The Gone by Lunchtime podcast crew held a special live event at The Piano as part of the WORD Christchurch Festival on Sunday 27 August.
Toby Manhire, Annabelle Lee-Mather, and Ben Thomas brought their wit, charm, and political knowledge to the stage, much like they do in their podcast. As Ben mentioned in a podcast a few weeks ago promoting this WORD event, “if you like books, you will loooove podcasts.”
In honour of the festival, Toby started by asking a “booky-type” question; what their title would be for the 2023 Election. Annabelle’s would be Rinky Dinky Days for the Right, and Bread and Buggered for the Left. Depending on how the election pans out (a major party dominating, or smaller ones influencing it), Ben’s would be Brilliantly basic: The bread and butter bonfire for the former or Brilliantly basic, bombing bands, and the bread and butter bonfire the latter. However, he did contemplate Two and a half men.
Some interesting issues they talked about included the major parties seeming to have more in common with each other than the smaller parties that they would naturally co-align with; Ben likening Luxon’s approach to Winston Peters and the NZ First Party similar to the idea that if one puts one’s fears or nightmares out of mind, they will disappear; and of course, David Seymour and picking a fight with the family of Nelson Mandela, and generally shooting his mouth off before realising people are actually listening.
About halfway through, Toby acknowledged that while having this live event in Christchurch, they hadn’t actually talked about the Christchurch political scene (to laughter from the crowd), and enquired if there was someone qualified in the crowd to do so. Cue, welcoming Lianne Dalziel to the stage.
The then four speakers continued in much the same vein, with more of a focus on Christchurch, Lianne Dalziel and her career and experiences, and valedictorian speeches. There were a lot of laughs, and some great comments and insight from all of them. As another audience member mentioned afterwards, she likes a bit of humour with her politics.
Teresa
Fendalton Library
Listen to this episode of the Gone by Lunchtime podcast (The Spinoff)
Find out more
- WORD Christchurch website and 2023 programme
- Follow @WORDChCh on Twitter
- Follow WORDchch on Instagram
- Like WORD Christchurch on Facebook
- Our WORD Christchurch 2023 page
- Photos from WORD Christchurch 2023
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