Auckland, Aotearoa Gill

An evening with AA Gill, Auckland Readers & Writers Festival 13 May 2011

AA Gill, the man himself, dismantler of restaurants and sharpest dictaphone in the west strolled slowly on stage suited and booted, ready to talk.

And talk he did, about food, criticism, his mother, his father, television,travel and his previous life as a drug dealer and alcoholic. There were quotable lines galore (I arrived in Auckland. It was lashing down. I thought “I’ve arrived in Hull”). He does a pretty bang on Prince Charles impression. The question and answer session gave him a couple of set piece opportunities (The Isle of Man and being chucked out of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant), as well as a couple of bizarre, were-they-planted ramblers.

Fishing’s Al Brown was asking the questions, and looked a bit out at sea. Whenever Gill paused mid-tale, and looked to his right, where a Kim Hill or Russell Brown may have given the right rejoinder to really get the conversation cooking, he saw Brown looking at his notes. Gill couldn’t resist clawing him around a bit (“Oh, you’re a CHEF?), but let him off, mostly. Apparently Brown took him fishing on the Gulf that morning, where they both got a Kahawai (They ate it as sashimi, he told me when I had my book signed). Must have been been good.

I didn’t know what to expect from a man so clinically, hilariously scathing in print, but after an hour and a bit in his company, I thought I’d quite like to share a meal with him. A bit of a show-off, yes, but utterly charming, with a razor sharp eye for where best to take the piss from. Beneath the metaphor athletics and withering words, he just wants things to be enjoyable. Enjoyable food, enjoyable places to travel, enjoyable things to entertain us on the box. Not much to ask. Uncynical enthusiasm, and an artfully written take-down if you’re not up to scratch. I quite liked that.

Further reading:

AA Gill in Vanity Fair

The Herald’s Michele Hewitson experiences The Charm up close, and is charmed

gourmettraveller.com.au interview

TV writing from The Times – seems to have escaped the paywall

Interview with The Listener’s Diana Wichtel

Update: Here’s a video of the session in full, courtesy Auckland readers and writers festival

1 Comment

Categories: being there, books.

By Richard

— May 13, 2011 at 9:31 pm

Cinema’s greatest sandwiches

No Comments

Categories: Uncategorized.

By Richard

— May 11, 2011 at 1:58 pm

Food tweets

Update on pizza notes.

Roast hogget stuffed with honey, mustard and breadcrumbs from Donna Hay.

Scalloped potatoes from the Edmonds Cookbook.

Important to point out, these were two separate meals.

2 Comments

Categories: food, photo.

By Richard

— May 5, 2011 at 3:41 pm

Getting sociable and sensibile in the Bay

MediaSense is a new social media conference put on by Hal Josephson, a Hawke’s Bay entrepreneur, impresario and top bloke.

For me, this was a fantastic chance to meet folk I don’t normally meet, with people from all around the country attending. The Bay was well represented and I was most impressed with the locals’ friendliness and enthusiasm. These guys have secured interesting and challenging jobs or taken the plunge and started their own businesses in an area notorious for a vibrant food and drink scene. It had me scratching my chin several times about life outside Auckland. Hmmm. Needless to say, we were well looked after eating and drinking-wise, enjoying the hospitality of the Craggy Range and Black Barn vineyards, who hosted the event itself.

I was there as the corporate perspective in the local case studies section, along with Tim and Matt from Uprise, Jayson Bryant, Tom from Catalyst 90 and Kayla from Mini Monos.

My case study was crisis communication. I told our earthquake story, which has some solid examples of the power of using social networks, and is a neat way to outline our approach in general. I think I got points for being honest(!), and I was pleased to get some thoughtful anecdotal and online feedback.

I throughly enjoyed the afternoon panel hosted by Nat Torkington and featuring Xero’s Rod Dury, Matthew Miller from Mogul websites and Paul Brislen from TUANZ – local examples almost always give me more takeaways than any other section of an event like this. I was hugely impressed with Matt from Mogul’s common sense approach to social – it’s easy to overthink this stuff. Like Telecom, Xero is a heavy Yammer user, interestingly. I enjoyed Paul’s war stories from his the early days of doing this at Voda – can relate!

A nervous glass of water before speaking, while wishing I’d chosen more irreverent footwear like Jayson and Paul. Photo credit: @gnat.

It was observed that Twitter was roughly 70% of the conversation, but someone did point out you need to look at it in context with all social channels available to achieve your goals, especially the lesser known ones like TradeMe forums, even databases and email! Karen Leland gave her two hot tips for PR in social media as 1. pick up the phone, and 2. go to lunch. I liked that.

Full credit, as they say, to Hal and Odette for putting on a thoroughly valuable and enjoyable event, with some fantastic hospitality and conversations the night before, during and in the bar afterwards – I hope to be involved in some capacity next year. Recommended.

PS I need to mention Tweet2Eat – if you’re in the Bay, you MUST follow for all your food and drink recommendation requirements.

1 Comment

Categories: @telecomnz, food, internet, media, new zealand, twitter, work.

By Richard

— April 15, 2011 at 2:55 pm

Putting the twit into Twitter

You know gang, if something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing stupidly. And so, whenever I have two and a half minutes to spare (insert your favourite “too much time on hands” joke here), I like to take this photo of me serving wussy milky drinks *on a boat* and make a new Twitter avatar.

I’m actually quite glad these don’t show up full size on Twitter itself. Ah har.

Chief Brody

A Bruckheimer production

Hemingway- the old man and the idiot

#redandblack for Canterbury

One bad Photoshop deserves another

Aero helmet for the Tour De France

Boyhood hero

All Whites at the Football world cup 2010

Best left

2 Comments

Categories: meta, photo, twitter.

Tags: stupid

By Richard

— April 13, 2011 at 9:18 pm

Two things too small for posts of their own

One: I’ve signed up at goodreads.com. My first review is of Donald Sturrock’s Road Dahl bio Storyteller. I recommend it, and wrote a review over there.

Most interesting to me was Dahl’s view of himself as an outsider, never conforming to any individual’s or the literary establishment’s expectations, and the fact that he came to writing later in life. His time as a pilot in the war and as a diplomat in Washington were facinating, and I got the feeling Sturrock could have added more gossip and scandal in this section – I’m intrigued!

Two: I totally made this for dinner last night, taking this fine recipe and adding chickpeas and sausages.

2 Comments

Categories: books, food.

By Richard

— March 15, 2011 at 1:35 pm

#retroavatarfriday – requiem for a meme

It all started with a tweet:

This got a few comments, TV3 changed theirs, a hashtag was born, and before long, it became a *thing*.

The retro avatars fell into three categories - corporates, who went through the brand crypt to find logos past, people who uploaded old pop culture references, and baby photos. By 3.30pm the next day, the internet had been expanded by:

335 tweets tagged #retroavatarfriday

96 photos in a Facebook album

127 @replies to @telecomnz

It even trended in Auckland and Wellington:

trendsmap.com screenshot from around 3.30pm Friday 18 February 2011

So – what did we learn?

It wouldn’t have been possibile without CateOwen, Mediawork’s savvy Social Media Strategist, who picked up on our challenge, and gave it a hashtag. Classy move.

This was a simple way to have some fun with a low barrier to entry (I WAS pretty amazed at the amount of people who had ready access to digital baby photos!). Everyone loves nostalgia, and tweeters seeing each other in bad knitwear and haircuts was a real hoot. Friday factor helped too, I reckon, everyone’s in a relaxed, optimistic mood on Friday, aren’t they?

Could you do this again? Probably. Would it work every time? I doubt it, and I think it’s easy to outstay your welcome on these, you run the risk of being seen to try too hard. The simplest ideas are the best ones, aren’t they?

Was it good for Telecom, and the other corporates involved? I think so. Spot, the face of our marketing in the early 90s got a lot of compliments – while brands are important and big business, it’s all about what people *feel* about you at the end of the day. Hopefully this shows we’re human, confident and don’t take ourselves *too* seriously.

Is this big, for this kind of thing? I don’t know.

Was it fun? Yes – the most important part of Social Media is the social, innit?

Selfishly, I’d like to have tried this on a day that Webstock wasn’t on – with Wellington’s digerati involved instead of sitting in a conference pecking away at their phones, it could have gained even more momentum.

So thanks for everything Spot – there’s life in the old dog yet.

1 Comment

Categories: @telecomnz, twitter, work.

By Richard

— February 19, 2011 at 8:05 pm

Pizza notes

I’ve been experimenting, trying to make the best thin base pizza I can at home. I’d heard that Italian pizza is about the crust, not the topping, the same way Italian pasta is about the pasta, not the sauce. I wanted on board. With much trial and error, using me Dad’s basic bread-in-a-breadmaker* recipe:

…I’ve been able to consistently produce a tasty, if slightly doughy-crusted pizza like this:

…in our oven at home in about 15 minutes, cranking the heat up as far as it’ll go and using a pizza stone.

What I REALLY want is a thinner, crispier pizza base, Italian / New York style, the kind of thing Tom Ripley would have in Napoli.

So, when I was entertaining at the beach, with access to a BBQ with a hood, it was time to try out my theory that a hooded BBQ would produce enough heat to really get a pizza cranking. I used friend-of-sportreview.net.nz Giovanni Tiso‘s fine pizza recipe to produce four adult size bases, and one for the bambina, using the trusty wine-bottle-as-rolling-pin method.

With hood down and all three burners cranked right up for about ten minutes, we were ready. Using one of those non-stick BBQ / baking sheets to cover the flames, the first couple of bases took five minutes each and were a little charred on the bottom – but still came out proper crispy and light. After turning the heat down, the last three came out just fine after six or seven minutes each, if a little under-done on top. A couple of minutes under the grill would have finished the job nicely, but everyone was too hungry for any of that carry-on.

I was pleased with the results, and feedback from the diners was encouraging. I’ll try this again, probably using a pizza stone.

Next experiments at home include using the fancy ’0′ type flour I picked up at Farro’s and the NY Times’ ‘fry it in a frypan and stick it under the grill’ recipe.

* minus the wholemeal

8 Comments

Categories: food.

By Richard

— February 8, 2011 at 9:16 pm

Social policy in one tweet

And ‘they’ ‘said’ it ‘couldn’t’ be ‘done’.

No Comments

Categories: @telecomnz, work.

By Richard

— January 23, 2011 at 9:00 pm

The @vaughndavis interview

Popular goat farmer @vaughndavis wrote Tweet This Book, a book about social media.

I wanted to interview him for Telecom’s co. magazine, so I put new batteries in my dictaphone and suggested we meet up for a chat. Vaughn gently suggested I was clearly off my tits on printer’s ink, and that we should do the interview through social channels.

So we did. Here it is so far.