Summer reissue: The TVNZ broadcaster reflects on his life in television, including a full circle moment with David Attenborough, his favourite politicians to interview and why he’ll never watch Game of Thrones.
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First published November 2, 2024.
Jack Tame spends most of his time grilling our own MPs, but at the moment his heart is somewhere else. “I just love the US and I love US politics,” the TVNZ broadcaster and Q+A host says. Tame is on the ground in America ahead of next week’s presidential election. It will be the fourth he has covered, including from his time as TVNZ’s US correspondent. “I’ll be travelling around various states to try and get a good sense of things heading into election day itself,” says Tame. “I’ll be going from the East Coast over to Arizona, going through states like Pennsylvania – for a good sense of how those critical swing states might be going – and then working out of DC as well.”
Tame says he has never been with the winning candidate on election night, bar Biden in 2020 – though nobody knew he had actually won until later on. Four years ago, he describes having an “extremely weird out of body experience” in a freezing Delaware car park. “Because all of Biden’s supporters were following the Covid restrictions at the time, there were only 500 people who had come out to see him speak and all of them were standing in this car park socially distanced,” says Tame. “We were all sort of standing two metres apart from one another… and they didn’t get the election result on the night.”
This time around, Tame is sticking with the Democratic contender. “I am going to be with Kamala Harris and Logan Church, our US correspondent, is going to be with Trump,” he says, adding that Church had first dibs. Maybe this time he’ll be there to witness an historic victory in the flesh.
Tame will be hosting a pair of special US-themed episodes of Q+A while on the ground – the first of which airs tomorrow morning at 9am – before he’ll be helping lead TVNZ’s live coverage of the election on November 6. But before he jetted off to the United States, Tame looked back on his near-20 year career in New Zealand journalism, including a live cross with Paul Henry that he’s never lived down and an unexpected encounter with a TV legend.
My earliest TV memory is… In my house, my parents instituted pretty strict rules around TV, so it was treated as a weekend treat. But I remember on Sunday nights, Our World – the BBC David Attenborough wildlife documentary – used to play before the news and I loved it. So I would always go and sit with mum and dad before they watched TV1 news on a Sunday night.
As for watching kids TV, I have two memories. First of all, watching What Now first thing on a Sunday morning. But also, I remember when Goosebumps first started showing on TV. It used to play about 5pm on a Sunday evening and I remember it was terrifying. Every Sunday I’d feel like “oh, TV’s a treat, I am allowed to watch TV… but Goosebumps is scary!”
My earliest journalism inspiration was… I remember watching Paul Holmes in the days when Paul Holmes was maybe the single best known, most recognisable New Zealander. In the early to mid-90s, I think Paul Holmes had the key to the country. He was a superstar like modern New Zealand broadcasting will never see again. I remember he used to helicopter around places for different stories and he’d be speaking to all the biggest names in the country. I don’t know what it was about his broadcasting or his interview style, but I used to just think, “oh my gosh, that guy has an amazing job”. He got to speak with really interesting people and he always got to be on the frontlines of really exciting things – if we were competing for the America’s Cup, for example, he would be there just as the trophy was lifted. I remember watching him as a kid and thinking that is a job that I would love to have one day.
The TV live cross that haunts me the most… I started in telly in 2006 and I was very lucky because live crosses on daily news were just becoming a thing. I can tell you this would have been November 5, 2007. And the reason I know that is it was Guy Fawkes and I was doing a cross on Breakfast. Paul Henry and Pippa Wetzell were hosting the show, and Paul was about to cross to me in Christchurch as the keen fresh-faced Christchurch reporter. And I remember there was a bit of distortion on my line and so I couldn’t quite hear what he was talking about. And they were saying “30 seconds to you Jack, 15 seconds to you”, and all of a sudden I heard Paul Henry’s voice say “…all right, what about you? What’s your favourite cracker?”
If I’d had slightly longer to consider the question, I would have realised that he was asking about Guy Fawkes. But I hadn’t heard the context, so upon being asked by Paul Henry, live on TV, “what’s your favourite cracker”, I did what any good keen young journo would do and I answered honestly and I said, “ummm, I don’t know, I reckon probably Meal Mates”. Honestly, for months afterwards, if not years afterwards, I would be walking down the street in Christchurch and motorists driving by me would roll down their windows and call out across the road, “Hey Jack, got any Meal Mates”. I’ve never lived it down.
My TV guilty pleasure… First of all, Celebrity Treasure Island is high art. And I say that as someone who has no time for reality TV most of the time. But I reckon Celebrity Treasure Island is just the most remarkable TV. I think the storytelling is amazing but I also think it is somehow a really clever self-deprecating celebration of New Zealand culture and the things that I love about New Zealand. When I watch it, quite often, I feel really moved.
As for other pleasures, I will admit that I am a real sucker for Chef’s Table. I think they call it ambient TV, where there’s no real conflict and it’s just beautiful. You know that there’s going to be a happy ending. They say that your brain is less active when you watch television than when you’re dreaming, that’s how I feel when I’m watching Chef’s Table. It’s like TV is happening to me, but I’m not really engaging with it in any kind of conscious way.
The TV show I always wish I could be involved in is… The show I always watched and just thought was the most profound, moving and artistically brilliant program was Anthony Bourdain. I think one thing that’s under-appreciated with those first person, “man on a hill talking about a place” things, is how important the writing is. I just love the way that he would use his writing talents to illustrate and describe a place. My favourite travel writer always talks about interviewing places, and I feel like that’s what Anthony Bourdain was able to do on television.
The most stylish person in the media is… This is a bit left field, how do we feel about Kendall Roy from Succession? Surprise, surprise, he dresses like he’s got money. I think I recall a turtleneck that I may or may not have owned a very similar version of once upon a time. So much of style is fit. Like a rich person and a poorer person can be wearing a similar item of clothing and to the naked eye it might look the same but there’s something about the tailoring that goes with extreme wealth that is just so precise and so beautiful.
My favourite politician to interview is… My favourite politicians are people who answer the question. I think David Seymour is always a very interesting person to interview. I think Chlöe Swarbrick is similarly always a very interesting person to interview. And, someone like Helen Clark always makes me think and that’s what I really appreciate.
The fact that we have a party political system means that generally our politicians are whipped. So unlike some other jurisdictions, like in the UK, where you might see slightly more dissent within a party, politicians a lot of the time won’t take contrary positions on any issue to their colleagues. And I think sometimes that’s a bit of a shame. I think we might have a slightly higher standard of debate if there was a bit more space for politicians to debate things.
My most memorable story was… I was Antarctica in 2010. And I had use of the Antarctica New Zealand helicopter for a day and so we went around and we filmed the huge Adélie penguin colonies, and we went to the dry valleys and filmed the amazing glaciers there. And then when I landed back at Scott Bay at the end of this extraordinary day, we had just flown over Mount Erebus, everyone was really excited. They said, “we’ve got a special guest for dinner…. Sir David Attenborough”.
And so I walked into the Scott Base bar and David Attenborough’s holding court. I walked up to him and said, “I’m really sorry, Sir David. My name’s Jack and I’m from Television New Zealand and I wondered if you might be open to doing an interview”. And he said, “Well, only if I can bring this bottle of wine with me”. So I sat down in the lounge at Scott Base with Sir David Attenborough, a bottle of red wine and interviewed him as just outside all of these whales were breaching out through the sea ice. And I’m just thinking: “Yeah, you know what? That career in accountancy might have been slightly more lucrative but honestly it is hard to beat this.”
A show that I’ll never watch no matter how many people say I should… Game of Thrones. I know people are going to be pulling their hair out, but I remember Billy Connolly once said about Lord of the Rings: “Call me old fashioned but I just like movies with people in them”. I’m just not really into fantasy stuff and for all the blood and gore and titillating sex scenes and all of that, I just don’t think that Game of Thrones is going to be something I’m going to dive into.
The last thing I watched on TV was… I watched Breakfast this morning and I watched the news and the first break of Seven Sharp last night. Aside from that, and it’s going to sound so nerdy, I just watched a documentary series about nuclear proliferation and the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. It was awesome, it was really amazing, I loved it. It was called Turning Point. My wife and I have that classic thing where our TV tastes are not at all aligned so it can be quite tricky to find a series that we both want to watch. That was definitely one where I was watching it on the TV in the spare bedroom. She wasn’t joining me for that, and I don’t blame her.