David Hartnell, despite his 40 years of rubbing shoulders with celebrities, lives a fairly staid life, it seems.

Of course I had my picture taken with the gossip columnist, David Hartnell. Wouldn’t you have? The one thing everyone knows about him is that he has all those photographs of him with famous people and that they are prominently displayed in his house, even in the loo, which is where he keeps what he calls his “wanker’s wall”.

There was no good reason for going to see him except that, as he knows better than almost anyone, flattery will sometimes get you somewhere. In this case it got me into his house and if he regretted the outcome of his sweet-talking, he heroically hid it even when I pointed out that his famous pictures were a bit (a bit!) dusty. “Who cares? As Quentin Crisp said: ‘It doesn’t get any worse after three years!”

He had sent me a very sweet email, mentioning in passing that when his memoirs came out last year he’d asked the publisher to ask me if I’d interview him. They didn’t (to the best of my recollection) but of course I’d like to interview him: He has always seemed a completely made up person and they are always interesting, in person. So I told him to come up with a peg. He is, as he says, a total media slut, but he proved sadly hopeless. Never mind, it was Oscar week, we could do the best and worst frocks.

“Of course!” he said. “I’d forgotten all about them! The trouble is: I don’t know a lot of their names!” He says he sometimes goes to the loo and thinks: “Ooh. A lot of these people have flicked the twig!” He’s 68 and he’s written gossip for 40 years so he might be permitted a bit of a rest. Do not suggest this. I asked when he was going to retire and he looked at me as though I was as mad as, say, Liza Minnelli, which brings us to his loo.

When we were in the loo – he had said, “would you like to go to the toilet? Come this way. I’ll take you, darling” – I said: “Where’s Liza?” I didn’t mean the dog. He and his partner of 19 years, Somboon Khansuk, have two: Miss Liza, not named after the other Liza; that was the name she arrived with; and Miss Cele, which is pronounced Sally after an earlier dog named Sally.

He says he couldn’t remember the new dog’s name so called her Cele. This seemed to make perfect sense at the time he told me, and in only a slightly nutty way. Anyway, he says the other Liza is not off her rocker, as I so rudely put it; that she has had a stroke, which most people don’t realise. I meant before that, actually. He said, purse-mouthed, “I’m not sure …” and we moved up the hall where he showed me a framed certificate proclaiming him the patron of the Variety Club of New Zealand.

He emailed later to ask if I could possibly mention this; he’s very proud of being the patron, so of course I’m happy to. He and Somboon were very kind to me and gave me a lovely afternoon tea, a poodle key ring made, by members of Somboon’s family, from pink beads, and a ride home when the taxi didn’t arrive.

Somewhere along the way, we had what could charitably be called a digressive interview which was mostly my fault, but not entirely. So, right: where were we up to with Liza? In the loo, then, I asked where she was and he said: “She’s in the other room.” That is not a conversation you are likely to have with anyone else, in any other house in the country.

I am not likely to have my picture taken with a gossip columnist and a large stuffed monkey wrapped around my neck in any other house in the country. What mad things he has. Why does he have a large stuffed monkey? He said, a bit huffily: “You saw the monkey and you enjoyed it, and so many people do and the kids who come here love the monkey.”

I shouldn’t have been rude about the monkey (or Liza) because we share another mad thing: A model of the Queen which has a tiny solar panel on the top of her handbag and when the sun shines, she waves. “When she’s waving, I know it’s going to be a good day. If she’s not waving, I think: ‘Ooh! It’s not a good day.” His Queen is far superior because of course he’s embellished her. “They missed something very important. She had no brooch.”

He went to the $2 shop and bought one of those Indian hand decorations and made her a sparkler. “We can’t have the Queen without a brooch! I’ll get you a pink one.” He did, the very next day, and emailed: “Now remember – it goes on the left hand side of her coat, she always wears her brooches over her heart.”

I thought he was probably a bit bossy (see above) but Somboon swears not. He was a bit bossy with me, but only in a helpful sort of way. He certainly wouldn’t let me boss him. I wanted to know where his famous little black book was. “On my desk.” Could I have a look at it? “No.” Why not? “I am not going to show you my little black book.” Just a little look? “No.”

He gave me some tips on interviewing, which were welcome, I can tell you. “An interviewer needs a good opener question, a middle question, in case the interview’s crap, and a good closer. I’ve always spoken to people as I would like to be spoken to and shutting up and listening – like you’re doing to me – is a good interviewer.” I said: “I can’t get a word in, David!” “Well, there you go. If I was giving you ‘yes’, ‘no’ answers you’d say: ‘For God’s sake!”‘ I said I was only teasing him and he unhuffed immediately. “I know you are!”

He says he’s not a complicated person, and I believe him. He lives, happily and quietly, with Somboon and the two dogs, and they visit Somboon’s family in Thailand most years where they do “nothing!”, except watch DVDs and he has a very occasional Baileys and milk and potters about on a push bike – an image which made me giggle; it makes him and Somboon and Somboon’s family giggle too.

He says he had a very happy and stable upbringing, although it doesn’t much look like one on paper. He was raised by his mum, and her parents, after his father left when he was a very little boy and he didn’t see him for years and years. He later discovered a half-brother and sister who knew nothing of his existence.

After his father left, his mother cut all the pictures of him out of the family photo album. He never asked his mother a thing about his father until, in 2000, he saw a death notice of a man called John Segetin. He asked his mother (who is still alive, aged 88, in a retirement village) if that could be his father and she said: “That’ll be him.”

And that was that. He is not at all bitter. He says it never occurred to him. He has never talked to her about being gay; they have never talked about being gay with Somboon’s family either. (Somboon, at 45, tells me he is the “toyboy”, which I said I was relieved to hear because it saved me saying it.) It’s just not a big deal and he is not much interested in talking about being gay to me, or to anybody. When he was talking about the dog called Miss Liza, he said: “People say: ‘Trust you to have a dog named after Liza Minnelli.’ It’s so camp. But it’s nothing to do with us at all.”

Is he camp? “I don’t know. I would have no idea. What do you think?” I said that I thought he might be a bit camp. “Well, that’s all right. I am gay. So that’s a compliment, I would think.” He doesn’t know why anyone would be interested what anyone else does in bed, for one thing. “But yes, I have sex, if that’s the next question.”

It most certainly was not. They are such a staid, married couple (even if not actually married), it was like hearing that your parents have sex.

It was a relief then, to hear that he has never been a party person; he was always career-minded and he really did make himself up: He left school, without School C; he became a champion roller skater (he still has his skates, of course and God only knows what else he has hoarded over the years.

He did give away some of his 200-plus trademark bow ties to the doorman at TVNZ but of course not all.) Then he became a make-up artist and worked in New York and London where he met the stars and the rest is the stuff of gossip column history – except that he has never done anything wild enough to appear in one.

He might have been born middle-aged, really. He never ever took drugs, he has those two Baileys a couple of times a year, he managed to make a very good living while wearing bow ties and refusing to be photographed without one … That really is about it.

He always wears his brooch, his Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit button, because he’s terrifically proud of having been awarded it, “by the Queen,” as he always says. He signs all of his correspondence, including emails, MNZM. He thinks he’s the only gossip columnist to have been so honoured, for services to entertainment.

He knows people think he’s a name dropper and that all those pictures of fading, or dropped-off-the-twig stars are silly and show-offy. He says he doesn’t care and, mostly, now at least, he doesn’t seem to.

If he ever frets, and he does occasionally, about what will happen next, Somboon tells him not to worry, whatever will happen, will happen. They both say he really doesn’t care that one day people might say: “Whatever happened to David Hartnell?” I think this is almost true, and I hope it is because it would be sad for him if not.

But I can’t write about him and not name drop Joan Collins because they are friends. I asked if he really loved her and he said: “I love Joan, as I say in the book, but not as much as Joan loves Joan.” What a thing to say about a friend! “No! No! Stop! She’s a survivor. That’s what I love about Joan. I love strong women … And Joan is always promoting Joan.” At which my mouth dropped open and strange squeaking sounds came out. Ahem! Ahem! I managed. “Well!” he said, “You’ve got to keep the name out there, honey!”

By Michele Hewitson
NZ Herald

This is an extract from David’s Book – Memoirs of a Gossip Columnist, available in stores now.

Los Angeles was my next stop. I’d decided LA was the place and I was champing at the bit to get there.

I’d realised early on in my career that if you wanted to be where the stars were, where the movies were made, there was only one thing to do. You had to go to LA. It certainly wasn’t going to come to me, so I had to go to it.

I arrived in LA with one or two contacts. Many years ago I’d written to Edith Head, arguably one of the most significant costume designers in film history. Edith was an amazing designer – she’d been nominated for 35 Academy Awards and had won eight, more than any other woman. Edith was such a big deal that her name would appear above the title – something that was truly extraordinary for a costume designer. She was tiny but always seriously stylish, and she was known for her trademark dark sunglasses and severe haircut. They say she wore them to see how clothes would appear in black and white on the screen, but she certainly looked fabulous all the same. Anyway, she answered my handwritten letter and we kept in correspondence.

I also knew Phyllis Diller from our encounters in Australia and London and kept in constant touch with her, so for the first time in my life, while I didn’t have any friends or family, I did actually know someone. Phyllis was adorable and ever so helpful. ‘If I can help in any way, David, just let me know,’ she would always say. We had a healthy mutual respect, and she did help me a few times, as did Edith Head. In fact, Edith and I became very good friends and she even gave me pictures of her early designs – two beautiful costume sketches: one of Elizabeth Taylor that she did for the 1951 movie A Place In The Sun, and the other of Audrey Hepburn from the 1954 movie Sabrina.

LA was all rather magical. It was a gamble moving there, just as it had been a gamble going freelance and travelling to New York all the time, but you can’t just sit back and wonder, what if? Still, while it was magical, I have to admit that I also found LA to be a phoney town. There’s a good reason they call it La La Land! I also called it the world of the ‘possible maybe’. Someone will agree to do an interview with you or come to a get-together, but it’s an unspoken rule that it’ll only happen if they don’t get a better offer – and if they do, they’re off and running!

New York was a good grounding place for me before going to LA. As I’ve said before, they say if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere, and that certainly gave me confidence. Hustling, bustling New York is so much more exciting than LA, which is sort of far-flung. In LA if you travel by car for a couple of hours, you’re still in LA, whereas in New York, all the action is encased in the wonderful condensed area of Manhattan, where everything happens. It’s all much more exciting on the east coast of the US, but all the celebrity gossip comes out of LA.

Celebrity is a curious thing. Celebrities worldwide are made by the gossip columnists and tabloids. The women’s magazines – which we’ll come to later – are also instrumental in creating their images for the public to consume. Celebrities and their press agents are happy to feed on the fantasy of their own public images. But the press agents love to say ‘no comment’, to be seen as attempting to rise above the gossip. Stars are no better or worse than the average person on the street, but they have one common aspect – they’re incredibly insecure, in many cases. I would say nine out of ten celebrities are extremely fragile people.

Celebrity by association is also a curious thing. If you’re buying a house in Beverly Hills or Bel Air and a celebrity is a former owner, even if the person hasn’t lived there and it was just an investment, people will pay over-the-top prices for it. I was once at a party in LA where everybody was agog when First Lady Nancy Reagan’s hairdresser arrived. It just proves how fleeting fame is.

Here’s one example of shameless publicity-mongering. I hadn’t been in LA long when I got a fax from one of the largest PR companies in America. ‘Madonna and Michael Jackson will be having lunch this afternoon at the Ivy Restaurant in Beverly Hills,’ it read. ‘They would appreciate having some privacy and being left alone.’ Of course, what did everyone do? They went straight there – and it was a press agent’s dream.

Savvy celebrities who want more publicity are best to simply say ‘no comment’. That’s licence for the tabloids to get on with it and let rip. In the case of Madonna and Michael Jackson, there was coverage all over the world. Most journalists I worked with were quite serious about the request, but I thought it was a hoot – and one of the best bits of PR I’d ever seen.

‘Well, they did ask for privacy,’ the conflicted journalists would muse among themselves of the ethical dilemma. ‘But this is our job, after all.’ What a joke! They were falling over each other to get there in the end, but everyone had to pretend that they were making the best out of an awful situation.

One of the funniest press calls I went to was the opening of Olivia Newton John’s Koala Blue shop in fashionable Melrose Avenue. Dame Edna Everage was out from Australia as a special VIP guest. In the eighties, not many people in the US had a clue about her, so they assumed she was there as part of the Australian entourage. Naturally, I knew exactly who she was, but the other American journalists assumed the Dame part of her name was real, and they treated her with such respect. Barry Humphries thought it was hilarious and he set about taking the mickey, although they were hanging on every word. Even though she dressed outrageously, they all thought she really was somebody important from Australia. The sad part is that she’d fit right into the Beverly Hills social set.

I’ve interviewed Dame Edna on numerous occasions – she actually presented me with both my 40th and 50th birthday cakes. When you’re interviewing her, you’re never aware that she’s anyone else other than Dame Edna. I really come from the Sir Michael Parkinson school of interviewing celebrities – that is, avoid interviewing an artist in character because it seldom works. However, Dame Edna worked a treat. In Australia in 1985 I interviewed Dame Edna for my radio show, Tears Before Bedtime. We were backstage in Barry’s dressing room before the show and he hadn’t got into costume yet. I’d ask a question and have to look away, as hearing Dame Edna’s voice coming out of Barry’s mouth just didn’t work for me! Of course, on radio nobody was any the wiser. Barry is a comic genius – truly one of a kind. And no, he’s not gay – in case you were wondering.

At first it was awkward getting a job in LA. I couldn’t work as a makeup artist, either in the movies or in TV, because I didn’t have a green card and there were union issues. I’d left Maybelline, and I didn’t have any further inclination to work as a makeup artist. By the time I got to LA, I’d firmly fixed my mind on becoming a celebrity journalist and interviewing stars.

By rights, getting a foothold in LA should have been quite tough, but I found ways around everything. You could get by if you were careful with your money. Public transport in LA is great so you don’t need a car, which was one expense I didn’t have to fork out. I put my celebrity journalism plan into action, and went on the hunt for stars to interview.

It was easier than you’d think – it just required politeness, gumption and a bit of shoe leather. I worked out a plan. Whenever I was out and I’d see a celebrity, I’d go and talk to them. The only rule was that I would never speak to a celebrity when they were eating – I’d always wait until they’d finished or they were leaving. Then I’d introduce myself and mention I was from New Zealand, which was always a good opening.

‘New Zealand!’ some would exclaim. ‘Oh, my father went all around the South Pacific during the war. Are you on holiday?’

It was brilliant and it worked every time.

‘I’m doing interviews to send back to New Zealand for radio,’ I would say, and they’d happily give me their card, with instructions to mention to any obstructive press agent that we’d met already. Those were the golden days and being from New Zealand definitely helped. I think they saw New Zealand as harmless and quaint.

I would then call up and say to the press agent, ‘Celebrity X told me to give them a ring. I met them yesterday at such-and-such.’ Unlike today, the agent would actually call you back and you’d get an interview time.

Shirley Jones, the mother from The Partridge Family, invited me to her house to interview her, and during my visit David Cassidy arrived. He had been to New Zealand on tour, so we had common ground too.

A lot of the interviews I did were at people’s houses – Mel Blanc, Jackie Collins, Betty White and Lucille Ball, to name a few. They seemed to trust me implicitly – probably because I wasn’t the typical LA type, and they felt they were doing a good turn to a small country by talking to me. I was a bit of a novelty, and totally harmless in their minds.

The hardest route was calling up places such as Rogers & Cowan – the holy grail of PR agencies, with a stable of A-list stars – to gain access to a star. Besides an agent and a press secretary, who presented problems of their own, stars had a PA, who was usually a real pain in the proverbial.

‘She won’t speak about her last divorce,’ the PA would say. Or, ‘She doesn’t want to talk about her children.’ You would be given a list of topics that were off the agenda, but suddenly the celebrity would start talking about one of the forbidden topics of her own volition. In my mind, I’d be panicking. Oh God, we’re not allowed to talk about that, I’d freak to myself. But the press agent would sit there and say nothing, so after I’d encountered this strange situation a couple of times, I figured I’d let them talk about whatever they wanted, regardless of the banned topics on the PA’s list.

The celebrity entourage can be trying. It usually consists of wannabes hanging on the star’s coat-tails, who have to justify their existence through irritating rules and interruptions. That’s why you’ll always see a press agent with their hand up at the airport when a star arrives. ‘No press pictures, no photos, no comment,’ they’ll say to the photographers and journalists. Isn’t it a coincidence that the agents and secretaries always seem to want to be in the photos, though? They want to be as famous as the people who employ them.

Technology has changed a lot of that. Nowadays, when you have the likes of Victoria Beckham or Angelina Jolie arriving at an airport, there’ll be plenty of fans and hangers-on there taking pictures with digital cameras and cellphones. Fans can start blog sites with all sorts of information, and the celebrity can’t control it. And at an airport, there’s only one way you can go – there are very few back doors in airports, and trust me, the paparazzi know exactly where they are and they’ll have them covered.

It’s a game, all the time. Stars want the publicity, and the media wants to sell copies. Ultimately, the worst thing hat can happen to a star is for people to ask, ‘Whatever happened to so-and-so?’ That’s the kiss of death, and that’s why there’s a constant push to get coverage in the media.

Some of it is carefully constructed by the celebrities’ managers, who will do anything to get their clients in the paper. It’s their job. But it can be transparent. You can always tell if a romance is fake – it usually coincides with a new movie coming out that the star needs publicity for. Sometimes the fabulous new love interest is another celebrity, and often the new happy couple will have the same agent, who’s getting a double fee – a two-for-one! They are common arrangements. The headlines will scream that there’s a fairytale romance going on – but you can see through it if you read between the lines. George Clooney is a fake romancer from way back, and many people thought Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were also together as a stunt. I always thought it was a mystery that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman never had any biological kids of their own until they went their separate ways. That’s really quite odd – but very Hollywood . . . need I say more?

Most are genuine, though, and often quite delightful. Once I ran into Ed Asner from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. At the time he had his own TV programme too, called Lou Grant, and was a high-profile celebrity. I was out with a friend to help him shop for a car, and I spotted Ed doing the same thing. We walked around and around, as I waited for Ed to finish and get ready to leave. Then I pounced and introduced myself.

‘Oh hello,’ he said, politely. ‘I thought you were buying a car.’

‘My friend’s in the market for a car,’ I explained. ‘I’m helping him, but I was also just waiting to say hello to you.’

After a good chat, he invited me to the studio the next day where he was filming his show Lou Grant. He pulled out his card, wrote on it and instructed me to show it to the security guard at the gate. The next day I was excited and nervous about the interview, and the nerves were my downfall. In his trailer during the break, I interviewed him, asking all my carefully thought-out questions. The only problem? I had the pause button down the whole time the tape recorder was going. I didn’t realise what I’d done until later in the day when I went to play back the interview. ‘What the hell am I going to do with this?’ I wondered. ‘What an idiot, David!’ I chastised myself for being totally unprofessional.

There was only one thing for it. I’d have to call him and explain what happened.

‘Ed, I’m so sorry,’ I said when they put me through to him at the studio. ‘I’m an absolute idiot, I had the pause button down on the tape recorder the whole time we were talking.’

Ed laughed. He thought it was a great joke.

‘So I’m calling for two reasons,’ I continued. ‘One is to tell you what an idiot I am, which we’ve now established beyond doubt. And two, I didn’t want you to think you’d wasted your time and that nothing ever happened with the interview.’

‘You’d better come back tomorrow, David,’ he invited.

The next day, he made a joke out of the whole thing, constantly referring to the pause button and my difficulties with it. Many years later he came to New Zealand for a function and he recognised me straight away.

‘Got your pause button on, David?’ he laughed. It was such a joke. The moral of the story is that once you get past all the hoopla and the obstructive entourage, celebrities can be very nice people indeed.

As a gossip columnist it’s a big no-no to get too close to your targets, otherwise you can’t write about them objectively. And over the years I’ve learnt that just because you’re a fan of a star, it doesn’t mean they’re going to be your best guest or best interview. However, if an interview goes awry, I generally think it’s my fault, not theirs. It’s my job as the interviewer to bring out the best in them, to ensure I’ve done my homework and to have interesting questions to ask them. Often you can pick up on something in the conversation, and that’s a gem to cash in on. I’m never really disappointed by people, but sometimes when I hear my interviews played back, I think I could have done a better job.

I’m often asked to name the worst, or most difficult, celebrities I’ve ever interviewed. Well, sorry to disappoint, but there were only two. Sometimes you can get someone on a bad day or you just get off on the wrong foot, but I’ve never come across any diva-like behaviour from women – only ever from men. In 1977 in New York I interviewed Yul Brynner, who was starring in The King and I on Broadway. He unfortunately only gave one-word answers and wouldn’t elaborate on anything. I cringed rather a lot. When a celebrity clams up, there’s just not much you can do.

The other tricky one was Mickey Rooney. I presented him with his 80th birthday cake on location but he couldn’t have cared less. He had a real chip on his shoulder that Hollywood owed him a living, having been the hottest child star of his time. It was truly uncomfortable – he moaned constantly about Hollywood, and when it came to taking a picture of me holding the cake and giving it to him, things went from bad to worse.

‘Take your glasses off,’ he bellowed at me. ‘I hate having photographs with people with glasses on.’

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ I said, apologetically but also very firmly. ‘The glasses are a part of me. And they stay.’

I think he got a shock that I answered him back, because he then turned to the cameraman and boomed, ‘Ah, hurry up then, take the picture.’ It was at this point I wished his parents had never met. And that was that.

But in all those years interviewing celebrities, those two are the only grumpy ones who stuck out in my mind. And who knows, maybe they just got out on the wrong side of the bed? Everybody has a bad day from time to time.

Years later, on a Sunday afternoon in 1994, I arrived in LA after a 13-hour flight from New Zealand. I was there to do a series of pre-arranged interviews for my radio shows. I was so pooped I went to bed early as my first interview was scheduled for 10am the next morning.

A terrifying earthquake woke me in the wee hours, along with three and a half million other inhabitants of Los Angeles. The floor-to- ceiling windows in the apartment I was staying in splintered into a million pieces and the curtain rail twisted into a corkscrew. At the same time a subterranean moan shook the ground and tossed me out of bed onto the floor. The low growl echoed for what seemed like forever, and as the strength intensified, water pipes burst and the power and phones went out. Part of the Santa Monica freeway lay in bits, and buildings all around me collapsed. Our apartment block remained standing, thank God, but it was badly damaged. The magnitude 6.7 earthquake left 57 people dead and another 1600 seriously injured. For days afterwards people kept telling me in a matter-of-fact way, ‘At least it wasn’t The Big One.’ Needless to say, all my interviews were canned for several days after that. That was one trip to La La Land I never forgot.

DAVID HARTNELL grew up in a secure but unremarkable suburban life. His interests in things colourful and theatrical led him to championship roller skating and cabaret. On his big OE, he landed a job in Australia and then in the heart of the London cosmetics industry, eventually attending to the makeup needs of A-listers. He went onto New York and Los Angeles where his career took a change of direction as a Hollywood Gossip columnist. Returning home in the mid seventies led to screen appearances as a purveyor of celebrity gossip, and he continued to travel frequently back and forwards to Hollywood.

David rapidly became established as New Zealand’s number 1 celebrity gossip columnist on television, radio and print. Frequent visits to Hollywood established his credentials until he became an encyclopaedia of trivia and scandal about the rich and famous – and the public lapped up every word.

Today no-one is recognised as knowing more about Hollywood. Not only has he spent a lifetime reporting on Hollywood gossip, but he now counts a number of international celebrities among his lifelong friends. David is the Patron of the Variety Artists of New Zealand Inc. In 1989 he was awarded a Variety Artists Club Scroll of Honour.For recognition and thanks for his international achievements and continuing contribution to the New Zealand entertainment industry

In May Penguin will be publishing his memoirs titled “Memoirs of a Gossip Columnist” He writes about behind the glitter and the showbiz glamour, David’s story also reveals the private strains he has experienced behind the ever-confident public face. He writes about damaging family secrets, being bullied because he was gay, two name changes and being sued for defamation by a prominent New Zealand singer.

Bursting with remarkable photos and stories of his encounters, including a surprise lunch with Alfred Hitchcock and Bette Davis, his close friendship with the legendary Phyllis Diller, little-known secrets about the Royal Family’s crown jewels and many, many more, this book is for anyone who loves behind-the-scenes gossip and enjoys a rollicking good read.

Davis Hartnell received his Boulevard Star on the 13th FEBRUARY 2011

David is an award winning broadcaster and columnist he’s also the patron of The Variety Artists Club of New Zealand Inc. Her Majesty The Queen, awarded David the Insignia of a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (formerly an MBE) in the Queen’s birthday Honours list 2011.

New Zealand Woman’s Weekly 26th Dec 2011

Interviewed by Lisa Jenkins

- OUCH! Magazine Vol 16 London, England

Memoirs of a Gossip Columnist By David Hartnell (Penguin, RRP $45)

There’s no doubt that most of us enjoy a good spot of gossip, but David Hartnell is one of those few people in the world who has managed to make a career of it.

It wasn’t always such a glamorous life, though, and for young David Segetin (as he was then) growing up was pretty tough.

From the age of three it was just him and his mum after his father walked out of the family home, and he didn’t see him again until many years later.

Life as a teenager wasn’t any easier: 1950s New Zealand wasn’t the most tolerant of times for a young gay man to make his way in life.

However, his positive outlook in life has carried him through: from a time as a champion rollerskater, to becoming the first male makeup artist in Australasia to finally taking on the role of New Zealand’s favourite gossip columnist.

Along the way he has had plenty of adventures, including being sued for one of his “Fickle Finger of Fate” pieces, meeting more celebrities than you could shake a stick (or microphone) at, and being thrown out of the lounge bar of an Invercargill pub back in the 1970s for wearing a roll-neck shirt. It has to be said that any sort of shirt would be classed as formal attire at some of our pubs these days.

And all of those adventures have happened as he has shared with us all the latest gossip on who is doing what, to whom and why. However, above all else, that gossip has always been good natured, which I suspect is why he has had such longevity: there are plenty of people out there ready to gloat when things go wrong in the lives of the rich and famous but they are all too serious and snarky.

Hartnell’s gossip has always been tempered with a good dose of humour and is generally nothing that will cause too much pain to the subject.

This book is a fun look at the life of a successful gossip columnist and is also packed with interesting little snippets about the celebs he has met over the years.

It’s a great read, and David: on behalf of all right-thinking Invercargillites, sorry about the shirt incident.

Reviewed by Jilian Allison-Aitken
- The Southland Times

There are three important rules behind’s David Hartnell’s success as a gossip king, which have helped earn him an honor from the Queen.

David, who was awarded his New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) for service to entertainment, last week, is believed to be the first gossip columnist in the world to be honored by the Queen, And he has the New Zealand Woman’s Weekly—and those three rules—to thank for it.

The Weekly was the first magazine to offer David a permanent gossip column in New Zealand in 1976.

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MEMOIRS OF A GOSSIP COLUMNIST

It’s impossible to dislike David Hartnell or to underestimate his remarkable achievement in making a career out of something as slight as being a gossip columnist in New Zealand before tabloid became king. Of course, Hartnell never really did gossip. His scuttlebutt was always along the lines of “And I’ll tell you another star who’s a really nice person…”

There are a few surprises in his background. As with many people who pursue glamour as a career, he came from a colourless background. Dad left home when David was three. School meant boredom and, for the gay teen, vicious bullying.

NORTH & SOUTH | JULY 2011