Former National Party leader Simon Bridges has revealed the moment he cried over a dig about his accent.
Bridges' new book National Identity: Confessions of an Outsider is released on August 18. In it, he writes about various stages of his life, including his time growing up and being a dad.
In one moment of his memoir, he describes crying while reading a story on The Spinoff titled 'Simon Bridges has the accent of New Zealand's future. Get used to it'.
Bridges says no one had ever made fun of his accent during his early years in Parliament and while he was a lawyer - it was only when he reached the top level in politics that people started making jokes.
"So many things that probably could have got to me and should have got to me, didn't get to me. That really got to me, the accent stuff," he told the NZ Herald.
"I think that shock of it being something I hadn't thought of, the personal nature of it, and just that it was intrinsic."
Although some people tried to help or make him change the way he spoke, he never wanted to, saying he would feel some kind of betrayal.
Bridges says he's now rebuking the criticism, not just for him but for anyone whose accent is similar to his.
"I do think that the book will, in that portion, stop it. I reckon media will read that and appreciate it's a pretty narrow, parochial snobbism - that if they're worried about gender and race and all the other things, which they should be, they should be about that as well."
When announcing his "intensely personal" memoir earlier this year, Bridges said although he's best-known as a politician, the book itself isn't political.
"[It is] an open, honest and at times intensely personal memoir about race, fatherhood, marriage, masculinity, fitting in, and the things that shape our national character," he said.
Bridges isn't the first National politician to pen a memoir in recent years. Current leader Judith Collins also released an autobiography last year, Pull No Punches, about her life and career in Parliament.
