Before he hosted the 2023 election coverage, the Mai Morning Crew challenged John Campbell to say three words on live TV during the night: ‘uso’, ‘bamboozled’, and ‘māfana’.
JC did complete the challenge, but in a manner he was not happy with: Right at the end of the night, he told the other presenters about the challenge and then said the words all at once.
“Wasn’t my best work,” he admitted.
We were chill with this: we gave him no rules so he did his job. But JC, ever the legend, apologised to us and explained why it went down the way it did.
“It was terrible,” he told us. “I had it all planned and I’d even spoken to people about it.”
It turns out he was getting ready to drop ‘māfana’ when the vibe picked up at a party one of the reporters was at. But that never happened.
“Everyone was having such a flat, kind of dreadful night. There wasn’t really any māfana out there.”
His plan to use ‘uso’ was also derailed when an interview failed to happen.
“I thought I’d speak to (Greens candidate for Panmure-Ōtāhuhu) Efeso Collins ‘cause he was coming on. I thought I could say ‘hey uso’ and I wouldn’t appear like too much of a d*ck. But we never spoke to him!”
“By 11:30 (PM) I thought: ‘I haven’t said my words!’. I was starting to freak out. I’m so sorry.”
“It just didn’t feel right. We’re going from the largest Pasifica caucus in government in New Zealand's history to effectively only one or two,” he added before saying ‘sorry’ once again.
“I want to apologise. I think that was a really lame way of winning our bet. The purpose of the bet was to start normalising words that we use in our lives”.
“I was feeling pretty appalled by myself but I thought it was better to say them like this than not say them at all.”
JC, we still love you and in our books, you’re forever a legend.
