WILL WE BE BLESSED?

Kim Hill is retiring from Radio New Zealand meaning that it'll be safe to turn on the radio on Saturday mornings again.

Hill's been around (not yet over) for nearly 40 years.

I've had an on-air love hate relationship with her, at one time yelling at the radio and at others thinking that she was a good interviewer and then, again in recent times getting very frustrated with her.

When Hill was an interviewer for Checkpoint her rudeness and invasive questioning style used to make me furious. Mind you, so did that twonk Mike Hosking and the  acerbic Mary Wilson - although I had respect for Wilson.

Kim Hill's hosting of the Nine to Noon programme again annoyed me. Sometimes it was good and I listened to many a good interview with famous people but it was during this period that she developed the drawling, "yah yah" type speech patterns that I found infuriating. This got worse over time with her slowing down her speaking so much that I, and the interviewees thought that she'd gone to sleep or forgotten what she was going to say.

It's not just me who's been frustrated by Hill's style over the years, as friends and associates have said the same thing. 'Notables' (love them or hate them) like John Pilger, Jeffrey Archer and Tony Parsons had bad experiences with her, on both radio and TV ending their interviews acrimoniously.

.

When she got shunted off to the Saturday morning show I was pleased but that meant that Saturday morning radio was out for me. I hope that RNZ come up with a good replacement. I note that they've been wheeling out Jim Mora a lot more, recently so maybe it'll be him. I don't mind him although his overused "bless" comment is annoying.