rule breaking from famous people, only to judge them harshly for it. What a normal, not at all psychologically destabilising premise for a show!

The Champagne Lady

Look, when you’ve got a show on FaceTV the only place you can go is up – and out to an island! I pray there is champagne on the island, because what is The Champagne Lady without the simultaneous qualifier and warning that is ‘Champagne’?

Max Key

Of all these one hundred percent correct and not at all parodic suggestions, this is the one I’m most confident about. In his latest single, Key lamented ‘the demise [the biggest sic of all] of social media’ and seemed to enjoy his time on various European islands. Where else can he continue enjoying that life, be completely cut off from social media and still be on an island?

See you in 2019, Max. Live your life on Celebrity Treasure Island.