I've still got all my own teeth.

Yes, I'll tell you what I'm looking for.

What do I love, FMG Young Farmer of the Year? I love a sausage sizzle, and I will be going through my rankings this year.

But what are we now? A couple of days ago, we kicked off the district finals in the 59th FMG Young Farmer of the Year, and we've got a couple of familiar faces, a couple of battle-scarred veterans, I'm going to call them, coming back through.

Ed Lather over there on the East Coast and young George Latham from Tasman.

So already we're seeing that there's a bit of previous talent heading out.

Yeah,

and these repeat offenders radar have a real advantage, don't they?

Gary, was it Gary Fraser from Swannanoa who won the first? Yeah, what year was that? 1969, was it?

It must be 69, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

We've come a long way since then.

You know, but I'll have to wait till then to get my pension, to afford, I don't know what the price of a steak will be back then to get my iron levels in.

I was also, while I was just wanting to chat to you, there's just running about a $400 steak in Auckland.

and these repeat offenders radar have a real advantage, don't they?

I think I got drunk once and did write the skit about Samoan Nazis, and no one would believe it.

Look, I'm just glad.

I think Mayor Wayne Brown, he was contentious at the time.

Like, I tell you what, he's just...

He's like that lovable old rogue of an uncle, and he's just, every time you think he's done something, he does something else that's awesome.

This week, and I love this, I love a mayor who takes issues into his own hands, grabs a paintbrush and goes, here's a really stupid thing, I'm going to go and paint it out.

This week, so a lot of the Auckland Transport stuff has come back, folded back into the bosom of council.

It could be something, couldn't

Let's go back to the epithet.

Oh, sorry.

Well, because I...

Because I've also just finished one about a guy who faked wine, I think from Jefferson, one of the American presidents.

He found all of this wine and these bottles that were marked with a special label, 200-year-old wine, and sold them to one of the Koch brothers, I think the less evil of the three.

So they had many, many, many, many thousands.

And then it was eventually debunked.

collect?

And webcams.

Um, there's a webcam.

You can go on a...

It's a series of webcams, actually.

Imagine my delight when I discovered it was more than one webcam pointing at these bears.

Um, and you can watch 'cause the, the salmon are running, and in the lead-up to their fat bear competition, which is where they try to figure out the most popular...

I don't know whether it's the most popular fat bear or the fattest bear before they head into hibernation.

Well, someone probably already has.

No

... or yourself get into a hot car, particularly if it's a Mercedes, um, 'cause they've ...

I mean, if you can afford a new Mercedes, uh, particularly the, the AMG, there, there's a little metal logo on the driver's seat.

Die

... for eight, uh, uh, 'cause th- apparently there's a pr- thing called Project Anchor, like an $89 billion plan involving secret bunkers for essential personnel and genetically, uh, a genetically diverse group selected to repopulate the Earth.

Mm.

Um, the, what have we got? The Essex Community Players decided that they were going to break with tradition of putting on reasonably staid kind of works, and they were gonna do The Rocky Horror Show, um, which is, uh, what, what could be more controversial in a way for this thing? Turns out that, um, they received what...

And for a show that kind of is relatively sort of, I suppose, could be considered at the time transgressive, they decided to recast the gender of some of the roles.

Uh, there was a, a, a bit of controversy about that.

Things weren't going well.

They'd never put on a musical before.

Yeah, with his big marble pillars.

He's got his sheet music.

Mm, we've all known.

Uh, a- and he said, "People," uh, because people, it was a human cry.

Um, and one of the, the Victorian state lawmaker, Georgie Purcell of the Animal Justice Party, uh, wrote on social media, "If you think this is a normal way to speak to your dog, sit down."

Yeah, yeah.

Um, we mention this because there's a, Australia has got, what was it? Uh, uh, one of the largest greyhound racing, um, factions, sections, interests in the world.

So there's all these greyhounds that need rehoming.

Um, and as a fundraiser, um, people hold, draw, like life-

But fine weather, that makes for a, a pretty, a pretty amazing day, make your job a lot easier as well.

It does make my job a lot easier, although I will...

I've got my little printout of the, uh, of the contestants' details for the, for the, uh, you know, the FMG Young Farmer, the, the senior competitors, so I can laminate that so I can talk about them.

Uh, but look, it, it is the most visual side of things, and for people who, who aren't familiar with everything else, you've got that very visual practical day where you're testing all those practical skills in front of people.

But for those senior competitors, they've got a day before that as well, that technical day, and they are run through some very tough, uh, challenges there.

They've been putting together a business plan for the last little while.

They've got to pitch that to judges, some kind of innovative idea.

Yeah.

Give us sort of a broad sweep of what's going on.

Look, I spent last week in Taranaki for the Arts Festival.

I'm back again.

When do I fly down? Wednesday for the, I think, the first time ever the FMG Young Final of the Young Final of the Year in Taranaki.

And I did, look, I did pop over to Stratford because that's where we've got the practical day on Friday.

It was quite a beautiful day in Taranaki.

Stratford was slightly inclement.

Right, the top seven, the big guns, going to be close to call?

Give us sort of a broad sweep of what's going on.

Look, I spent last week in Taranaki for the Arts Festival.

I'm back again.

When do I fly down? Wednesday for the, I think, the first time ever the FMG Young Final of the Young Final of the Year in Taranaki.

And I did, look, I did pop over to Stratford because that's where we've got the practical day on Friday.

It was quite a beautiful day in Taranaki.

Stratford was slightly inclement.

Right, the top seven, the big guns, going to be close to call?

All sorts of interesting things.

Yes, won the Olivier Award for her role as Jessica Parks in Into Alia.

Reprised the role, and at the curtain call the other day, she came back on and people thought, oh, she's come back on for a personal applause, and she shushed people and then castigated somebody who had used their phone through the course of the...

Of the performance, as is the way with people now, everything.

I sat behind a woman at Sparks the other night, you know, a band that's been around for 60 years or something like that.

She read through the entire thing.

Why is she there? I can't judge.

Yes, go on.

Oh yeah, I've done that

too.

Like I've sat through so, like 25 years of people speaking at conferences on how to improve yourself as a person and I poo-pooed most of it.

Yes, of course.

You know.

I did give them their little conference gifts and say, well done, we're all going to change our lives.

But I did give – I found it really helpful.

that to houses up and down the country.

Pleasant Point's another lovely town.

You do, and you get a real sense that they're really supported by locals.

I know last time I was here, Geraldine still had an independent children's toy shop on the main street.

You never see that.

I don't know whether it's still there.

I'll have to have a stroll of the streets there.

When we go down, and then you've got those businesses that put those big investments into town.

So it's three weeks in a row, then you get a three-week break and you're off to the North Island.

It's

brilliant.

I do.

Hey, look, it came, we had a chat, the publisher sort of came to us and wanted to do something around rural innovation and we did.

We had a look at it and said, look, it's been done really, really well.

There's nothing we can add to that.

You know, David Downs and the Number 8 Wired website and things like that, they keep it up to date.

Is there a sort of a favourite story in there that really tickled your fancy to write up?

How good is that?

Well, very good indeed.

And that's the thing.

I say to people, you don't need to win the competition to be a winner.

You want to do the best that you possibly can, but it's those people that get in and take the advantage of all of these things that are offered to them all along the way.

And you'll see no shortage of those folks pop up.

But look, I tell you what, it's going to be interesting because not only do we have three second-timers, we've also got two people for whom the competition was their first time as well, Justin Rygrok from up north and James Robby.

George Dodson?

And to radar, I think we've ticked one box already, the Northern Regional Final at Hellensville.

One of the seven boxes, perfect conditions in Hellensville.

Back in my old stomping ground, we filmed the Off the Radar series out there many years ago.

So it was great to get back.

Sunshine in the morning, a little bit of cloud come over just to take the temperature down, and it was a cracker of a day.

Look, Jamie, it's always great with these regional finals where you bring in a lot of seasoned competitors who come onto that organising committee.

And Zannie Ferguson, who's been a great competitor over the years, she was responsible.

And he gets a, didn't he get a motorbike or something?