Tag: gavin soper

From the Archive: Gavin Soper, Cabin Steward and Ratepayer

With my usu­al excel­lent sense of tim­ing I have decid­ed to make my con­tri­bu­tion to the Inten­sc­i­ty event some days after it has been dis­man­tled but I hope Welling­ton his­to­ry afi­ciona­dos will appre­ci­ate it any­way.

This short video fea­tures Bri­an Ser­gent play­ing his well-loved char­ac­ter Gavin Sop­er (Air New Zealand Cab­in Stew­ard) for TV3’s Night­line in (I think) 1992 or 3. Gavin is cel­e­brat­ing the impend­ing com­ple­tion of the refur­bished Te Aro Park, the cost of which was a source of some local con­tro­ver­sy at the time. The oth­er great con­tem­po­rary issue he alludes to is the num­ber of glue-sniff­ing street-kids pre­dom­i­nat­ing around the Te Aro area. Simul­ta­ne­ous with the beau­ti­fi­ca­tion of Te Aro Park was the WCC scheme to house these “poor glue-addled kid­dies” in a cou­ple of con­vert­ed ship­ping con­tain­ers on waste ground south of the Basin Reserve.

Writ­ten by Bri­an Ser­gent; direct­ed by Jonathan Brough; pro­duced by Jonathan Brough, Gor­don Har­court and myself.