The Good Life Hadyn's Taranaki Haven

For Tv’s Good Sort, Work And Life Are A Happy Collision

- Kelly Bertrand

The Taranaki bureau of TVNZ is quite the different environment from other newsrooms around the country.

For one, it’s often occupied by a trio of very enthusiastic (if a little under-qualified) contributors, whose main mission is to help pick the backing tracks for the country’s favourite news segment.

It’s also in the home of their dad, Fair Go host Hadyn Jones. He’s Taranaki’s one-man band, and he’s been on a nine-year mission to spread a bit of joy and love to the country with Good Sorts, his weekly yarn that airs at the end of the Sunday ONE News bulletin and celebrates an ordinary Kiwi doing something extraordinary. Hadyn (43) and his wife Zanta (37) have welcomed the Weekly into their New Plymouth bungalow, which has been undergoing renovations for seven years with no end in sight. Hadyn has agreed to give up the right to select the location for their new kitchen in return for the usually very private Zanta agreeing to be interviewed too.

“She even drew up a contract,” he says, laughing. “I signed it the other day, it’s on the fridge.”

“He doesn’t do the cooking, so I’m not sure he had a say anyway,” Zanta adds with a grin.

Yes, life in the “Taranaki bureau” – the name Hadyn proclaimed for the editing studio in a room off his garage – is perhaps unconventional for a journalist, but Hadyn wouldn’t have it any other way, and it means he gets to see a whole lot more of his little music selectors, Marley (9), Archer (7) and Perry (5).

However, it does mean that chaos is often the order of the day – while chatting to the Weekly, Hadyn is heating his forgotten mug of tea in the microwave for the third time this morning.

“I can never finish a cup,” he laments, pulling another neglected cup from the microwave to make room for this one.