Properly speaking

To his surprise, Nathan Rarere has found the switch from commercial radio to RNZ has helped him find his real voice.

- LINDA HERRICK

In the wee hours of the morning, five days a week, the alarm clock beeps on Nathan Rarere’s phone at 3.10am. He hits the snooze button, and dozes for 10 more precious minutes until the next round of beeps gets him out of bed.

It’s off to work he must go, leaving his wife, their two daughters and four cats snuggled up in the sleepy warmth of their West Auckland home. His mission, as host of Radio New Zealand’s 5am First Up show, is to help listeners enjoy waking up, too.

Over the past two years, Rarere and his team have built First Up into a brisk mix of news and interviews that make you more engaged in what’s going on in the world, even if you’re only half-awake.

It’s also deliciously eccentric.

When Rarere, 51, first moved to RNZ in late 2020, public broadcasting was completely foreign to him. He’d worked on commercial radio for 30-plus years and become a TV star on “youth” shows Ice TV on TV3 and Box Dog on the now-defunct Max TV. His long CV is well documented, full of ups and downs.

Commercial broadcasting is a fickle business. The day I first met Rarere for this story, his phone was abuzz with texts from friends saying Today FM had closed.

He’s gone through the grief of closures and firings himself, most notably from the Channel Z alt-music radio station in 2003, where he partnered with Jon Bridges in the mornings. “When you’re doing stuff attached to money, you’ve got to please the money,” he says. “You end up doing a show for your advertisers, not for anybody else.”