The Breakfast host tells FIRST about the first dance he learned, the first time he played rugby and the lesson he was taught by two All Blacks legends.

First favourite band

“The Spice Girls were probably the first that I was obsessed with – I had the posters, watched the movies, bought the magazines, learnt the choreography. We had to do a lip sync at school once and I managed to convince four of the other guys in my class to do the Spice Girls. They all thought it was funny but I took it very seriously, going ‘No you’re not on beat, this is the choreography, this is the way Sporty Spice does it in the music video, you’re not taking this seriously enough!’ I was definitely Baby. I’ve got Emma Bunton written all over me.”

First screen name

“It was Dirty Dog something. I’d like to think because of the sunglasses, I don’t think I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a dirty dog’.”

First sport

“When I was five I was in the rugby team. Mum came to – oh my god, I was going to say ‘rehearsal’ – practice, rugby practice one day, and she was like, ‘Where’s Matt? He’s not with all the other kids practicing.’ Then she looked down the other end of the field and I was sitting under the goalpost making a daisy chain. Mum says one of the other mums said to her, ‘I think we know what’s going on here’.”

First celebrity encounter

“When I was in primary school the All Blacks came to Queenstown to do a training camp. They ran a competition in the local newspaper for families to win dinner with two of the All Blacks, and my best friend’s family were one of the families that won. They got Andrew Mehrtens and Christian Cullen billeted to their house, and I got invited around there for dinner. They taught me how to play Kings and Assholes!”

First dance learned

“I was almost exclusively friends with girls at school. Guys didn’t enter my life for a very long time, and I remember visiting some friends who were girls and maybe I stayed the weekend. But we spent all weekend in their living room learning a dance routine to Cher’s ‘Shoop Shoop Song’. God, I’m so gay. That’s the gayest core memory you could possibly have.”