Paddy Gower Just Wants to be a GC

Words by Ethan Manera (he/him) and Zoë Mills (they/she)

Paddy Gower pulled up to the Student Union building in his old, red family wagon, greeting us with a firm handshake and a chipper smile. The NZ media heavyweight kindly squeezed in an hour of his day to come along to the Salient office, the place where it all began for Gower, and chat about media, politics, and how he got to where he is.

“The first stuff I had published under my name was right here in this building with this magazine. How good is that?”

Gower’s time at Salient as a sports columnist and contributor is heavily documented in the 1998 Salient archives, back when it was still a newspaper. We pulled out a couple of his articles for him to take a look at, and it’s the only time in our chat where at moments Paddy falls completely silent. He tells us that he's got a couple of tears in his eyes as he takes a look at one piece in particular, a double-page investigation into race relations in New Zealand media. “People can't see that I'm actually stroking [the article] at the moment, which is very weird,” he chuckled. 

Since Gower’s student journo days at Salient, his career has constantly evolved. He’s gone from being a sports reporter, a NZ Herald crime reporter, political reporter, and 3 News political editor, to smoking cones on national TV and now hosting his own show, Paddy Gower Has Issues. “It was probably right in front of my face what my identity really was, and it was this kind of stuff, rather than walking around with shorts in winter and a rugby jersey on. That wasn't really my identity,” he said, referencing his time reporting from the rugby field.

Gower says that the move into documentary making gave him a chance to “push the boundaries” in a way that hasn't hasn't been seen before. His doco series Patrick Gower On: which tackles the “big issues” is what Gower is most proud of. “The documentaries show my personality, they show everything about me. And people can get into them [...] In my view, it's more accessible.” 

What sets Gower apart as a journalist and a media personality, however, is his brutal honesty. While discussing his time working at the press gallery as a political reporter, Gower compared it to “doing a life sentence for murder” and says that he “wasted all of [his] 30s in that building”. 

“It's a really brutal place that left me with a lot of problems”. One of these problems was Gower’s relationship with alcohol, which he recently explored in his documentary Paddy Gower On: Booze, admitting, “I was an alcoholic.” This type of blunt authenticity seems to be Gower’s superpower, which he says is key to a career in the media. “You've just got to be real. There's no secret to that. it doesn't matter how many Instagram posts or how many articles you write or whatever you are, whatever you did, if you're not authentic, people know.” 

Although his documentaries may be his proudest work, no moment quite encapsulates Gower’s audacious and feral persona quite like his iconic line eight years ago, “This is the fucking news” This saw Gower gain social media notoriety and a place in the meme lexicon of Aotearoa. If there’s one thing that Paddy wants people to know, it’s that “This is the fucking news” was just a fucking skit.

“That changed my life, which is so random,” he says, but insists he isn't sick of people bringing it up. “People say ‘this is the fucking news’ to me, I shit you not, every day. [...] If I got sick of it, I’d have to move to a foreign country.”

When asked about his love for profanity, Gower apologies for not saying “fuck” enough throughout our chat and assured us he does “swear a lot”. He says the only time he's sworn on live TV  was last year at “the fuckin’ Queen’s funeral”. After being surprised by Jacinda Ardern’s international popularity and not realising he was live on air, Gower said “fuck they do know her” into the microphone.

Although his days of political reporting are behind him, Gower was willing to share his reckons on the upcoming election, but admits what he has to say is “not the most exciting”. “It's gonna be pretty close,” he mused. 

Somewhat more exciting are his takes on NZ First leader, Winston Peters. “It's too early to say whether he's back [in Parliament] or not, but as someone who has followed Winston Peters pretty bloody close down the years, [...] he's more than back in the game.”

Gower’s popularity in the mainstream media has also seen him gain influencer status on social media. He said he was “one of the first people to really get into Twitter” and has “always been interested in social media.” His TikTok account @matuapaddyg “just took off” after posting videos of himself sporting “speed dealer” sunglasses and sinking lion red on crate day. “I don't feel that great about that now, because [it] was, you know, sort of promoting binge drinking.

Paddy admits that his status led him into being a “bit of a fucking dick from time to time” and even “an egomaniac” at points. “I've had to sort of learn to work with that and just, you know, I really just want to be a GC,” he said. Although Gower agrees that there's a performance element to the world of broadcasting, he’s clear that “putting on a show” isn't for him. He finds that he’s become more “introverted” these days, to which he credits to getting older. “I do know that I am happiest when I'm doing stuff like this,” he says, gesturing around the podcast studio. “Like at the moment, I'm having a lot of fun talking to you guys, which sort of shows that when I'm being myself, that's cool.” 

It’s a sentiment that Gower comes back to multiple times throughout our chat—the importance of being himself and staying humble, wherever his work takes him. 

 “That's my vibe…[to] just be me. Be a GC. Don't be a dick. Leave your ego wherever you can shove the bloody thing and crack on.”