Tim Bickerstaff

Timothy John Bickerstaff (28 November 1942 – 31 October 2009) was a New Zealand radio talkback host, sports broadcaster, newspaper columnist, and author who pioneered talkback radio in New Zealand. Over nearly 40 years (1960–1997) he honed a reputation as New Zealand's version of Australia's Derryn Hinch or US "shock jock" Howard Stern.

Early years Bickerstaff was born in Napier, New Zealand, one of two sons to Patricia Kathleen Bickerstaff (née Stevens) and George Ian Bickerstaff, (known as Ian). His father was a public accountant and sportsman who was at Napier Boys' High School when the Napier earthquake struck on 3 February 1931.

Parents divorce Bickerstaff's parents divorced while he was a pre-schooler and he and his brother Dale stayed with extended family until his father remarried Mary Patricia Jaffray (known as Molly).

His childhood was not particularly happy.

After his parents' separation, he did not see his mother again until he was an adult and did not get on with his step-mother.

Childhood recollections In a chapter titled Good Keen Man in a Michael King edited book, One of the Boys? Changing Views of Masculinity in New Zealand, he recalled his parents were very social and he and his brother felt they did not "figure in the scheme of things."

Relationship with father His father was an ambitious man who was proud of his own record as a sprinter and pushed his sons to compete and win.

When Ian Bickerstaff stopped competing himself, he became active as a sports administrator and young Tim was drawn into a passion for sport at an early age. As a teenager Bickerstaff junior won the New Zealand junior hammer throw event but he did not enjoy "feeling like a trophy" his father showed off, and was not sorry when a knee injury ended his short athletics career.

"I tried to protect myself from the shining light and built a barrier between me and the world."

Bickerstaff did not thrive at school but became fascinated with sports and became a walking encyclopaedia of sporting general knowledge.

Melbourne In 1967 he headed to Australia, where he worked in both radio and television, with 3DB and Channel 7 in Melbourne.

Journalist Phil Gifford, a fellow sports specialist, said the Broadcasting Corporation style of "the BBC crossed with a conservative insurance office" was never going to suit Bickerstaff's volcanic personality, and when he returned to New Zealand from Australia he was ready for something different.

"At the NZBC his most memorable moment was the time during the Saturday night television news when the camera panned down to reveal he was reading results directly from the 8 O'Clock sports newspaper".

When he returned to Auckland in 1970 he took up a job as a sports editor at Radio I, a private radio station.

Sportsline with Geoff Sinclair With his passion for sports and a prodigious memory for sports trivia, he pioneered talkback on Sportsline with Geoff Sinclair on Radio I. The show attracted more than a third of the listening audience at its peak, and was arguably one of the most successful sports shows in New Zealand radio history. Phil Gifford said Tim Bickerstaff didn't just blaze a trail in sports talk on radio in New Zealand as much as "dynamite the landscape, and change it forever."

He earned notoriety for the on-air Punch a Pom a Day campaign he initiated when All Black Keith Murdoch was controversially sent home from a British tour in 1972. The campaign, which included bumper stickers and jokes at the expense of the British, resulted in assaults on those who were British, or even perceived as British, his Mercedes Benz being vandalised with a crowbar and a car dealer who sponsored his show having 40 tyres slashed in his yard.

The Bickerstaff -Sinclair match-up, said New Zealand Herald sports writer Chris Rattue, formed the finest radio double act New Zealand has produced. Their show was compulsory listening in his schooldays in the 1970s, as they made a wonderful chalk-and-cheese team, full of humour and irreverence.

He suggested it was a golden period for radio, as private companies changed the airwaves, thanks to deregulation. Sinclair was supposed to be the bad cop and Bickerstaff the good when they first went to air, but the roles were reversed at Bickerstaff's instigation.

"There has never been a pairing to match the warm, working-class Sinclair and controversial stirrer Bickerstaff. Their notables included introducing the Mad Butcher, Peter Leitch, to the city. Sinclair and Bickerstaff not only understood what made Auckland sport tick, they helped make it tick."

As Gifford noted in the Sunday Star Times the inner rogue was always near the surface with Tim. I"

The two met in the Wiri Trust Hotel bar. Sir Peter, then a dyslexic former grave digger just beginning in business with Rosella Meats, took exception to Sportsline getting stuck into the Mangere East Rugby League Club, of which he was already a keen supporter.

He ended up taking (and losing) bets off air with Bickerstaff, so when the radio man tried to sell him advertising he decided it was more sensible to spend the money promoting his business than losing it gambling.

Leitch said in a newspaper interview he was sipping beer with Bickerstaff "and this Maori guy walks in, points to him and says: 'Hey, there's that ----ing mad butcher!'"

The expletive deleted throw-away-line became a household name through many years of advertising with Bickerstaff.

They remained friends for life. Sir Peter attended Bickerstaff's sixtieth birthday party, regularly called him to enquire after his well being, and spoke at his 2009 funeral.

Newspaper columnist and author During the 1980s Bickerstaff regularly wrote a sports column for the Sunday News. In 1998 he wrote and published Heroes and Villains with Josh Easby, Jenny Wheeler, and John Andrews.

The book was a nostalgic review of incidents of high and low moments in sport, giving the Bickerstaff perspective on "what really happened."

Sportsmen covered included cricketer Sir Richard Hadlee, yachtsman Chris Dickson, John Adshead, and Charlie Dempsey, the men behind the 1982 All Whites Soccer World Cup campaign, and All Blacks Buck Shelford, Don Clarke, and Keith Murdoch. if he could have exclusive rights to directly sell it.

Within two years Happy Families developed their own brand of honey and bee venom products, known as Honeybalm and BV Relief, and for several years continued to focus on marketing honey-related products including honey and bee venom capsules, an Active Manuka cream, and Honeybalm For Pets for arthritic dogs and horses.

Male Impotence and Herbal Ignite Happy Families began promoting erectile dysfunction product Ignite after Bickerstaff began talking publicly about male impotence in the mid 1990s, one of the first public figures to be willing to talk openly about this male health issue.

Ignite was launched in early 1999 as an herbal alternative to pharmaceutical medicines like Viagra which were being launched in the New Zealand market.

Before Viagra was a legal prescription product in New Zealand Bickerstaff was buying it off the web and on-selling it to his car dealer and horse trainer friends.