Marty Sharpe12:27, May 27 2021
SUPPLIED
Air New Zealand kaiurungi (pilot) Kiran Parbhu with kaipāpāho rongonui (media celebrity) Mātai Smith at Gisborne’s taunga rererangi (airport).
When Mātai Smith heard te reo Māori spoken across the passenger address system by the pilot of the Air New Zealand Bombardier Q300 aircraft leaving Wellington, he was stunned by the proficiency. By the time the plane landed in Tūranganui-a-Kiwa at 8.15pm on Wednesday, and after hearing the pilot reel off more te reo, Smith had decided he had to say something. Smith manages Tūranga FM Media, a Māori language radio station in Gisborne, and is a fluent te reo speaker as well as being a frequent flier.
As the nights get longer and colder, so the need increases for something entertaining to fill them. Naturally, free-to-air television’s solution is more reality competitions. TVNZ has dusted off
The Apprentice for a new generation (TVNZ1, May 10), while a day earlier, Three introduces a Kiwi version of international hot property
The Masked Singer. A new quiz show, 9 Lives, hosted by Matai Smith is also expected to debut this month. Meanwhile, for fans of the outdoors, TVNZ1 has a new series of Britain’s
Your Garden Made Perfect (May 13) and a show focused on New Zealand’s aim to be predator-free by 2050 –
Supplied
Artist Linda Trubridge and her elder son Sam in front of Linda’s Wall of Wings sculpture for Havelock North, in 2004.
Ahead of many successful Kiwis, there’s often a mother who showed them the way. Sarah Catherall hears how these women inspired their kids then, and now. Linda, William and Sam Trubridge
Linda Trubridge is an artist and yoga teacher, who is married to lighting designer David Trubridge. Her book,
Passages, is about her family’s adventures at sea. Their sons are Sam, an artistic director who founded Wellington’s Performance Arcade, and William, a world-renowned freediver who lives in the Bahamas with his wife, Sachiko, and daughter, Mila, 2.
Within the application form, contestants are asked to rate their general knowledge, and gives details of their “specialist subject”. They are also asked to explain why they would be a great contestant. Te Māngai Pāho, the Māori broadcasting commission, funded the programme, which would air on TVNZ 2 later this year. Smith, from Rongowhakaata, Ngāi Tāmanuhiri and Ngāti Kahungunu, is a fluent speaker of te reo and would intertwine te reo Pākehā and Māori into the show. He has appeared on television on both side of the Tasman, starring in
The GC, a reality television show about Māori living in The Gold Coast.