By Patrick Gower
A video has been released of Prime Minister John Key's top ten reasons why American television host David Letterman should visit New Zealand.
The recording was made long before Mr Key's live performance on the Letterman Show. Mr Key is stressing it was an invitation to Letterman, not an audition.
John Key had been in the job for just a few weeks when he sent the video.
He had apparently seen an interview with Nicole Kidman where Letterman said he has never been to New Zealand.
And so it went on. It would have taken some effort, but on Monday Mr Key had a bit of memory fade.
“There was a joke tape, if you like, done in my office. I don’t know what happened to it actually. Don't know whether it ever went there.”
The joke did get to Letterman and a copy of the tape was kept in Mr Key's office, released today under the Official Information Act.
Mr Key says the tape was an invitation, not an audition.
But later that year the joke got serious and Tourism New Zealand paid $10,000 of taxpayers money to an American public relations firm to lobby to get Mr Key on the show.
By November he had made it and says it was money well spent.
Mr Key’s marketing exercise may have reached millions but it did not have any effect on Letterman himself. He called New Zealand "the best country he'd never visited". It remains that way with the excuse he has given Mr Key is that he is afraid of flying.
3 News
source: newshub archive
