The Rise and Fall of King Andy
Once upon a time, there was a King of Haumoana.
Enough time has passed now and I can say, “Once upon a time”.
The following is my recollection of my time as King Andy, and how I came to be King of a small coastal settlement in Hawke’s Bay, New Zealand. I will attempt to recall some of the memorable highlights and silly madness during my reign and how it all came to an end.
I am putting it here for my own record and to provide a timeline of events, plus I get to post-up some of my older funny creations that are gathering virtual dust on my hard drive. Right where do I begin?
The year was 2002 and it was an election year. I was working as a graphic artist in the advertising department at Hawke’s Bay Today, a large regional Newspaper. But more importantly I lived on a corner section.
Being an election year there was lots of signs appearing asking for you to support various candidates of various political parties, and I had one of those sections that would be great for a temporary sign, and being who I am, I thought it would be hilarious to put up my own sign.
I thought that would be the start and end of the joke – get a few laughs from passer-bys in a fairly stale election. But as the election day drew closer I foolishly found out that the polling booths would be at the Haumoana Hall, over the road from my property. I decided to take the joke further and set up my own polling booth on voting day. I created my own voting slips and bribed voters with lollipops and HB Today branded pens. Due to the rather dry election campaigning, the newspaper jumped on the chance to report something interesting and so my joke became newsworthy.
With the newspaper attention my stunt had attracted I got asked to support the Haumoana School Mid-winter Polar Plunge and open for the Haumoana Arts in the Park Market Day. I decided to carry the joke on and said King Andy would be there. I just needed better props and so I set about creating a better look – rather than the plastic tiara and hand-painted coat of arms tee. Something regal and worthy of a King.
I made my crown from spare cutlery, I wired them together with the first half of a Kingswood car badge and told people we no longer ate with forks at home and drove a Swood. My cloak was created from old odd socks sewn onto a dressing gown.
The whole ensemble was very heavy. When asked about my cloak, I would tell people that when they put their clothes into the washing machine the spin-cycle would create a hole in the fabric of space and time and one sock would disappear into this hole and re-appear in my backyard. I simply gathered them up and added them to my cloak.
Not long after my election the newspaper was wanting to put out a special puzzle holiday page over the Christmas break and asked if I, as a graphic artist, wanted to create this page. Because I had done a couple of public appearances in Haumoana as King Andy, I suggested this alter-ego would be great to front this kid friendly page.
King Andy’s Fuzzles appeared as a full broad sheet Newspaper page in the summer of 2002/2003. The initial page was set to run for only six Saturdays, but it was such a hit, that the paper wanted to make it a regular thing. I loved the challenge of making a weekly page and it was a perfect vehicle for my style of humour, so I said yes.
Alongside my silly antics they also wanted to include stories and news relevant to children and create a younger readership in the paper. I joined forces with Mandy Kaye, a reporter at the paper who was covering a lot of the youth stories, and the regular Thursday feature “Mandy and the King” was launched.
Mandy and the King first appeared in Hawkes Bay Today in 2003 and ran weekly for 6 years. I continued to work in the Art Dept primarily serving advertising and on top of that create the page in my own time. Mandy and I were asked to visit schools and various youth groups, often being involved in reading to the class, judging art works or encouraging students to write to us with letters being a part of the page. I enjoyed the chance to meet students, crack jokes and generally be enthusiastic about their projects, while encouraging them to read the newspaper. Teachers would say that when students got their letters or pictures published it gave them a real sense of pride and they would continue to write or create more.
The children loved trying on my crown to see if it fitted them or offering up their odd socks to add to my cloak. I like to think that being accessible to the students and being a King I gave them a sense of anything is possible, a sense that the world can be fun, their point of view was important and you can create your own future.
One of the regular events that I supported as King Andy was the Haumoana School Polar Plunge – this was always a chilly affair being in the middle of winter. Myself and other local identities would turn up and join the kids in jumping into the school pool.
In July 2004 Mandy left the paper for an overseas experience. I agreed to fly solo with the page and so the page masthead changed and became Me, Myself and King Andy – the Fun Page for kids young and old. The editor at the time, Louis Pierard, told me that I had gathered a cult following, with the most popular age groups being school age children and senior citizens, I reckon the senior citizens liked it because they were regressing to their childhood. The page was primarily aimed at children but I got a lot of adults secretly enjoying the page. 20 years later and I still get the odd person recognising me and how much they enjoyed my page.
I loved reading the letters that came in weekly and the best ones made it onto my page, one letter that stands out was not from a child though, it was from an inmate at the prison, he had written to thank me for making a page that he could read with his kid over the phone and it was some thing they both looked forward to every week.
Not everyone enjoyed my sense of humour or my gross recipes. I knew the page was being read when letters to the editor would come in about something on my page. I would find it quite ironic that the front page of the paper could have murders or other heinous crimes but mention snot on the kids page and people would feel incensed enough to write in. One particular group that I got letters of complaint from regularly seemed to be the Country Women’s Institute. I don’t know why this group had it in for me, but I started to deliberately bait them on my page. Whenever I needed a nemesis for a joke, they were it. I may or may not have at one time alluded to them being a terrorist cell in hiding. Maybe it is coincidental but the group no longer exists.
I was getting a bit of national attention for my role as King Andy while also highlighting Haumoana whenever I could, more than a few people said they chose to move to Haumoana because it had a King and looked like a fun, creative community.
I also got involved with the Haumoana Parks Committee and later the Haumoana Ratepayers Association. These organisations were manned by a few hard working locals who were interested in creating community events. I would help organise the beach clean ups, the local bonfire and beach sculpture and Lemon Day as well as attend these events as King Andy.
I had created the Haumoana Lemon Marketing Board for a bit of a laugh and out of that the idea of Lemon Day emerged.
Haumoana Lemon Day featured a lemon race that saw numbered lemons dropped in at Haumoana Bridge and the first three to reach the river mouth won prizes. Lemon Day also had old-school races at the domain and had a lemon baking competition along with other lemon related events.
In the process of making the page I also created a lot of regular slots that appeared in the page along with a few fictitious groups like the Haumoana Lemon Marketing Board and the Haumoana Men’s Knitting Club. The page was a balance of mad-fun and educational learning. I had word of the week and brain puzzles, the kneecap of knowledge dispensed facts, Mike Mullet had his meaningful moments and there were recipes that were fun to make. I enjoyed illustrating different colouring pics and making fun mazes the most, along with the odd cartoon. It was a chance to let my creativity have free reign and utilise my illustration skills, which wasn’t always the case when making advertising campaigns for a conservative Hawke’s Bay market. The page afforded me a freedom and an audience that I miss to this day.
The weekly page ran regularly for 6 years, but it was constantly threatened by the number crunchers – the newspaper was always trying to find a balance of advertising and editorial and the kids page was seen as valuable retail space that needed to pay for itself. After various newspaper buyouts, restructuring and centralisation, I received the news that the page would no longer continue to be made by me and instead a kids page would be made in Auckland and used by all the regional papers. I made my last page on 27 Dec 2008.
The New Zealand Herald tried to replicate my style in a watered down kids page but it lacked the personality and failed to connect with readers and was missing that local feel. It didn’t last too long and soon disappeared itself. I may also be a bit biased.
I wanted to try and make my own regular magazine style publication, but I was just one person and I lacked all the additional selling skills and finances to get something off the ground. I made a couple of attempts to publish in existing local magazines – pitching the concept and idea but it wasn’t taken up. Magazines and newspapers had started their decline already and social media was replacing them.
With the loss of my main platform as King Andy, I no longer reached a wider Hawke’s Bay audience. I continued to appear at public events as King Andy but they were less and less. At the same time I was starting to get a bit of online bullying from disgruntled Haumoana locals who failed to see the joke. My letterbox was set on fire, my car was tagged and I had threats of violence. The negatives started to outweigh the positives. It was a role that started as a joke, a joke that I carried on. It was a role that wasn’t funded or sponsored, and the time I gave to various places and events was done out of my own sense of fun. I was no longer having fun and I had a young family that didn’t deserve this negative attention and so I made the tough decision to stop being King of Haumoana. It was time for the joke to end and I abdicated my role of King.
I think to have any sort of public personality you need to have a certain level of confidence and a thick skin. I loved making people laugh and playing the fool, but the haters got to me in the end. I wanted to carry on for those who saw value in what I was doing, in the richness I thought was being added to the community. But my mental health took a beating and I mourned the loss of the kids page as my platform.
In reflection I hope that the time I did spend being the King of Haumoana made people smile, and they appreciated the role. I never took the role seriously and I loved doing it but it also took a lot out of me. I am naturally an introvert and prefer to put my thoughts on paper or canvas than in person, to get up in front of a crowd made me uneasy but I did it if it made people smile. That is all I really want to do.
So I’ll finish this post with a signoff that I used often as King Andy:
May the goats of prosperity chew upon your roses and may your piles heal without the need for invasive surgery.
PS: If you are after a good podcast and want to listen to me waffle on about dugongs, goats and lemons as well as my time as King, I was interviewed by Daniel Brennan & Yvonne Lorkin for the excellent Bays of our Lives podcast series.
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