S4 EP1: Bret McKenzie

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Podcasts, there are millions of them. Some might say too many. I have one already.

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I don't have any because there are enough. Politics, business, sport, you name it. There's a podcast about it and they all ask the big questions and cover the hot topics of the day.

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But nobody is covering the most important topic of all. Why is that? Are they scared?

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Too afraid of being censored by the man? Possibly, but not us. We're here to ask the only question that matters.

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We try and say it at the same time, Max. What did you do yesterday?

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What did you do yesterday? What did you do yesterday? That's it. All we're interested in is what the guests got up to yesterday.

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Nothing more. Day before yesterday, Max? Nope. The greatest and most interesting day of your life?

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Unless it was yesterday, we don't want to know about it. I'm Max Rushden. And I'm David O'Doherty.

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Welcome to What Did You Do Yesterday? Hello and welcome to season four of What Did You Do Yesterday?

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We're back, David. We're back, finally. I've missed you. It was nice to take a break there for...

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How long did we take a break for? Three days. Yeah. I feel refreshed. Why do we do this?

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Just because it sounds cooler? It's a running gag. And, you know, what you hope is when you say we're going on a real break, people go, actually feel sad.

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And then when you pop in on a Sunday, they're like, actually, they were joking all along.

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And I don't like repeating gags. But we're going to keep doing this forever. And then one day we'll say we're taking a break.

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And then actually we will take a break for four days. And people will be like, oh, my God.

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Would it be funnier if every week we just called it a new season? This is the end of the season special.

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And then the next one is the start of the new season. I'll run with it.

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Anyway, today's guest is Brett McKenzie, David. So our first Oscar winner, Max. Our first Oscar winner.

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Trevor Nelson doesn't have an Oscar, does he? Amit Jalili doesn't have an Oscar. No, but he was in The Mummy.

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Did The Mummy get an Oscar? Best screenplay? It's different. You may know Brett from Flight of the Conchords.

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You might know Brett from probably the 1135 from Edinburgh to London, 2003. When I got on at North Allerton with an ex-girlfriend and sat opposite two quite hairy men with guitars.

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And we got stuck outside Stevenage for about an hour, but we didn't say anything.

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And then we got off the train. And a few days later, I saw an advert for Phones For You.

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And it was these two guys singing. I was like, oh, we were sat opposite the train for them.

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But while I was on that train, I said, listen, in about 22 years, would you come on a podcast I'm doing?

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And so that's again, I booked another one. It is wild to me that you didn't bring that up in this.

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There were so many opportunities to bring up your first meeting during the podcast. It may be the best day we've ever had.

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Yeah. Like, it's not often a day has genuine, like it's hilarious and genuine sort of pathos as well.

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It's like a movie. This is the closest day to a movie that we've ever had.

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Wow. Really selling this. Now, Brett doesn't really need anything plugged, does he? I mean, this guy's a total superstar.

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Very grounded, you know, a bit like us. Hugely famous. And, you know, probably has more jewel-lit toasters than the two of us put together.

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But you wouldn't know it. Just a normal guy, you know? It's funny. You know someone's doing well where there's a whore in the background and it's six jewel-lit toasters because they famously don't pop up.

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They just have little timers. They just have them on all the time, constantly, just in case.

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They're constantly making toast in case they want a piece by that time. That tells you everything you need to know about Brett McKenzie.

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He's got an album out, David, hasn't he, as Brett? Yeah, like, he's an incredible musician.

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And I think while Concords is what he's best known for and then music that he's done for movies, he has always had these songs, proper songs, you know?

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And he's released two albums now. The new one's called Freak Out City. I really like it.

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It's like there's an element of it that's very contemporary. There's also an element where it's like classic 70s songwriting.

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You know when someone's actually talented, Max? Do you know what that's like? You said to me off air, it's like the village people meet the new radicals, is what you said to me.

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I did not say that. Oh, my goodness. To Brett, if you ever listen to this, I apologize.

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Me too, I also apologize. He's a football man. He's a guardian football. He's just like a football with little legs.

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Just a football guy. Yeah. Just a football guy. Yeah. I will say for this, I will say is if there are any farmers listening, you will get some excellent pointers about how to improve your farming.

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To improve your farming. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what Brett McKenzie did yesterday. Brett McKenzie, welcome to What Did You Do?

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What Did You Do Yesterday? Thanks very much. Nice to be here, Max. Hey, DOD.

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It's great to have you. And what's interesting, David, here is it's our second New Zealander.

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Third. So what we can do. Third. Oh, holy shit. Yeah. I haven't counted Rose Matafeo in this.

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Yeah. Well, that's interesting because what it does mean now, across three is a better sample size because I was just thinking of Guy Montgomery.

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Yeah. Once we've recorded the episode, I don't want any spoilers, we can find out if there is an amount of dry cleaning that all New Zealanders do.

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In a day. In a day, yeah. That's the thing I'm most excited about. Is that something that's come up in previous New Zealand?

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In one previous New Zealand one, yeah. Okay. I haven't heard that one. 50% strike rate at this stage.

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Or Rose Matafeo went to a classical music concert. Oh, that's true. So that we could also see if that's what all New Zealanders do as well.

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Or a mixture of those two things would be fascinating. And in the Richard Hadley episode, he took 58 wickets.

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Seven runs. But we haven't put that one out yet. I'm glad you mentioned Richard Hadley because he's one of the few.

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That's the short window of cricket that I'm aware of in New Zealand history. That's when I was a kid.

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Not essential for this podcast, I would say, Brett. Interruption. Please, please. I have no idea who Richard Hadley is.

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You don't know who Richard Hadley is? He's like one of New Zealand's great speed bowlers.

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Okay. I thought he was Tony Hadley, the lead singer of Spandau Ballet's brother.

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I know there's two brothers in Spandau Ballet. He's an incredible guitar tick. He's an amazing guitar tick.

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He toured the world. He can tune a guitar in 17 seconds. His team talk famously after he took a little wickets, he turned to the New Zealand cricket team and he said,

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gold, always believe in your soul. That's how he wrote that song. Yeah. Oh, Brett.

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When did you wake up yesterday, please? What time did you wake up yesterday? Oh, okay.

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I woke up at quarter to seven, 6.45. A little bit earlier than I was hoping.

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I'm more of a like 7.30 type riser. Yeah. But I was at, we've got a beach house up the coast and I was there with, there's a lot of context on this wake up.

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I was there with my two brothers and my soon to be 80 year old mother.

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Oh, this is great. And the night before, my younger brother, we were talking about what time we're going to get up.

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I said, what about 7.30, 8 maybe? And he's like, oh, well, I've got young kids. I'm up a lot earlier than that.

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But, you know, he's the brother who's got younger kids. I've already had the younger kids.

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I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. Now I know what it's like to get up early.

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So then when I woke up at quarter to seven, I was like, oh, my mum was crashing around doing some odd jobs.

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And so then I got up and it was like a strange thing of like, of course, my younger brother, my younger brother was already up, but it was like he thought I was going

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to sleep in, but, you know, I was like, oh, no, actually I woke up early.

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So it was like a kind of sibling rivalry of what time we could get up.

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Your mother's odd jobs. Is this early DIY for a 79-year-old lady? To be honest, she'd taken it on herself to do a lot of laundry.

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And she was wanting to leave at about 7.30 a.m. And she decided she wanted to get, I think she was continuing a complex cycle of washing and drying of sheets that had been used as dust cloths to cover furniture during a renovation.

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So they weren't really needing to be cleaned. Do you know what I mean? It was unnecessary laundry.

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Yeah. And early. And she wants to get out of it. She's had a terrible time and she wants to get away from her family is what I'm sort of hearing.

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She's off. To church. She's not a religious woman, but we weren't religious growing up.

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But in the last 10 years, she's become a devout church goer. Not particularly religious, I don't think.

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Just likes the social side of it all. And is there coffee afterwards? Like that sort of a thing?

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Is there a bit of singing during it? At the church, you mean? No, beforehand.

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They're like, come on, priest, hurry up. Spread the fucking glass. She's often making sandwiches and cake.

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For the morning tea afterwards. Yep. So she was a Sunday morning yesterday here. So it was quite a busy, there was a lot going on.

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Do you know what I mean? So my mom's getting ready to leave early to get to church.

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And me and my two brothers are waking up at the beach house here. This is not a usual Sunday for me.

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But this is the only one we have. I know how you like to stick to the rules.

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I'm interested at 6.45, you could give yourself a little 45-minute line. You know, you're past the young kids.

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Yeah, I know. I know. I felt, I was like, I think part of me wanted to get up to show my brother that I could get up this early.

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It was quite ridiculous. It was like a very, it was a very small victory.

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And was he impressed? Yeah, I tell you what. Yeah, he was. He said, you're up early.

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It's an early win. It's a great early win. Always believe in yourself. And then he said, do you want to wrestle just like the old days?

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Certainly you're having a drawing competition and then you're wrestling. Yeah, so we're arm wrestling, five to seven, we're arm wrestling.

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Well, you know, my mum, it's not a big house. And so once someone's up and the dryer is going, the head, the bed head, as you guys obviously, where the head goes on the bed,

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it's beside the wall where the dryer is. So turning the dryer on, it's a bowl.

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It's an old move at quarter to 7 a.m. But quite actually, quite a therapeutic way to maybe wake up, I guess.

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Yeah, yeah. It wasn't an abrupt. I was lulled from my dreams. By a hot point, a hot point 746.

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I do recall going on tour with Flight of the Conchords when you'd be on a bus sometimes with bunks on it.

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Oh, yeah. I like that sound. And occasionally, because the surface of the road sometimes would change from like digga, digga, digga, digga, digga to whoosh.

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And nearly always in that situation, if I was in and out of sleep, my dream would manufacture some reason why the sound had changed.

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And often it would be we've gone over the edge of a cliff and the reason the sound has stopped is because we're about to hit the ground.

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And what a loss to. Musical comedy, that would have been huge, yeah. On the bus, you don't want to hear digga, digga, digga.

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That means the bus driver's dozing and hitting the edge line. That's when you wake up and you go down to check out and say hi to the bus driver and see how they're going.

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How's it going? Should we pull over and get a cup of coffee or something?

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Because, you know, the driver stays awake all night as the band sleeps, you know, that's the deal, yeah.

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But my question to you is when the tumble dryer is going does your brain build it into, you know what I mean?

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I'm imagining, are you imagining you're on stage with Fleetwood Mac and the digga, digga, digga of the tumble dryer becomes the start of that song?

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Digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga. I love that song. That's one of my favorites.

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You know that song? I think it's a Stevie Nicks song. It's the one that in...

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Tusk or is that the Tom Tom song? No, it's the song that in Bootylicious by Destiny's Child has a digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga, digga going old.

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It's Edge of 17. It's just come up in the chat from our producer. I think it's a Stevie Nicks.

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Look, we've been sidetracked here. I just saw the edge of 17. I see. Oh, wow, you get information.

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It's like AI is listening in. Yeah, it is. Yeah, well, I didn't get that.

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I didn't get that sensation because I think going to sleep with a dryer is better than waking up to a dryer being turned on.

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Do you know what I mean? I think so because you're sort of, you know what's happening.

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You have the knowledge. You can hear the noise. And it's comforting that the things will be dry, whereas what's happened is your mom has given you, I would call it kind of shock treatment,

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mild shock treatment to get you up because she has spent her whole life worried about the sibling rivalry between you and your brother.

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She wants to divert some of the conflict. She wants to unite us with our aggravation about the drying.

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Look, the other observation I will make here is a large part of the Guy Montgomery.

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Episode was taken up with laundry. And is this a big New Zealand? It's happening.

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We're already in. Is laundry a big part of New Zealand culture? That's the question.

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You know what I mean? Because I know when you get to the airport, a lot of the time, like if you spilled food down your front on the flight, someone will just take the jacket and immediately, like border security,

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just put it in a washer and you have to stand there for an hour and a half while it cleans and dries.

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You know what New Zealand's like with the laundry. Some of the smaller airports don't have a tumble dryer.

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They just hang it up and you have to stand there. I'm not sure where this is going.

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New Zealand loves laundry. I guess we love laundry. Yeah. Now, okay, so 6.45, you're up.

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You come into the, I presume, a sort of living room area and your brother's there with his young kids.

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That's the scene. No, that's not what happens. The three, me and my two brothers, together for a weekend, to clear out my late father's horse farm up the coast.

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So this is night one. We've done a day's work on the farm and we've gone to sleep at the beach house because it's closer to the farm.

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We're getting up early to drive back to the farm to work on, to clean up the farm.

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Wow. So it's in a very unusual situation. And our mother has come up to have dinner with us.

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Because the last time we had dinner together, we would never have dinner, the three sons, with our mother without our children or our partners.

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You know, it's almost like flashbacks to when I was a teenager and we're having dinner on Sunday night with our mum.

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Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Very unusual dynamic that's going on here. So why is your brother not staying in bed?

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I mean, I appreciate you've got to go to the farm, but he's got a night away from the kids and he's still – The clock is there, but, like, just lie in bed.

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Yeah, that's right. That's why I was surprised he didn't take the opportunity to sleep in as well.

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But, yes, I don't know. I don't know. He was up early. But to be fair, my mum had kind of set the house awake.

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Do you know what I mean? Of course she had. Yeah. It's very evocative. It's very the opening scene of a movie, this.

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But the problem is because it's quite tranquil and you're going there, I think it might be a horror.

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As in – you go to the – it's a gentle start because the drama is going to kick in.

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Yeah, horse ghosts. There's going to be ghosts of horses soon. Yeah. Yeah. Spoiler alert, there are no horse ghosts.

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But, yeah. Gee, Brad, come on. You start to wonder why they've never put horse ghosts in movies before.

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Why has no one ever done horse ghosts? It would be quite good. I mean, maybe I'll try and get a horse ghost later on in the day.

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I mean, there's no reason. I'm trying to stick to the truth, but I can see if I can get – I'll try and get one in.

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Where's the third brother? Do most New Zealanders talk about horse ghosts? Is that – Laundry and horse ghosts.

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We know what you guys are going to – the next Kiwi is going to be talking about.

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Washing the horse ghost's blanket. Okay, so where was the other brother? Yeah. Why are you keeping this guy out of the whole thing?

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Because there's a – the house has a little – what was a garage? It's like a little sleep out.

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He's sleeping in. He's asleep at this point. Question. Does he get the outhouse because he's the big brother, and so he gets the first choice?

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Great question. Like the front seat of the car when you're growing up. I think he might have got that call, actually.

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It turns out everyone in the family snores. Oh, wow. We all wanted to be as far away from each other as possible.

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Do you revert back – like this is a very evocative scene as in it's not often, say, me and my brother and my sister get together without their various kids and whatnot.

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Do you revert back to – is there a lot of you drop a bag of crisps on the ground and everyone's like, oh, uncoordinated bread, hello.

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Have you found reverting back to that vibe? Yeah, we're brilliantly dysfunctional in this format.

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Because there's no one filling in the gaps. It's just like the straight-up brothers, their long-term issues with each other.

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And my mum, who's a very strong, overbearing character, and so everyone's frustrated by my mum equally in different ways.

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And she's oblivious to the frustration she's creating in the room. So hence, you see, the laundry's going.

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We're like, oh, no, we're waking up. She's like, oh, well, you're up early. You're like, yeah, it's because you turned the laundry on.

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That's the kind of thing. For the first time in 45 years, you've gone, oh, mum.

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You've made that noise. That's the 7 a.m. vibe. But it's very picturesque. It's just up the coast from Wellington, where I live in New Zealand, and it's a beautiful seaside little town.

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So the living room looks out to the ocean, and we've joked about, like, putting a – with climate change, this house will be washed away so we're thinking about building the bottom of the house like a boat.

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Yeah. As climate change lifts the ocean, the beach house can just, like, it won't be a problem.

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We'll just sail away on it. And that's true, and also because it would also just happen overnight that you'd all be in there.

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I don't know how fast it happens in New Zealand. We'll have to stay in there for probably – for a decade.

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We'll be in there for a decade waiting. Peering over the window going, it's coming, it's coming.

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We're ahead of the curve. It was worth it. I have a question. You spent yesterday, the day before, clearing out a farm.

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That sounds like heavy manual. It's not relevant, Max. No, no, it is relevant. What is relevant is everyone's very tired and a bit achy.

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Yes. Have you woken up with calluses on your hands and aching thighs? Jod purrs, dirty jod purrs.

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We woke up. Yeah, everyone is tired and sore and, yeah, a bit sort of enigmatic.

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Need of more sleep, to be honest. We'd done a lot of heavy lifting the day before.

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So not that I'm going to go into the details of that. No. But you're right, that adds a layer of the physical sort of weight of the feeling in the room.

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Do you have a mighty sort of working man's breakfast there? Yeah, good, yeah. Or do you revert back to your preteen selves where everyone's got a separate breakfast cereal and has built a wall between the other brothers using the breakfast cereal?

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The Coco Pops are yours. He's finishing the end of the box of cereal before anyone else can have any.

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No, we should be having a big breakfast to prepare for the big day. But no, there's not a clear plan and there's a bakery just down the road so we think we'll get a snack from the bakery.

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But I don't miss this moment to scoff a bowl of cereal, definitely teenage style.

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I just pour a bowl of cereal, don't add anything to it apart from some milk, and then slam that back.

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And I was like, do you guys want some? And no one was really interested in breakfast.

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No one really wanted anything. Wow. What cereal are you having here, Brett? There's a company called Hubbard's.

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It's not like a normal cereal I get. I just got it at the dairy the night before.

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Hubbard's, and it's kind of like a muesli, a kind of sugary muesli. Interruption here.

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A dairy is what in New Zealand they call a corner shop. Noted. See, I'm just – That was a good interruption.

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You know what I mean? Like this part of the beauty of this podcast is I feel we are bringing the world.

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That's right, because there's that kid's book, Harry McCleary from Donaldson's Dairy, right? Do you guys have heard of that?

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There's this Kiwi kid's book. But people in the UK, I think they think that this dog comes from a dairy farm.

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But he comes from – Yeah, milkmaids and cows. That's what I'm picturing. No, the dairy is the shop where you get – get the milk out of a cow is you get the milk out of the bottle from the guy behind the counter.

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From the fridge, yeah. Max was so confused when you said you got the breakfast cereal at the dairy because the implication is the milkmaid is – there's a cow – Foie gras.

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Just shoot out golden grahams. That's perfect. If you had a whole set of cows that delivered the difference so you could get the cereal out of one cow, then you could get the toppings out of a tiny cow.

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Yeah. Like a little cow. We'd have blueberries going poo-poo-poo-poo-poo. Oh, yeah, and then yogurt.

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A little bit of yogurt. Yeah, exactly. And then a milk – a traditionalist milk cow at the end.

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It's like a sort of – It would be great. Yeah, a frozen yogurt shop of just cows with different skilled udders.

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It's not a terrible idea. When I was about – it's reminiscent of Brett's scenario.

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When I was the youngest, I'd say about five years old, my brother and sister used to delight in convincing me, that things were true, that were not true, and then I would reveal that on to other people.

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Yeah, that's mean. So white cows, because, you know, driving to the west of Ireland, you would see various cows.

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White cows full of milk, black cow empty of milk. Full of the plague. Full of the plague.

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Like a white cow, half full, half empty. Oh, that's really – yeah. That's how it should be.

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Cow half full. Depends. That's how you see the cow. That's a good New Zealand phrase.

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I had a bowl of cereal, and my mum has smashed – there's a little bit of yogurt and strawberries left over from the dinner before, and we were the only ones who ate.

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Two brothers didn't eat. What about coffee? There must be some coffee. No coffee, no tea.

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We get in the car, go down to the – it's like a kilometre down the road.

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There's a little village with a bakery. Me and the younger brother, we're driving together.

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Older brother's in another car. We drive down. Everyone gets coffee, and I get an almond croissant.

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It's pretty delicious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm quite sort of city kid, bougie, coffee and a pastry guy, yeah.

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Okay, so just to – what coffee? Are you getting just a black coffee, or are you getting a milky coffee here?

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Oat, milk, flat white. Another observation is that your big brother has slept in a different part of the house.

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He's also driving separately. Is there a theme running through about the relationship between your big brother and the two younger brothers?

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Well, no, no, they get on really well. They did fall out for a while over a business, but they get on really well now.

25:38 - 25:45

It was a contract killing. The McKenzies are famous as well. Yeah, no, it was more like three people, two cars.

25:45 - 25:55

My older brother brilliantly has so many tools, power tools. His car is full of tools.

25:55 - 26:00

His has got this little car with a ladder on the top, the boot, it's just full of like all these saws.

26:00 - 26:06

I'm not a power tool person. I do not have that skill, but he's got all these cool tools.

26:06 - 26:18

So his car is actually quite full of tools. My car has just got a couple of like Yeti coffee cups that keep things coffee hot and not much else.

26:18 - 26:27

This is where you're less useful in cleaning out the old stables because you've just brought some vintage musical instruments.

26:28 - 26:36

So, well, he's got a Kangol hammer and he's fixing a gate. I've got like a sustain pedal for a keyboard without the keyboard.

26:36 - 26:50

He's very important in the team. Is he the project manager? Is he like when you get to the farm on day two or, you know, is he the guy saying, right, this is what we do?

26:50 - 26:57

Well, we get to the farm, it's about 30 minutes drive. So we've got these coffees and then we drive to the farm.

26:58 - 27:04

So this is one of the problems with the three brothers. We're all our own project managers.

27:04 - 27:15

Right. So you're doing your own thing. Three different ways, right? We're all very self-motivated and all think we have the best idea of what to do.

27:15 - 27:30

It's a pretty hilarious situation. Okay, and just a bit more context because so my dad was a farmer, he's a horse breeder, racehorse breeder, and also did a bit of law work and a bit of acting work.

27:30 - 27:40

But primarily when I think we had – when he had kids, he decided to go down the more stable path of being a racehorse breeder.

27:40 - 27:45

Of course. That's a great pun. Sorry, I don't think you meant that pun, but that is a great pun.

27:45 - 27:53

Anyway, so he passed away a couple of years ago. It's been long enough that now we're sort of – we inherited this farm.

27:53 - 28:00

We're like, okay, we're taking our time and now we're trying to sort of – how to manage it.

28:00 - 28:06

But there were 50 horses on it when he passed away. Wow. And no staff. No one works there apart from him.

28:06 - 28:15

So if you turned up two years later and they're just desperate for a race, these horses, they're like – They're also really hungry and thirsty, Max.

28:15 - 28:21

They're all in the stalls. They're like this. They're like, is it race day? Is it race day?

28:21 - 28:36

No, the farm is not animated. There's about seven horses there, 20 cows, and an unknown amount of sheep that have just taken over the farm.

28:36 - 28:43

Like squatted. So they were just horses. They've been breeding for two years, so the numbers are just going up exponentially.

28:43 - 28:48

There's probably about 90 of them, but they go wherever they will. They can just go under the fences.

28:48 - 28:54

The fences don't stop them anymore because the fences are all kind of broken. And the whole place is in a sort of rundown.

28:54 - 29:02

It's very rundown, like nothing kind of works. You know, like you open a gate and the gate falls off, and then you – do you know what I mean?

29:02 - 29:10

Like everything's a bit broken. Yeah. And the first job of the day – Get all the sheep, put them in the car and drive them.

29:10 - 29:20

Get all the sheep. Well, let me just explain the cows. We thought what we'd do is – first of all, none of us grew up on a farm.

29:20 - 29:30

I do music, obviously, and then my brothers do hospitality and stuff, and so we're not farmers, and we thought we'd – get rid of lots of the animals to begin with,

29:30 - 29:39

and we gave away all the horses. A friend of my dad's helped us find homes for the horses, but we then realized that if you don't have animals on the farm,

29:39 - 29:47

the grass grows too fast. You actually can't just get rid of the animals, although you'd spend your whole time on a lawnmower.

29:47 - 29:54

So the city kid, you'd just think you'd just mow the lawn, but you would be mowing full-time and just get back to the beginning and start again.

29:54 - 30:04

It's 100 acres. It's the size of it. Is it the case that if you don't train a horse for long enough, it becomes a cow?

30:04 - 30:11

Now, I am not a veterinary expert here. Is that what cows are? Yeah, cows are unfit.

30:11 - 30:18

Those are old horses, is that right? It's old horses. And then they go back to the reunion and they go, oh, you've put on a bit of timber.

30:18 - 30:22

And a baby cow is a sheep, is that how it works? You think so?

30:22 - 30:29

Yeah. I'll figure it out. I like the idea that you turn up and you're in music and your brother in hospital, so you look at the cows and you go,

30:29 - 30:36

I'll take these two for the band. The other's like, these two, they can be front of house at this cafe that I work at.

30:36 - 30:40

God, you've got a job on here. We're quite out of our depth, but it's also quite fun.

30:40 - 30:51

The first job of the day is we got these cows. So we bought 20 cows to eat the grass, but now the cows, there's 10 there, they're too big, we've got to sell them.

30:51 - 31:00

And they're coming on Tuesday. Interruption. As three sort of urbane non-farmers How easy is it to buy?

31:00 - 31:08

You drop that very easy, like we just went and bought 20 cows. I would be like, that would take me a long time to get my head around just going to buy 20 cows.

31:08 - 31:13

No, I have no idea. We had, again, a friend of my dad's help us buy.

31:13 - 31:27

Exactly. We have no idea how to buy cows. I love the image. McKenzie boys arrive at the cow dealership and maybe even say cow dealership demonstrates that I don't exactly know where you buy cows.

31:27 - 31:32

You're in good company. I wish there was, where is this cow?

31:32 - 31:36

This is the sort of place we need to find. Do you have, if you could tell me where that is.

31:36 - 31:43

With a reputable cow dealer. You can never trust a used cow salesman. You just can't trust them.

31:43 - 31:50

The McKenzie's turn up as well in their little like city winkle picker boots as well.

31:50 - 31:57

Just pretending to be hayseeds. You've got like, one of you has a cowboy hat on and like a piece of hay.

31:57 - 32:02

Howdy. We're looking for some cows. How much are you looking for for these cows?

32:02 - 32:10

Some pretty fine cows. Honestly, it's not that far away from how we're rolling, to be honest.

32:10 - 32:16

Like, we just don't know anything. And we, luckily there's YouTube, so you can look a few things up, but.

32:16 - 32:25

That's funny. That isn't funny. I've got to check YouTube. I'm going to a rodeo and I don't know how to stay on.

32:25 - 32:29

How much does a cow worth at a New Zealand, how much should we pay?

32:29 - 32:33

Well, like when I got on, there's a quad bike there and no one knows how to ride the quad bike.

32:33 - 32:38

It was in a barn, but I couldn't get it into reverse. So, because I didn't know how to put it.

32:38 - 32:42

I could turn it on, but it kept on going forward, closer and closer to the wall.

32:42 - 32:48

You just, you know, YouTube, you know, Suzuki, random model, and then I was like, oh, that button there.

32:48 - 33:00

But the cows, get this. Okay. There's also a massively complex system in New Zealand where if an animal leaves a farm, it has to be registered on this website type thing.

33:00 - 33:06

I mean, it's not that complicated, but it's complicated. It's like registering your song. It's like your songwriter thing.

33:06 - 33:16

But each animal has a tag. So, these 10 cows are being picked up on Tuesday and sold to the stockyards somewhere, and someone's going to pick them up.

33:16 - 33:26

But two of the cows don't have any tags. They've fallen out. Okay. So, our job this morning is to tag two cows.

33:26 - 33:38

Oh, wow. So, we're sitting at the table. It's like, yeah, Scott, there's a little A4 piece of paper with a picture of how the tag needs to go.

33:38 - 33:44

It's a little circle thing that clips through the cow's ear. Like a hole punch.

33:44 - 33:49

You're hole punching a cow's ear. Oh, Brad. You've got to, like, staple this thing into its ear.

33:49 - 33:54

Is it a staple or a hole punch? That's what I'm interested in. It's more like an ear piercing.

33:54 - 34:01

Okay. I mean, I only learned this yesterday. It's a little. It's a little disc with a little pin that goes through and it clips around the ear.

34:01 - 34:12

Okay. So there's 10 cows. Each cow has a number tag on it, like 115. You've got to find the two cows with the numbers that are missing the other tag.

34:12 - 34:18

And then we've got to get them into this. They're in a paddock. We've got to get them into a smaller area.

34:18 - 34:23

Now, first of all, all of us are a bit scared of the cows. Yeah, absolutely.

34:23 - 34:26

I think these cows are fine. I'm pretty sure. I don't know. They're pretty big.

34:28 - 34:34

I wasn't there. But in my experience of cows, they're big things. Big, but they're not – they're pretty much scared.

34:34 - 34:39

If you go, shoot, shoot, they go the other way, right? But you don't want to do that because you need the cows.

34:39 - 34:42

You want to be like, come here, cow. Like, I don't know how you do that.

34:42 - 34:52

We should have been there, David. But they're pretty chill cows, I think. So, first of all, I open the first gate.

34:52 - 34:57

And just so you get the picture right, I've got these cows, but I'm also still drinking my takeaway coffee.

34:58 - 35:03

Even at the time, I was like, yeah, you probably should put the coffee down.

35:03 - 35:07

This does not look like a farmer. I was like, I've got my coffee with my takeaway lids.

35:07 - 35:13

Just want to enjoy that last bit of coffee. But also got to get these cows into this area.

35:13 - 35:19

So, herding cows. At this point, the cows are really great. They're just sort of following me like in the Pai Pai.

35:19 - 35:24

Are you doing any kind of whistling? Are you doing any kind of, you know, sort of farmer-y whistling?

35:24 - 35:30

Yeah. No, we don't have a dog. There's no dog there. No. Are you dressed as a bull, as a horny bull?

35:30 - 35:36

You know, with a big ring through your nose. Is that how you've wooed them into the stall?

35:36 - 35:43

That's a good idea. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, a bull costume might be a good thing for us to purchase.

35:43 - 35:54

The Mackenzie City Boy Farmers are here again. So, the cows go into the – so, the next into a – I don't even know what it's called.

35:54 - 36:01

But it's like a little – Corridor. Yeah, but it's more of a box. It's more of a square.

36:01 - 36:05

There'll be a term for it. I think pen. I feel pen. A pen. A pen.

36:05 - 36:13

Stall. Stall. Yeah, into a stall. It's got wooden fences. Okay, and then we get it through the next gate into a smaller area.

36:13 - 36:20

So, now there's 10 cows in this small area, probably about as big as a backyard, right, of a house.

36:20 - 36:27

And then what we've got to do is we've got to get the two ones that don't have the ear thing out from the group.

36:28 - 36:34

Ooh. At this point, I've gotten them most of the way here. One brother's helped, and the third brother, older brother's arrived.

36:34 - 36:39

So, now there's three of us there. Older brother's got the tagger. He's getting ready to do the complex.

36:39 - 36:42

He's the tools guy, right? He's the tools guy. He's the tools guy. He's been checking out.

36:42 - 36:47

He's been reading it. And me and my younger brother are getting the cows into the area.

36:47 - 36:54

And I'm like, okay, it's that one there, 115 and 126. There's one that's red, so that was obvious because most of them are black and white.

36:54 - 36:59

And then there's one that's- Hang on, a cow is red? How red? Devil red.

36:59 - 37:07

Yeah, yeah. And it's a specter. I mean, it's a ghost of a cow. And every step it takes, it leaves a pile of blood.

37:07 - 37:15

It was quite scary. When you bought the 20, you were like, oh, those 19 are fine, but I'm not sure- Is this one okay?

37:15 - 37:22

Oh, yeah, that one's eternal. Are you talking about Lucifer the cow? He's- Lucifer the cow.

37:22 - 37:32

He made a deal. Yeah. You know what? No red, like sort of ginger- Do you mean brown?

37:32 - 37:38

Googling red cow. No, not brown, man. Oh, yeah. I see them. They're pretty- Yeah.

37:38 - 37:44

It's sort of like Nicole Kidman. Nicole Kidman. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not a compliment.

37:44 - 37:50

Nicole Kidman. I hope that that comes up with her, like one of her assistants is like, yeah, your name came up in a podcast.

37:50 - 37:59

They were describing you as a cow. Yeah, so Nicole Kidman. Nicole Kidman needs any attack, right?

37:59 - 38:05

Yeah. That's such a great image that every morning when Nicole Kidman's PA comes down and says you've been mentioned in dispatches.

38:05 - 38:13

We've got the information in from yesterday. It's been a pretty quiet day apart from this one podcast.

38:13 - 38:22

So I know the cows we've got to get, and we've got to try and maneuver them into the smaller pen.

38:22 - 38:27

We've got the red cow, the Nicole Kidman cow, and one cow that's not the right cow, but anyway.

38:28 - 38:38

So there's two of them, and then they've got to go into this bit that's like a little corridor, like you say, but it's two fences on each side, and it's where they go up a little ramp.

38:38 - 38:41

What? A ramp? The ramp's to go onto a truck. Well, we're not putting them up the ramp.

38:41 - 38:47

This is how you get cows onto a truck. Yeah. I mean, it's all quite new to me as well.

38:47 - 38:52

It doesn't sound like it. I'm so excited. I really hope some farmers are listening.

38:52 - 38:58

You keep saying they have to get to progressively smaller and smaller rooms until they get the room is smaller than the cow.

38:58 - 39:03

But surely you're in control of tagging them. Why can't your brother just go up to the cow and go, boof?

39:03 - 39:06

It doesn't work like that. Well, maybe it does, but we don't know what we're doing.

39:06 - 39:13

No, no, no. You can't walk up to a cow, really. It's not like a horse that you pet.

39:13 - 39:18

You can put a collar on it and hold it. Cows just go wherever they want to go.

39:18 - 39:23

Same with a sheep. You can't hold a sheep unless you're like people who shear a sheep.

39:23 - 39:28

You actually hold it in like a wrestle hold. I have an idea that could revolutionize farming.

39:28 - 39:34

From the little I know of farming, which is mostly drawn from the last 25 minutes.

39:34 - 39:48

From a farming expert, yeah. How about this? Instead of tagging them going forward, you make each cow eat one ear pod and it would digest it.

39:48 - 39:55

Have a find my cow function. You could use find my phone as find my cow, so you would always be aware of where it was.

39:55 - 40:04

Why don't you just come out the other end and be in the past and like- You have to design the air pod that is, it can't pass through all the stomachs of the cow.

40:04 - 40:09

It's going to be in there for a while. It's just going to- They're quite expensive air pods as well.

40:09 - 40:14

I imagine the tag is cheaper than an air pod, but once again- It doesn't have any satellite capabilities.

40:14 - 40:26

It's just a number. Can I withdraw that idea from the podcast? I put it to a panel of expert farmers and they've given me some feedback.

40:27 - 40:32

I'm a big enough man that I can now say maybe it's not a great idea.

40:32 - 40:40

But we've got them in this little corridor bit. We've got one in the corridor bit.

40:40 - 40:45

And the corridor is like, corridor is not the right description. It's just a little- End stall?

40:45 - 40:56

It's a corridor like pen. And so my brother, older brother, he's got the thing, the tagger punch thing.

40:57 - 41:03

And he's talking to the cow really nicely. You know, he's like, okay, it's going to be okay.

41:03 - 41:10

It's got a lovely bedside manner. He's got real charm. He's got real charm. But the cow is just like moving around, going forward, going back.

41:10 - 41:15

And the corridor thing, the area, is the length of two and a half cows.

41:15 - 41:33

Okay. So the cow that's in there is just moving back and forward. I didn't realize a cow could go backwards, but it turns out a cow- The cow is looking at my phone while I was turned away.

41:33 - 41:45

So the cow is going backwards and forwards, walking away from my brother, right? We're like, huh, let's put a second cow in there so that they can't move, right?

41:45 - 41:51

Yeah, yeah. It's a bit like, do you remember those challenges, those things where you've got to move, you've got to get like a train to go down the track.

41:51 - 41:57

You've got four carriages and five carriages. This is a huge logic problem. It's just not what you buy for your kids.

41:57 - 42:02

For Christmas, I've got five cows in the garden. We have to get them to the other side.

42:02 - 42:12

It's only two cows. It's quite a simple problem, I guess. So now we've got two cows in this zone, right, this alleyway thing.

42:12 - 42:16

And there's two bits of wood on each side. So you can sort of stand next to them.

42:16 - 42:19

You can sort of pat its back and stuff. And my brother's talking to them at the front.

42:19 - 42:24

But now the cow is just putting its head up and down and moving around.

42:24 - 42:35

My brother can't get it to stay still to put the thing. Oh, God, I hope this ends with your brother takes the shot, the cow ducks, and he tags you in the air.

42:35 - 42:43

Then you get sold. And then I get sold. You become the cow. And then the cow tags over my life.

42:43 - 42:52

At the market, they're like, next up, Oscar-winning songwriter Brett McKenzie. Yeah, the orcs is good.

42:52 - 43:03

Do I hear 100, 100, 100, 200, 200, 200, 200? Hey, it's me. I'm not a cow. I'm not a cow. You've got a guitar.

43:03 - 43:08

You're trying to play a song. I love the saying that everyone treats me like a cow for some reason, just because of the tag.

43:08 - 43:16

No, he's tagged. He's definitely a cow. He's registered. Oh, man. Tragic. Tragic turn of events.

43:16 - 43:20

So then he's bobbing up and down. So then I'm like, oh, let me have a go.

43:20 - 43:27

And so I take the clip of thing, and I lean in and get the cows here, and then the thing misses.

43:27 - 43:32

It misses, and it falls on the ground. And so now it's under the cow, and now we get another one.

43:32 - 43:36

And I get it through the air, and it's done. It's actually not too bad.

43:36 - 43:44

Yes. One down. Can I ask a question? And listen, I don't know you well, but you don't strike me as a man who does this a whole lot of times.

43:44 - 43:52

So I fixed my toilet seat today, and the feeling of achievement of doing that is so much greater than anything I've achieved.

43:52 - 43:56

I was thrilled. I was fucking thrilled. I'm not going to lie. But you did it.

43:57 - 44:09

Immediately in your head, Desperado, why don't you come to your senses? I was pretty stoked, and then soon I was like, okay, number two.

44:09 - 44:14

Let's try and get this other car. So we moved this one through, but I don't think we were doing it right.

44:14 - 44:21

There's actually this thing. There's this little metal bar thing at the end that I think you can hold the car's head in place, and then it's much easier.

44:21 - 44:25

The car doesn't move. Anyway, we didn't realize that. We were like, what's that thing do?

44:25 - 44:37

Also, the whole time. I should mention that the gate at the front of this corridor is broken, so one of us has to lean on it to hold it shut to keep the cows in there because everything's sort of half broken.

44:37 - 44:41

We get the other cow in. We manage to get the other one. It takes a couple of times.

44:41 - 44:46

I drop the thing on the ground, but I get it in, bam. Yes. You're the guy.

44:46 - 44:57

At this point, we're pretty high on life that we've become farmers. We feel like we're real farmers, even though I think what we did was a really average, normal job.

44:57 - 45:03

It would take someone about three minutes or five minutes, and it took us about an hour and three quarters.

45:03 - 45:14

So three of us. But what you need now is a real farmer. When they go to auction, someone looks at the tag and thinks it's been done by a farmer.

45:14 - 45:24

That's what you need. I don't think they will because I did notice that all the other cows, their tags were in the middle of the year, and my ones were sort of like- These are avant-garde cows.

45:24 - 45:32

More like satellite tags. They're changing. It's a new fashion for cows. You know, it's like the first person to have the earring in the top of the ear.

45:32 - 45:41

Oh, so good. So that was a huge mission. If you're changed as a person, do you notice, like, when you got back to the city, then you were like, howdy?

45:41 - 45:46

You know what I mean? And you're saying stuff like, people gone awful soft in the city.

45:46 - 45:56

These crazy city folk. None of them can tag a cow like me. Yeah, but have you tagged a cow?

45:57 - 46:02

But, like, you've still tagged two cows. This is a great achievement. What time are we at now, Brett?

46:02 - 46:09

I think it's about 10.30 a year. Okay, so we're rallying through this day. We need to get through this day now.

46:09 - 46:15

Come on. Oh, is the podcast over? We've got to wrap up. We've got all the time in the world.

46:15 - 46:27

No, there's people coming to view this house in a while. Okay, so, okay, the next job was taking terrible jobs.

46:27 - 46:41

Taking some of that with the farmers full of decades of accumulation of various bits of failed ventures and broken farming contraptions, you know.

46:41 - 46:50

Like inventions. Not inventions, just like ventures. My father was quite an entrepreneur in spirit, right?

46:50 - 46:59

One of his big ideas he thought was going to be a big money-making project was deer velvet.

46:59 - 47:07

Have you heard of that? Yes. No. It's like deer antler turned into a powder that you then eat as a herbal supplement.

47:07 - 47:16

And it's really big in China. It's massive in China. And so my dad in the 90s was like, this is going to be massive.

47:16 - 47:25

And so he got some deer and then he started making deer velvet and it never really took off, right?

47:25 - 47:40

So what we have at this point, you know, 30 years later is a lot of plastic containers and packaging and little mini boxes that say deer velvet with no deer velvet in them.

47:40 - 47:43

Just, you know, when you get like, I don't know if you've ever made some t-shirts or something.

47:43 - 47:50

If you get something printed, you can get a hundred for $10 or you can get a hundred thousand for a hundred dollars.

47:50 - 47:57

What you're talking about here is I have 5,000 David and Artie snap bracelets for an hour.

47:57 - 48:01

I have an album from five years ago that are just in some boxes over there.

48:01 - 48:09

5,000 snap bracelets. Are they one of the chattels that you're selling with the house? They come with the house.

48:09 - 48:19

I just, sorry, I'm imagining from your late father's various ventures, I'm imagining the logo on the front of his car.

48:19 - 48:27

Because if you've got law acting and horses as the first three, so we've got a horse.

48:27 - 48:37

Certainly with a law wig on. The horse has got stags. It's a stag. And he's holding a skull like from Hamlet.

48:37 - 48:47

Is that the logo? It's like two horses, one tragedy and one comedy. And it's also, it's a legal practitioner.

48:47 - 48:59

So it's the McKenzie Barrister's solicitor. Who is this guy? What's he doing here? The thing about Deer Velvet, right, is the Deer Velvet would just be a deer in like a velvet smoking jacket.

48:59 - 49:16

I think that would be the sign. But like I get a feeling if you had loads of it in the packaging now, I think in the high-performance world, if you suddenly said you can get Deer Velvet from New Zealand, the sort of 5 a.m. guys would pay millions.

49:16 - 49:25

If you just say I'm not tired anymore and, you know, I used to have gout and now I have a Deer Velvet every morning and I'm fine.

49:25 - 49:35

There are several. A hundred bottles that do have some, so I'll send them to your place, Max, and you can enjoy that journey.

49:35 - 49:42

You can enjoy that. Max ends up having a boner for three years. It turns out to be one of the side effects.

49:42 - 49:48

You can't get rid of it. And who recommended Deer Velvet? It was an expert farmer.

49:48 - 49:58

Real horny farmer. Sorry, that's the logo. We've now added it's a horse in a judge's wig holding a skull with a massive bone.

49:58 - 50:08

Oh, God. Okay. Okay. Brad, can we recycle all of this, do you reckon? Or is it old school plastic?

50:08 - 50:13

Or what are we going to do with all of this? No, today's mission is to recycle this stuff.

50:13 - 50:20

So we load these pottles. Do you call them pottles? No. What do you call like a small plastic container?

50:20 - 50:26

A pot? In plastic, though? It's plastic with a lid. And you're like, well, what do you get your multivitamins in?

50:26 - 50:31

It's a lot like that. Great gutters. I mean, honestly, there's so many of them.

50:31 - 50:39

We put them into, they're in all these dusty boxes. They're 20 years old. They'll be sitting in a farm shed.

50:39 - 50:52

And then we tip them into a giant plastic bag and load it into the back of my car and me and my, and then all the cardboard, and me and my younger brother take this to the local recycling station.

50:52 - 50:56

Ah, the tip. Ah, the tip is fun in itself. I mean, that's a fun journey anyway.

50:56 - 51:05

We drive in. It's about a 15-minute drive to a town called Levin, which like New Zealand is a really quite a beautiful place.

51:05 - 51:22

Yeah. But Levin is really not very beautiful. For such a beautiful country, it's astonishing that Levin has ended up existing because it's sort of got an industrial wasteland and one of those small towns with a long main road,

51:22 - 51:27

so it never really focuses. It's like, did the town start? Is this the town?

51:27 - 51:31

And then you're like, did we get through it? Was that it? You know what I mean?

51:31 - 51:44

It's a pretty grim town, but we get to the station and we tip, but we have this giant bag of blue pottle things, but the window to tip them through the recycling thing is about the size of a laptop.

51:44 - 51:51

Does one fit? Yeah, one. I mean, you'd fit probably, you know, you'd fit like 20.

51:51 - 51:56

But we put the cardboard in. That goes in easy because it's just flat. They're like the boxes, flat packed.

51:57 - 52:05

And there's the guy, it's sort of a fake wall. You know, you're putting it through these little holes, but actually on the other side of the wall, there's a dude in these big baskets collecting it.

52:05 - 52:10

You know what I mean? No. Is that what happens in recycling places? Well, this one there, there's a guy on the side.

52:10 - 52:17

It's not like those big bins that are not, it's not like a container. On the other side, there's these big, they're collecting it.

52:17 - 52:23

I couldn't really be bothered. I wasn't sure about engaging with the guy. I was like, no, we'll just funnel this stuff through.

52:23 - 52:27

But my younger brother was like, no, we've got to talk to this guy and see if we can get around the other side.

52:27 - 52:32

So he says, can we bring this stuff around the back? And so. Is he talking through the hole?

52:32 - 52:40

Yeah. Excuse me. Excuse me. And the guy does not want to talk to us because his worst nightmare is people who want to talk to him.

52:40 - 52:48

He's just trying to do his job. And the people that are, the people that want to talk to you through the recycling window are probably often not a problem.

52:48 - 52:54

They're in need of conversation somewhere. People just get off their chat, don't they? How the hell are you up to today?

52:57 - 53:07

It's a bad scene in a rom-com. How do we meet? Well, I was talking through the green bottle only slot.

53:07 - 53:12

That would not be accepted in a script. They're like, this is unrealistic. This is not possible.

53:12 - 53:17

There's no one behind that script. Anyway, he's like, guys, he says, yeah, bring it around.

53:17 - 53:24

So we carry this ginormous, it's like this farm scale plastic bag that we found.

53:24 - 53:30

Like it's giant. It's big enough to fit. Basically a small car in this big plastic bag.

53:30 - 53:36

The two of us, it's so heavy and they're empty plastic bottles. You're like recycling Santa.

53:36 - 53:42

Yeah. You know, this is the bag that he would have the presents in for all the children of the world.

53:42 - 53:51

Flying over the world, dropping plastic. Yeah. Terrible Santa. And, you know, not that far away from what a lot of toys are, I guess.

53:51 - 53:56

But anyway, we get around the other side. So now we're in the, now we're behind the scenes, you know.

53:56 - 54:01

Oh, wow. And the guy turns out to be, he's like, so what are those from?

54:01 - 54:09

And we're like, oh, well, our dad, he had this dream, you know, this job is like, you know, to make deer velvet.

54:09 - 54:17

And the guy goes, well, it only takes one good idea. You know, you have 200 bad ones, but one good one.

54:17 - 54:22

You know, this is so, he was shining a really beautiful, he took a really good perspective on it, actually.

54:22 - 54:27

I thought he was going to say something like, I think I can see your dad walking away from here.

54:27 - 54:40

Wow. He got really, for the sort of gruff, this gruff, unlikely man who's like doesn't want to talk to you from behind the counter of the recycling, he became quite sort of spiritual and big picture.

54:40 - 54:46

He was quite magic. He was probably the most magical part of the day. So anyway, we tipped these giant things into the front.

54:46 - 54:50

He pulls up in a giant, you know, digger, and he says, load them in the front of that.

54:50 - 54:58

So he'd load them in the front of his big forklift, not forklift, big truck thing, truck thing with the big front thing full of plastic.

54:58 - 55:09

It's like a farming's your expertise, not this. I don't know much about trucks. We loaded the cows into the corridor, into the cow box, the cow carton.

55:09 - 55:13

And so then that was recycling. That was job two. God, we're cracking through it.

55:13 - 55:32

Is it slightly emotional? You know what I mean? Like your father's not gone that long, and then to see these various kind of crackpot schemes, but also something quite beautiful in the – like that is true what he says about the 200 ideas and one good one.

55:32 - 55:35

Well, that's right. He was like – he did say, I bet he had one that worked.

55:35 - 55:40

So, yes, he did have some successful racehorses. So it is quite emotional, but it's not fresh.

55:40 - 55:46

It's not like it's the first six months after he passed away, it was too raw to be able to cope with this sort of thing.

55:46 - 55:57

But now part of us is like, oh, we're just also wanting to – you know, the most emotional part probably is actually the little bit of regret of, oh, guys, we could have just done this.

55:57 - 56:02

When he was alive and his – he wouldn't have been – there wouldn't have been such a mess around him.

56:02 - 56:18

Right, yeah, yeah. That's the regret that keeps bubbling up. To be honest, it's quite – he was quite a charismatic – his combination of unusual ventures is a source of great entertainment for us even when he was alive.

56:18 - 56:22

So he was very well aware that this was not – this venture didn't quite come together, you know.

56:22 - 56:27

And the beer velvet does not sound fresh. No. This old powder you're about to send me.

56:27 - 56:36

I need to see the best before date. What's the best before date, Max? What's the best before date between farmers is actually the full saying.

56:36 - 56:46

Time isn't linear, Max. That's tough when they start arguing that with you when you're buying milk in the dairy.

56:46 - 56:53

It's solid butter. So we're going to need some lunch. Do we need lunch yet?

56:53 - 57:02

Lunch, yeah. There's a little – Annie's I think it's called. It's pretty brilliant. It's a brilliant pie shop in Levin, and the cool thing about this place, this is our favorite spot.

57:02 - 57:14

What I love about it is it's recently – it does pies and sandwiches, mince pies, meat pies, and it's pretty old-school New Zealand tea room type food.

57:14 - 57:22

It used to be in every place you went, and now it's quite rare. Now it's all like sourdough and things like that.

57:22 - 57:26

There's no sourdough here. This is like thin bits of bread with ham. Old-school, yeah.

57:27 - 57:35

Salad, mince, steak, and cheese. Does it have plastic – instead of a front door, plastic strips coming down that you walk through.

57:35 - 57:47

Is that the vibe? That's exactly the vibe, and the staff – what was amazing today is you could buy – I saw they had like Christmas – you could buy the Christmas pie shop T-shirt that the staff were wearing.

57:47 - 57:52

They had them like for sale for the customers, but just sitting in a pile, not actually the sign.

57:52 - 57:58

Anyway, yeah, it's not fancy at all. But the cool thing is they've got a table up the front that is shaped like a pie.

57:58 - 58:03

Oh, yeah. It's kind of cool but kind of heinous because it's made of this sort of spongy material.

58:03 - 58:12

I don't know what they made it of. It's like the worst – I love it because it's so bare, but you set it up and it's like a table shouldn't be spongy.

58:12 - 58:22

It's kind of weird. It was another of your father's ventures was spongy tables. There's 300,000 of them in a – you haven't opened the big barn at the back.

58:22 - 58:31

All these spongy – no, what the hell? So, yeah, we ate that yummy food and then back to the farm.

58:31 - 58:36

Then we just do a bit of trimming some trees and tie up some trees that are massively overgrown.

58:36 - 58:41

Brett, are you going to hang on to the farm? Obviously, there's people who work there.

58:41 - 58:45

There's a little bit of recent backstory there is that we put this farm – we're waiting.

58:45 - 58:49

We're like, okay, we've got to sell it. We've got to sell it. We can't look after it because we don't know what we're doing.

58:49 - 58:57

We put on ourselves a tender on Friday – no, Thursday. No, the tenders came in.

58:57 - 59:09

No offers. Oh, right. No offers. This is a disaster for us. This is like, oh, so we're going to – two years, it's time to really move this thing on.

59:09 - 59:16

No one wants to buy the farm. So we don't even – at the moment, we don't have an out, but we're working on it.

59:16 - 59:25

We might – yeah, they're building a giant road, a new freeway beside nearby. So once that road's finished, maybe it'll be more attractive.

59:25 - 59:28

But until then, we don't know. We don't know quite what to do with the farm.

59:28 - 59:32

I mean, after this record, there's a high chance Nicole Kidman will buy this farm.

59:32 - 59:40

Just to shut it down. Where's that cow? And she just bazookas the cow. Well, it's like, yeah, yeah.

59:40 - 59:45

A few weeks from now, and they're like, there's a drone attack. There's a drone attack on the farm.

59:45 - 59:53

They singled out one cow. Do you bring a pie back for your brother who's still at the farm?

59:53 - 1:00:02

Yeah, we bring back pie and sandwiches and little – Belgian biscuits. Oh, lovely. So there's a bit of snack, bit of calm, having a snack.

1:00:02 - 1:00:10

And then second half of my day, I've committed to doing a charity gig. What a change of pace this is.

1:00:10 - 1:00:16

It really is. It was ambitious for one day's mental capacity. Do you know what I mean?

1:00:16 - 1:00:27

Are you leaving the two other brothers to do more farming? Yeah, I have to leave them to do a bit more work because I've got a gig, which is not really in the spirit of the three of us spending the weekend fixing the farm.

1:00:27 - 1:00:38

But that's all cool. That's all cool. They were all cool. And so I drive back into town and it's about an hour's drive, hour and a bit's drive back into Wellington.

1:00:38 - 1:00:45

Do you listen to anything while you're driving? I listen to country music stations just nonstop.

1:00:45 - 1:00:55

Your cheating heart. What did I listen to? I listened to one of, well, I can't remember.

1:00:55 - 1:00:59

I've done so many back and forth in the last few days I can't remember what I listened to on the way back.

1:00:59 - 1:01:02

Podcasts. Would you ever put a podcast? Probably this podcast. I listened to one of your podcasts.

1:01:02 - 1:01:07

Oh, which one? With the woman who was like a commentator from a sports show.

1:01:07 - 1:01:19

Oh, yeah. Kelly Cates, the last episode. Kelly Cates. It was so good. And what I loved about it was at the beginning you explained, D.O.D., like what that show was that she did.

1:01:19 - 1:01:24

Match the day, yeah. And, Max, you were like, David, you don't need to explain what this is.

1:01:24 - 1:01:28

I was like, I don't know what this job is. Thank you, Brad. I called out.

1:01:28 - 1:01:33

I was like, no, it is good he's explaining it because I've got no idea what this is.

1:01:33 - 1:01:39

Anyway, there was some good stuff in there. There was quite a lot of laundry in that as well.

1:01:39 - 1:01:42

Yeah, a lot of laundry in that. There's a lot of laundry in your podcast.

1:01:42 - 1:01:47

And then Sire Grey, I think that's how you say their name. They played in Wellington.

1:01:47 - 1:01:50

That was cool music. I listened to that on their way down as well. Great.

1:01:50 - 1:01:54

Okay, so we're back in town. I'm back in town. And this is a real shift of gears.

1:01:54 - 1:02:02

So I'm now back at home. I'm in Wellington. The family aren't there. They're out visiting friends up down the road.

1:02:02 - 1:02:09

It's kind of a nice bit of calm. It's like a cup of tea, get my head together for this gig that's in a couple of hours.

1:02:09 - 1:02:22

Do you wash the farm off? Do you wash the farm off? Oh, yeah. I mean, literally, there's a lot of farm to wash off because you've been handling all these cows and the dust from like decades of failed dreams.

1:02:22 - 1:02:31

That's the name of your country album, right? The Dust of Decades of Failed Dreams by Brett McKenzie.

1:02:31 - 1:02:37

Yeah, definitely. It was great. It showered, put on some clean clothes, cup of tea.

1:02:37 - 1:02:44

Hannah, my wife, had gone to an afternoon tea with neighbor friends and had made these chocolate biscuits.

1:02:44 - 1:02:50

So I ate a biscuit that was bloody delicious. It was actually a real high point to my day, actually, that calm little window.

1:02:50 - 1:02:55

Tell us about the biscuit. It's like a little chocolate biscuit with a little icing on top, crumbly.

1:02:55 - 1:03:11

So good. Well done, Hannah. That's great. The gig is a charity fundraiser for actors at the local theater, and it's a variety show, and I'm kind of the host doing music and also introducing the various acts.

1:03:11 - 1:03:16

Oh, my God. I've never really – I don't know what the other people are doing.

1:03:16 - 1:03:25

And I was like, okay. And I've wrangled and I've got this band who I've been touring with and I've called in four of them to help me.

1:03:25 - 1:03:36

So I've got a band to play with. So I pack the car with guitar, a keyboard, a bunch of mics and instruments and stuff and drive down to the theater.

1:03:36 - 1:03:42

And I'm trying to think. I feel like I've – there's an hour's disappeared here.

1:03:42 - 1:03:44

Anyway, I don't know what happened in there. I guess they're packing up the car.

1:03:44 - 1:03:52

And I arrive in the theater and there's a pantomime on, so we can't get into the theater until 6 p.m.

1:03:52 - 1:03:59

There's the Christmas pantomime, and just at the time I arrived to load in the gear, oh, a rainstorm happens.

1:03:59 - 1:04:06

There's like a real torrential river of rain type storm. And I walk into the theater, but it's interval.

1:04:06 - 1:04:14

So the place is heaving with like – it's chaos, you know. So rather than the kind of calm like, okay, where are we going to put the gear?

1:04:14 - 1:04:20

There's about 200 people milling around, and then I see some of the band. I'm like, hey, guys, okay.

1:04:20 - 1:04:24

And then someone's like, oh, hey, Brett, can I get a photo with you? And I'm like, oh, okay.

1:04:24 - 1:04:29

And then it's just a real really random – Scene. What panto are they halfway through?

1:04:29 - 1:04:35

Robin Hood. Then we load, get the gear, we find a little dressing room upstairs to rehearse in and to set up.

1:04:35 - 1:04:41

Weirdly, it's Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, and they're doing the entire film with Brian Adams.

1:04:41 - 1:04:47

He comes on at the end. Morgan Freeman's there. That's great. To the trees. I have a brother.

1:04:47 - 1:04:50

I have a brother. I mean, it's the greatest film of all time. Obviously, we know that.

1:04:50 - 1:04:56

So sad to have missed it. Kids are like, I'm not really that. This is a sort of a soppy love story.

1:04:56 - 1:05:03

Set in Nottingham. I'm not that interested. Look into my eyes. You will see.

1:05:03 - 1:05:10

Yeah. So that's all going on. And then so we set up. But upstairs, we have to rehearse quietly because the theater isn't very well built.

1:05:10 - 1:05:17

So the noise upstairs goes straight down into the actual auditorium. So we do a little bit of practicing.

1:05:17 - 1:05:22

And there's a band in New Zealand called The Front Lawn. Did you ever come across The Front Lawn?

1:05:22 - 1:05:31

Oh, legendary New Zealand. Sort of like some of their stuff veers in. Into comedy, but is beautiful music.

1:05:31 - 1:05:40

Yeah. Yeah. And little stories. And one of the people that's on the show is Jennifer Leland, who was in The Front Lawn, which was the show that I watched when I was a kid.

1:05:40 - 1:05:44

And so her and I are going to sing a song by Front Lawn together.

1:05:44 - 1:05:51

Wow. So we rehearse upstairs. It's pretty special for me because I watched them when I was about 13 and they were a big inspiration for me.

1:05:51 - 1:05:54

So it's kind of buzzy now that I get to sing with one of these people.

1:05:54 - 1:06:00

Do you know her anyway? I've met her once or twice, but not really. Max, it's real golden age of showbiz.

1:06:00 - 1:06:09

What I'm getting here is like you arrive backstage, son, you're in the next show, and there's like a dog jumping through a hula hoop that's on fire.

1:06:09 - 1:06:15

Go upstairs, learn your song. You're on at 6.45. Hollywood's in. We've got to get this show up.

1:06:15 - 1:06:28

And then the turnaround, you know this, Dave. The turnaround is ambitious, right, because the previous show finishes at 6 p.m., 7.30 our show starts, and no one – knows what other people are doing or anything.

1:06:28 - 1:06:36

So basically Kevin Costner is killing Alan Rickman, and you are literally just walking down the stairs with one of your heroes.

1:06:36 - 1:06:50

This is exciting. And so then we get in there, sound check, trying to get everything working, and the panic is in the eyes, and I suddenly realize, oh, I don't really have the brain capacity after this day to host this thing.

1:06:50 - 1:07:03

And I have to introduce people. I have to introduce them, try and say something a bit fun, but also exciting about what – what they're going to do, but I don't really know their names or what they're doing, and my brain is not quite coping

1:07:03 - 1:07:08

with the, like, that juggle. I don't know if you've ever had that problem where you're like, I need more brain right now.

1:07:08 - 1:07:16

I've obviously done fewer shows than you, but quite often, you know, I've got on stage for like a Football Weekly Live, and then I've spent the whole morning tagging cows,

1:07:16 - 1:07:21

and I just – I can't make that jump to, you know, Aston Villa's form.

1:07:21 - 1:07:31

It is tricky. Some kid comes on to perform. There's a scene from King Lear, and you just panic and tag him in the air.

1:07:31 - 1:07:39

People are like, it's very contemporary. It's very modern what they're doing here. But then we get the show up.

1:07:39 - 1:07:46

The show's on. Honestly, I'm in the middle of the first song thinking, probably shouldn't have spent so much time on the farm.

1:07:46 - 1:07:51

So I can tell. You know when you feel like, I've got the audience, but just.

1:07:51 - 1:07:56

I've just got them here. I'm going to really have to work hard to pull this thing together.

1:07:56 - 1:08:01

But presumably this is a charity gig. Yeah. And you're not going to be heckled.

1:08:01 - 1:08:04

They're not going to go, you're shit. No, there was a good energy in there.

1:08:04 - 1:08:15

Everyone was very calm. But I was just like, okay. And I could tell, I've toured my band enough that I can tell by the way they're looking at me like, oh, oh, you're really fried, Brit.

1:08:15 - 1:08:25

What's happening here? There's hay in your hair. Anyway, I get through it. I introduce the other acts, come on, it's all really good.

1:08:25 - 1:08:31

We do the songs. It's pretty fun. And the duet with Jennifer was absolutely, was magic.

1:08:31 - 1:08:43

It was like, you know, I was singing on stage and looking across going, wow, this feels like, I watched her sing when I was 13 and it was one of the first shows I loved and now I'm singing with her.

1:08:43 - 1:08:51

That was magic. That was beautiful, yeah. And then, yeah, the show wrapped up and then I'm packing up all the gear.

1:08:51 - 1:08:56

There's a lot of lifting in life at the moment basically, you know, there's farming and moving gear.

1:08:56 - 1:09:04

I'm packing up guitars and stuff. Then the keyboard player comes in and goes, Britt, your mum is out there.

1:09:04 - 1:09:09

She's saying you've got to come out. I'm like, okay. And he was like, yeah, she's quite a character, eh?

1:09:09 - 1:09:12

He hadn't met my mum before. So then I go out and she's like, oh.

1:09:12 - 1:09:20

And we're chatting away because on the front of the theatre there's all the people hanging out after the show and you're seeing lots of people you know from, because Wellington's a small town.

1:09:20 - 1:09:23

She'd been at the show. Mum had been at the show. She came to the show.

1:09:23 - 1:09:26

Yeah, it was great. She came to the show. Holding all the laundry. She is literally.

1:09:26 - 1:09:33

She's like, is there a dryer in this building? I could just do a load while the show's on.

1:09:33 - 1:09:36

How long's the show going to be? Is that a cycle? Can I do a.

1:09:36 - 1:09:44

And also I've got 200 people from the congregation from the church this morning. They've all got their Washington.

1:09:44 - 1:09:53

Yeah, the last little piece of the day was I'm absolutely exhausted, right? We chatted to a few people.

1:09:53 - 1:09:59

I'm like, okay, I'm really going to wrap up and then head home. Yeah. Mum goes, oh, you haven't met Judith.

1:09:59 - 1:10:05

And I was like, oh, hi, Judith. And this is a vague friend of my mum's who I've never heard of before.

1:10:05 - 1:10:09

She goes, Judith's the one who gave you the letters I dropped off at your house.

1:10:09 - 1:10:21

I was like, what letters? I was like, the ones from the school about how the government's cutting funding for the historian that's working at the World War II memorial.

1:10:21 - 1:10:30

Have you got enough brain? You're like, I don't have enough brain. I was like, oh, yes, yes, I remember.

1:10:30 - 1:10:35

Yes, she wants you to get involved in the cause and raise the profile of this.

1:10:35 - 1:10:41

Write a protest song. She wants you to write it. I'm like, yeah, oh, yes, that's right.

1:10:41 - 1:10:43

You know, the woman's quite nice. She's like, yeah, you don't have to do it.

1:10:43 - 1:10:45

I was like, yeah, I'm not sure that's quite right for me at the moment.

1:10:45 - 1:10:55

Anyway, then my mum pulls this crazy move out, which was so crazy. She goes, so this woman who I've never met before who's trying to get me to do a protest song for Judith.

1:10:56 - 1:11:01

And mum goes, she actually lives down the road from you. When are you going?

1:11:01 - 1:11:08

Would you be able to give her a ride? You can't say no. I can't say no in front of Judith.

1:11:08 - 1:11:17

Judith's right there. And so I said, oh, well, yes, I am going that way because I'm going home.

1:11:17 - 1:11:22

So now I was like, I'm taking Judith home, but I'm not quite ready to leave.

1:11:22 - 1:11:28

I was like, oh, my God, how could I? She starts giving you the background to the story and who works at the War Memorial.

1:11:28 - 1:11:32

Well, then I see a couple of other friends. I'm like, oh, I'll just say bye to them, say bye.

1:11:32 - 1:11:36

And I'm chatting to them, and I'm like, I'm just talking a bit long. I'm like, maybe if I talk for a bit longer, Judith.

1:11:36 - 1:11:40

And Judith's just hovering now. She's standing next to you. Judith's with you now. She's not standing next to me.

1:11:40 - 1:11:43

She's standing like a foot away from me, so it's weird that she's standing there.

1:11:43 - 1:11:49

She's two feet away. And do you introduce her? Do you say, oh, by the way, this is Judith, who I'm driving home today?

1:11:49 - 1:11:56

She's hovering. And then I was like, oh, maybe I'll just keep talking and she'll probably cruise into her own thing probably, yeah, because I finally say bye and then I go to leave.

1:11:56 - 1:12:00

I'm like, oh, Judith's waiting. She's like, oh, hi. I was like, she's waiting. So it's better that I don't know.

1:12:00 - 1:12:07

So anyway, next thing I'm driving Judith through the streets of Wellington home. Judith actually turns out to be really great.

1:12:07 - 1:12:14

She's lovely. But it was a lot. There wasn't much left for the chit-chat and the drive across town with Judith.

1:12:14 - 1:12:20

You just put on Kelly Cates. What did you do yesterday? Really loud in the car.

1:12:20 - 1:12:28

Have you heard this? Have you heard this? She goes to her daughter's hockey match, but her daughter only gets on for the last 10 minutes.

1:12:28 - 1:12:41

It's fascinating. And then I got home. Hannah's at home. Kids are asleep. And I catch up with Hannah and basically tell Hannah how my mum made me give this person a ride home.

1:12:41 - 1:12:46

Do you have to unload the gear, though? I mean, because that's always a kicker.

1:12:46 - 1:12:53

Ah, our driveway. I pulled up the driveway back and locked the car. I was like, okay.

1:12:53 - 1:12:59

Fine. It was pretty secure, yeah. Part of me is hoping that Judith lived quite a long way away from you.

1:12:59 - 1:13:04

Well, it turns out Judith didn't actually want to go home. She wanted to go to where she'd left her car.

1:13:04 - 1:13:09

So we did a bit of a detour because she was like, well, I probably can drive.

1:13:09 - 1:13:15

I haven't had that many wines. So, I mean, honestly, Judith was a lot. Judith was a lot.

1:13:15 - 1:13:26

Judith was like, Brett, just while we're here, I've written a few songs, and I'm wondering if you could record them right now for me because you've got a little studio there.

1:13:26 - 1:13:35

What a day. What a day. What a day. It was epic. Brilliant day. Really good.

1:13:35 - 1:13:43

Three high points. You tagged a cow. Yeah, definitely. The other things you mentioned were high points were a chocolate biscuit and singing a song on stage with your hero.

1:13:43 - 1:13:47

I reckon, and the recycling guy, I think he was actually a bit of a – Yeah.

1:13:47 - 1:13:57

Which one gave you the biggest high? The way we've talked about it, the recycling guy came out strongest, but I think long-term I'll remember singing the song with Jennifer.

1:13:57 - 1:14:09

Yeah. That was really special for me. Tagging a cow is – that's like – My thoughts are actually with the other cows who are now all mocking that cow for having a wonky earring.

1:14:09 - 1:14:17

They did all start sort of mooing as someone moving into different areas, like, oh, what are you doing over there?

1:14:17 - 1:14:22

You think it's – you mean it's like the Sneetches where it's like, oh, dude, you don't want your tag there, mate.

1:14:22 - 1:14:30

That's – That farmer was having a bad day. That's not a farmer. I told you they're not farmers.

1:14:30 - 1:14:39

We've got to get out of this place. I'm really looking forward to – I'm really looking forward to the next time I'm in the UK and I switch on Radio 4 too early on a Saturday morning

1:14:39 - 1:14:48

and the very Radio 4 voice goes, and now, in an hour, the Today Show. But now, Farming Today with Brett McKenzie.

1:14:48 - 1:14:58

Brett McKenzie. That's what I'm looking forward to. Brett, thank you very much for telling us what you did yesterday.

1:14:58 - 1:15:17

I'm glad to share it. Yeah, it was fun. Brett McKenzie there, and I have been laughing because we recorded this episode a few days ago, David.

1:15:17 - 1:15:27

I've been laughing so much about Nicole Kidman, the cow. Yeah. I really – And then, you know, this morning meeting she has with her people.

1:15:27 - 1:15:33

Yeah. The time she's brought up in the public domain. Oh, so much in this day.

1:15:33 - 1:15:41

The farm is so – the tagging the cows. Yeah. I just love talking into a recycling bin as well.

1:15:41 - 1:15:53

I wonder when Brett won the Oscar for his work on The Muppets, did he ever think one day he would be trying to communicate with a man through the slot of a – Recycling bin.

1:15:53 - 1:16:02

And not only that, it turns out, you know, the man behind the recycling bin is actually, you know, like one of the savants of our time.

1:16:02 - 1:16:09

You know, like he's a modern-day philosopher who just happens to be there going, that's plastic, that's metal.

1:16:09 - 1:16:13

And then at the end he sings a song with one of his heroes. Yeah.

1:16:13 - 1:16:21

Because you hassled me early on to get Flight of the Conchords on or one of Flight of the Conchords.

1:16:21 - 1:16:27

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I maintained that – that they never did podcasts. Yeah, and then he turned up on one about a minute later.

1:16:27 - 1:16:42

Yeah. But I suspect this was the first kind of remote podcast he ever did because we did – there was a bit of faffing that you won't hear in order to make all the beautiful sounds work.

1:16:42 - 1:16:49

But, oh my God, so worth it. Please check out Freak Out City. It's on Bandcamp.

1:16:49 - 1:16:56

It's everywhere right now. There's an amazing song about – about a vending machine falling on a person.

1:16:56 - 1:17:03

It's a topic that hasn't been touched really in contemporary songwriting. That's what Brett McKenzie did yesterday.

1:17:03 - 1:17:16

If you would like to get in touch with this podcast, this is how. To get in touch with the show, you can email us at whatdidyoudoyesterdaypod at gmail.com.

1:17:16 - 1:17:22

Follow us on Instagram at yesterdaypod. And please subscribe and leave a review if you liked it on your preferred podcast.

1:17:22 - 1:17:55

And if you didn't, please don't. ♪ ♪

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