Well fuck me, I had a day yesterday. There was me looking forward to a big weekend watching the boys smashing the Aussies in the league when the phone goes and, would you know it, it’s me old mate John Key.

“John,” I says, “Mate!”

“Peter,” he says. “I need a favour”. He tells me he wants to impress some lady friend of his down in Wellington, and he needs my help. This sheila’s supposed to turn up at his place and he has to cook for her.

“No worries, mate,” I tell him. “Put the barbie on and serve her a few bangers. The ladies can‘t resist a good sausage watered down with a bit of the brown nectar.”

Mate, I’m a Lion Red man myself, but the posher ladies like something a bit more sophisticated. So I also tell him, “mate, get her a few crates of that fancy stuff they put in green bottles. Steinlagers and the like.”

He says to me, John says, “there’s a lot of people going to be there. Can you help with the catering? Bill says we can’t afford to splash out too much on the fancy wine and food. And I want to give her an authentic Kiwi experience.”

“Mate, there’s no-one more authentically Kiwi than me”, I tell him. “If I was any more Kiwi I’d be eating worms and have a feather up me arse.

“Look, mate,” I tell him. “If this lady friend of yours means that much I’ll be there. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll throw in ten kilos of my finest pork bangers, all for just $5.99 a kilo. Yes, that‘s right, only $5.99 a kilo!”

“We’ll need more than sausages,” he says. “What else have you got?”

“Mate, just the best damn meat patties you will find! Slap ‘em on the griller and throw ‘em between a couple of bits of bread. A two-kilo bag will set you back $12.99. Maaaate!”

He then tells me there’s one of those fancy limos coming to pick me up for the airport, and that he wants me to man the barbie. Before you know it I’m at this posh establishment in Wellington standing in front of this fucking great piece of shiny metal.

“Mate!” I tell one of John’s boys. “What the fuck is this?”

“It’s a barbeque,” the bastard says.

“You’re bullshitting me,” I tell him. “I can’t bloody cook on this thing. Come on mate, let’s grab a ute and head to the BBQ Factory.”

We buy a three-burner for less than three hundy, and pretty soon it’s humming away with a couple dozen bangers and patties sizzling on top.

Then the fancy lady turns up, and a shitload of other people too. Fuck me, I tell you there were more suits than a dodgy deck of cards! It was a real swanky event. They even had wine from bottles.

The lady’s a Yank, but not even a foreigner can resist one of my sausages. “Here,” I tell her, walking up to her with a pork sausage in bread, drowned in Mr Wattie’s finest. “Get your laughing gear around that.”

That’s when the whole evening went tits-up for me. Some bloke in a suit pushes me away, so I give his jaw a bit of a tickle with me fist. Hey, I’m an old bugger, but I can still do the business, and they never expect it.

Then one of his mates shows up and has a go. Before you know it I’m beating the shit out of a whole heap of suits, all while this high-class lady looks on.

You’d think she’d be grateful for me keeping those lowlife scumbags from her, but then she tells me to get away from her. Well what a stuck-up sour-faced old cow. I let her know what I think.

Then the cops grab me and I spend the night in the slammer. Mate! All because I tried to help an old mate with a chick.

Mate, I don’t need that kind of shit. The papers now say I’ve caused a diplomatic incident, and all because I tried to help out. The papers are always having a go at the league boys for getting into trouble but, mate, they’re good boys compared to that fucking feral lot in suits.

Mate!