Olly Ohlson-after school’s out

Tu Tangata, Issue 13, 1 August 1983, Page 2

Olly Ohlson-after school’s out

The strange thing about Oily Ohlson is that he’s not strange to most of us.

He has been on television only 18 months. His face is so familiar, yet most seldom see his television programmes. The kids watch “After School” after school. “You and Your Child” screens on mornings and afternoons.

Still, most people know him or think they do, for Oily Ohlson is a different fellow to know. He has few friends, prefers his own and his family’s company.

He is immensely popular with children and adults alike, and worries about being over-exposed through constant requests for interviews.

He was a smash hit on Telethon and fills speaking engagements up and down the country. Yet he has none of the hype of many television personalities; he has no trouble keeping his ego under control long enough to impress the interviewer, because he is not that kind of man.

In fact, it’s difficult to know what kind of man he is.

There’s a reserve about him which does not lend itself easily to brief encounters; nor does it sit readily with the warm, easily-relating television Ohlson. This is not to suggest that he suffers from some kind of television schizophrenia. They both spring from the same personality. It’s the way he operates.

Oily Ohlson was born in Te Whaiti, in the eastern Bay of Plenty, the youngest of 19 children. He only ever met 14 of them the others had died by the time he was old enough to remember.

The Ohlson came from a Norwegian heritage; Oily came from teachers’ college, much later. His given name is Te Hata.

His father was Jack Te Tuhi Ohlson, his mother Menepeke Potatau; she could trace her line directly to King Potatau.

Young Oily had an ambiguous upbringing. His older brothers and sisters were steeped in things Maori. Their parents talked to them predominantly in Maori.

When Oily arrived, his mother’s attitude began to change. She could see the village life breaking up. People had to move out of the area to find work, mainly in forestry in Minginui.

His father was basically Ringatu in his philosophy; the young Ohlson used to sit on his shoulders as he began the day with meditation and prayer to the

god 10. In the evenings he and his mother prayed together: “Dad in the morning, mum in the evening.” Oily sees it as similar to Christianity, “without the hang-up of sin,” a learning process in which you stumbled but you picked yourself up again. His father died when Oily was 10, the victim of a blow on the chest with a steel pin as a bridge labourer. His mother’s attitude changed further. From that time she spoke scarcely a word of Maori, talking to her children in broken English. She made sure he did his homework. Until then he hadn’t been allowed to read books. “You might get too much brains,” his mother would say.” Too much brains are not good for you.” Now, she wanted Oily to read. She wanted her husband’s tama potiki to succeed. The family shuttled between Te Whaiti and Rotorua, then Minginui. Back in Te Whaiti, the family home was demolished, by order. Oily remembers plastering its walls with flour and water on old English “Daily Mirrors”. In Minginui Oily’s brother Fred took his father’s place at the head of the house-

hold. To get a mill house, someone had to work at the mill, and Fred was it. Oily lived there until he was 19, the longest time he ever spent in one house. There, life took a fateful turn. At first, there were no shops in Minginui; when a butcher’s shop came, it was regarded as ridiculous. After all, there were pigs and deer to be had for the hunting. Nevertheless, the town’s lifestyle began to change. People began to use them, although they didn’t understand the booking up system; when they got the account they were puzzled. Ohlson remembers first failing to come to grips with the concept then rebelling against it; he and a few local kids began stealing from shops. Inevitably, they were caught. Part of the punishment was a boarding school, St Stephens: “The best thing that happened to me.’’ Initially, he was puzzled: “There were a lot of brown-skinned people who were not Maoris. They couldn’t speak Maori. They were brown pakehas.” But his English improved, and other things too. He’d never had sheets, or even underpants. When he first put them on, he wore them back to front. He had clothes of his own, too as No 19 he’d

always inherited everyone else’s. He became more confident, but failed School Certificate the first time around nonetheless.

The family could no longer afford the fees for St Stephens. He went back to the local high school, became deputy head boy, got School Cert. Illness wrecked his hopes of U.E. and he went off into the bush as a scrub-cutter.

But one of his teachers, Bill Hill, convinced his mother he had a future as a teacher. Off he went to Ardmore Training College.

By the second year there, to a lot of friends he was a pakeha. That year faced him with a crisis. His mother was ill. He had to decide whether to finish teachers’ college or go back and look after her.

He stayed, finished the course, did his P.A, year under the Maori Board of Governors and rebelled. Maori children he believed, needed to be exposed to European values, not kept together in a Maori school. He was released from his bond. When he turned 21 his mother died, as she’d predicted she would.

Oily married in Christchurch and moved on to Kokatahi on the West Coast of the South Island then to Rununga as first assistant and on to Kaitangata, where his marriage broke up. He met his second wife Jan in nearby Balcultha and the pair moved back to Christchurch. Oily left teaching. The money couldn’t support two families, besides, he saw the system as full of old people hanging on to jobs, leaving no room for the young.

The period was to see his debut in television, in such programmes as “Seagull,” “Woolly Hill”, “Woolly Manor.” Later, in Timaru, his job as a life insurance salesman gone as a result of his involvement with a Pentecostal church, he won a part as narrator in a South Canterbury Operatic Society Production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.” It convinced him that his future lay behind the footlights, on stage or television.

He took a job with the Anglican church, started a happy hour for kids, making up songs and attracting up to 80 for a session. All the time he was praying for a career singing, entertaining and one day the telephone rang. It was Television New Zealand’s lan Cumming, offering him a job as presenter of “After School”.

Curiously, Ollie wasn’t interested at first. He wanted something more musical. Moreover, he was working with alcoholics, having helped found an alcoholic recovery centre. He didn’t even watch television, nor does he watch it much now: “We’re more book people, out-and-about people.” Eventually, he took the job. Now, as he talks, themes emerge. The strongest is his idea of a total New Zea-

land; that’s why he started using different languages on “After School.” “I am a person,” he declares. “That’s the kind of thing New Zealand needs. I’m a New Zealander, not I’m Dutch, Maori, Spanish. M Our elders are frightened of losing their Maoritanga. Well, they’ve lost it. “Some asked me, ‘are you proud to be a Maori?” I said talking to me in these terms, one per cent speak the language, a hell of a lot go through the prisons, the courts on that basis I can’t be proud. I’m sad. My older children, Riki and Tania, don’t speak Maori at all. I’ve said to them they are themselves first and foremost and they have a rich heritage from which they can learn if they want to and not be pressured to learn things Maori because if it doesn’t come from inside, it’s a farce. My other two, Jodie and Kiri, are starting to speak Maori. They want to.” He initiated “Kupu”, encouraging the correct pronounciation of Maori place names. His preoccupation has recently led him into more controversial areas. He lodged a protest with the Race Relations Concilator against the New Zealand Maoris tour of Wales. “If New Zealanders really want to be New Zealanders, then I think it’s about time we got rid of racist teams like the Maori All Blacks and indeed everything that

bears the name Maori for example Maori Affairs (which is merely a branch of the Housing Corporation) and Maori members of Parliament (Maori issues are not that unique to warrant a separate form of government). Let’s start being New Zealanders then, and stop this almighty farce of trying to find unity in division.” “If the Maori people want to do anything I believe they should tell their children they are equal New* Zealanders,” he says. ‘‘The concept of Maoridom needs to be broadened. “Only a select few are taken through the whare wananga, the higher school of learning so few there are hardly any left. “Even on the marae, women take a secondary place. You can’t tell teenagers that. “The positive aspects warmth, trust, aroha, the idea of sharing and caring that’s what we can learn from the Maori. The idea of being a worthwhile person. “My hassle had to be, what the hell am I? I had to stop trying. It was a hell of a hassle, especially when you get Maori jokes. “When people look at me, it’s Oily Ohlson they see. Often people look at me and say, God, I never realised you’re a Maori. Basically, the public see me as Oily Ohlson, the man with a smile.