Jenny-May's Breakfast dream 'I WANT TO BE THE FIRST WOMAN TO DO THIS!'

The beloved broadcaster has one more wish on her television bucket list before she calls it a day

- Wendyl Nissen

Breakfast presenter Jenny-May Clarkson has one of the best stories to tell about her time on the show, which celebrates 25 years on air this week.

But it's not an interview which went wrong or indeed an interview which went right. It's the moment she found out she had her job on Breakfast.

"When I was offered the role, the first thing I felt was fear and then once I had moved through that process, I remember driving in the car on my own. The tears are coming back now! I remember tears rolling down my face. And I was thinking of my dad, who died four years ago, and I said, 'Hey, Dad, how far have we come?'

"I've had struggles with my own journey of being Māori. But just at that moment, I realised I'm the only female Māori presenter who has done Breakfast. So, I had that moment with my dad."

Former Silver Fern JennyMay, who is of Ngāti Maniapoto and Ngāti Kahu descent, has talked before about taking time off to do a full-time te reo Māori immersion course in 2012, just as dad Waka Coffin did in his fifties at night classes.

Now she speaks te reo Māori to her six-year-old twin boys Atawhai and Te Manahau, but says they're only just starting to speak back to her in te reo.

"At school, they're pretty good, particularly when they're playing," tells JennyMay, whose boys attend a Kura Kaupapa Māori. "But they'll do it when they feel like it.

"I've learned not to ask them to speak to me in te reo Māori, but now I hear things just drop out of their mouths and at those moments, my heart sings. They're just choosing to annoy me, but I'm at peace with that now," she laughs.

Jenny-May, 48, talks to the Weekly at eight in the morning, which is late for someone who gets up at 3am every day. She has no makeup on and sits in front of a wall in her home with the word "Whanau" printed on it, surrounded by pictures.