The Devonport Flagstaff Page 18
Interview
August 21, 2015
Devonport steals the show for Pippa
Pippa Wetzell sparkles on the television screen. She has co-hosted programmes such as Breakfast and Fair Go. But she is just as at home as a Devonport mum, juggling work, making school lunches and popping to New World in track pants. Wetzell spoke to Maire Vieth. Television presenter Pippa Wetzell is now back home in time for family dinners after finishing a frantic five-months’ stint as cohost of the nightly TV One news show Seven Sharp. She was filling in for Toni Street, who was on maternity leave, while at the same time co-hosting Fair Go, TV One’s Wednesday night consumer-affairs programme. Wetzell (38) and mother of two girls, Brodie (8) and Cameron (6), and son Taj (4), says juggling work and family life has been challenging in 2015. “I loved working on Seven Sharp, I really enjoyed it, but it was hard not being there for the school pick-ups and not being there in the evenings. The younger two would be in bed by the time I got home and so I missed all that quietening-down time when they tell you about what happened in their days. Those sorts of things are important to me,” she says. Until five years ago, Wetzell worked long and early hours as the co-host of TVNZ’s news and talk show Breakfast, alongside Paul Henry. She resigned from the show in October 2010, shortly after Henry left. Taj was born months later and Wetzell has been working part time ever since. She presented One News at 4.30 pm before joining Fair Go in 2013. Wetzell has long-established Devonport roots. She arrived on the peninsula as a thirdform student at Takapuna Grammar School (TGS) at the age of 13. Carol and Clem Wetzell and their three daughters (Kylie, Pippa and Anya) were living in Castor Bay, but all the girls went to TGS. “We were in zone for Westlake Girls but my parents were keen for us to go to a co-ed school. We were all girls and they were really keen for us to have some boys in our lives, funnily enough, bit of male influence, and Takapuna Grammar had a good name,” she says. By the time Pippa was 14 her parents had separated. Carol and the girls moved to Belmont and became locals.
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A nationally recognised face, but in Devonport Pippa Wetzell blends in with the community In her first year at TGS, Wetzell says she noticed what Devonport teenagers these days refer to as ‘the Bubble.’ “I remember thinking how really close-knit the kids were. Geographically they have been in this, what do we call it, ‘bubble’ so everyone seemed to know each other really well. They had this history, which I hadn’t experienced so much where I was growing up,” she says. Wetzell’s husband Torrin Cowther lived on Clarence St and grew up in Devonport, but went to Westlake Boys. He and Wetzell were teenage friends, dated briefly and got together again in their early twenties. They moved back to Devonport in 2004 and married two years later. Wetzell says as a parent she is watching her children enjoy the Devonport upbringing. “When Brodie started kindy I remember looking around at the other kids and thinking that she will go through all her schooling years with them. They might not end up at the same primary school but odds are they will see each other at sports, on the rugby field or in ballet class, and end up in the same intermediate and high school together. It’s a pretty cool feeling,” she says. The close community is what brings back many Devonporters, Wetzell says, including her younger sister Anya who arrived home two weeks ago after living in Europe for 11 years.
Taj is just finishing his first season of rippa rugby. “So we have started visiting the rugby club again. It’s probably been 20 years since I set foot in there for a few parties when I was a teen,” she says. “The Vic was open then too and I would see movies there until not long before it closed. It’s good to have it open again.” What was she like at Takapuna Grammar? “Good,” Wetzell responds quickly, but it is obviously true. She and both her sisters, were Head Girl. “I thoroughly enjoyed school, had lovely friends, was a committed student and involved in lots of activities and sports,” she says. Sports were an important social connection for Wetzell. “I played lots of netball, basketball and volleyball and did rowing for a few seasons. My older sister said: “just do everything and then you can choose what you do and don’t like.” So I did and kept up with netball and basketball all the way through school,” she says. During her OE, Wetzell spent a year working as a teacher aide in a Yorkshire private school. “It wasn’t super, super flash, but I was at times amused by some of the formalities I wasn’t used to. Lunchtime was a lot more civilised there. The kids had lots of different uniforms for everything and you had to wear shoes for PE. You’d never go barefoot,” she says.