Mikey Havoc owns a lot of masks. He has been collecting them all his life, inhabiting creatures that are often not entirely of his making or under his control.
Attempts to peel off these alter egos have led to a few run-ins with journalists over the years. But today, the glam rocker turned radio jock is in a more conciliatory mood, even putting his kinesiology practitioners’ skills to work in the dimly lit Radio Hauraki studio.
Kinesiology is about “putting all the energy back in the right places”, he explains. Taking off the entertainer’s mask for a second, he asks the patient to hold both arms out and makes a series of beeping and whirring noises to explain the mechanics of the alternative medicine.
Havoc says it was kinesiology that helped rescue his ex-wife, actress Claire Chitham, from 10 years of crippling illness.
“Claire was on three different types of drugs a day for 10 years for Crohn’s disease. She stopped taking them and a couple of weeks later it was out, gone out of her body in two weeks, after having it for 10 years. I’m very suss about conventional medicine.”
Havoc and Chitham, who played Waverley in Shortland Street and went on to star in Outrageous Fortune, began dating in 2001 and married five years later, a day Havoc has described as the best in his life.
But the couple split in 2009 and Chitham calls Los Angeles home these days. “We catch up every now and again. We’re on good terms,” Havoc says.
For the past couple of years he’s been living a nomadic lifestyle, going between “Mum’s, and friends and Mum’s”.
He has just moved into a new place, the first time he has had a chance to unpack his belongings since the end of his married life, and settling his mum into a retirement village last year.
Havoc is still getting used to the perils of living alone. Somewhat dramatically he recalls “the heat pump incident” from the previous night. He woke up in the middle of the day barely able to breathe, feeling like a rotisserie chicken left on the warmer too long. Turned out he’d left the heat pump on.
“I thought I was going to die,” he says.
He has been busy unpacking dozens of boxes, stuff from his childhood, the collections of a hectic, eclectic life.
“I’ve kept everything. Just toys and things, and a lot of masks. I don’t know what psychological inferences you could draw from that. Always been into masks, don’t know why.”
He tells a story about when he was 4 years old. About six months before his father was killed by a drink-driver, he and his brother Allan dressed up in cardboard apple masks. “We both look like little aliens.”
Havoc used the resulting photo as ID on the back of his member’s card for his old Squid Bar, on O’Connell St.
Among other gems to fall out of his boxes was the piece of paper on which he wrote the No 1 single Trippin‘ for Push Push he’s hoping to reform later this year.
The four former band members plan to tour main centres over the summer. Havoc won’t have to prepare his stage look: he still sports the same hairstyle he had when the band was big in the early 90s.
Says Havoc of the band’s hit song, which spent 25 weeks in the charts: “I thought ‘I was trippin’ on you’ was such a dumb line.
“I crossed that out and wrote all these other lines. ‘I was mumbling around with you, I was splashing around in puddles with you, all these things then came back to, I was trippin’ out on you’.”
Along with the hair-do, not much has changed with the way Havoc, real name Michael Roberts, presents himself to the world.
The shift from late nights to primetime with the Mikey Havoc Afternoon Express on Hauraki hasn’t reined in his untamed eccentricity.
There is no putting a leash on the endless streamof consciousness that flies out of his brain, and his mouth, at speeds too fast to enunciate.
The larrikin who once lampooned Gore as “gay” and called it the gay capital of New Zealand is still there, the rapier wit undimmed. But, he says, he has also achieved some stability. Havoc, who turns 44 next month, is still smarting over a January 2012 Metro article in which he was portrayed as a slightly sad 40-something unemployed mummy’s boy.
At the time he had just quit bFM and was taking time out to plot the next move.
“I knew when I left bFM there was no next obvious job to step into. I made the decision to take the hit financially. That’s why I moved into my mum’s place, to hang out with her. I had just finished doing 16 years of one job, surely you’re allowed to recalibrate for a second.”
Havoc felt betrayed by the Steve Braunias piece.
“He said ‘Okay, look, I don’t want to do a story on this, this, this, this, this. We’re not going to mention this, this, this.’ And I went, ‘Okay, if you’re not going to mention that.’ And he mentioned every single one of the things he said.
“It hurt at the time because I trusted him and I’d like to think there was a bit more to me than that.
“There was a lot more stuff that he didn’t know. But f*** him. Now people say, ‘Oh, good to have you back, mate.’ It’s like, I haven’t been anywhere.”
On the day the Herald on Sunday visits Havoc in his studio, a female caller invites Havoc to join her in a Parallel Universe – a yacht parked down at the Viaduct. He gets that a lot, propositions on air. “Oh, yeah, it’s not necessarily a good thing. It’s a weird thing, actually.”
He has been such a constant pre ence in many New Zealanders’ lives since glam-rocking his way into the public consciousness with Push Push more than 20 years ago.
So familiar are his fans that they will text, email or call with their thoughts: “I’m by myself for the first time since my second kid was born. Have you got any Rammstein [a German band]?”
Two years ago, Havoc was signed up by Radio Hauraki on the late shift to help woo younger listeners as the station moved away from its pirate radio, classic-rock heritage.
Mike McClung, TRN’s group content director for the youth brands, says TRN didn’t want to compete with the Rock in chasing the young adult male market.
“To be honest, the Rock owned it, but we found there is a whole new audience that didn’t want to hear the same old dirgy rock songs day after day.”
McClung says Havoc has autonomy over the music he plays-probably the only DJ working in commercial radio to do so.
Like a music festival lineup, Havoc’s playlist lurches from rock to punk to electro and soul. A light dusting of tui birdsong sprinkled over a Pearl Jam track.
Never one to toe the party line, Havoc has even taken to using correct Maori pronunciation from time to time.
“It’s almost Kiwi vernacular to call it Howraki,” he says.
“I don’t think it makes much difference but if it’s important to some people, then I’m happy to do it.”
If radio has been his salvation, Havoc will always be best known for the 300 TV shows he made, and none more so than the Gore episode from Havoc and Newsboy’s Sellout Tour.
Thanks to NZ On Screen’s new digital archive, a new generation of Gore-ites can work themselves into a blind fury over being outed as the “gay capital of New Zealand”.
Lines like “Greedy old gay man sitting around the back of the fence doesn’t tell anybody keeps it to himself Gore” were sure to get a rise out of the Southland town.
Havoc says the outrage is still alive and well today.
In fact, Havoc says the town’s most famous son, former All Black Jimmy Cowan, tried to pick a fight with him over it.
“About [three years ago] Cowan came up and was going to try and step me out at some bar about it. I had no idea, I was going, ‘Are you serious?’ That was years ago.”
Havoc still harbours ambitions of a return to TV and says he would love to reunite with his old buddy Jeremy Wells, now a stablemate at Radio Hauraki.
But he can’t help having a go at the quality of shows being made in New Zealand.
“It’s in this weird, horrible little cul-de-sac. There’s nothing that reflects New Zealanders on TV at the moment. It’s all about competition cheffing and show us the house you’re building.
“There’s a market for that but the reason our TV show worked was ‘here’s two guys just mucking around all weekend doing nothing’.
Well, guess what? I’ve just spent all weekend mucking around doing nothing.”
Havoc often stays up all night combing the internet for new music, TV shows, always on the hunt for new sound to play on the radio show. He also MCs at a burlesque night once a week, and still keeps his hand in DJing.
Havoc remains a political animal, and although he’s had to tone down his views for the Hauraki listenership, he still fits in a good old rant about how the politicians have let the children down in the wake of a 13-year-old being charged with murder this week.
He’s worried New Zealand is sleepwalking into the September General Election. He will probably vote Labour-Greens, and says former Labour leader David Shearer was “too good a guy”‘ to become Prime Minister.
“I went to a barbecue at his place recently and it was really cool. Interesting bunch of people there, much better than the business roundtable. [Shearer] can tell you what a good Motley Crue solo is.”
On the subject of politics and music, he admires Kim Dotcom’s tenacity but says his album was terrible.
And he doesn’t hold back in his distaste for National and John Key.
“One of my pet hates about John Key is he will just shrug his shoulders and say, ‘I don’t think most New Zealanders are interested in that’. I am most New Zealanders.”
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