These days Jeremy Wells is a Radio Hauraki host Jeremy Wells has relayed a full account of what happened when an angry homophobic mob confronted him at a Gore petrol station. In 2008 Wells and another broadcaster, Hugh Sundae, were in the Southland town as part of One News’ election coverage when he was accosted by angry young men ove the joke he and Mikey Havoc made on their TV show in 1999 that Gore was “the gay capital of New Zealand”. Now a Radio Hauraki host, Wells has recounted the experience on air. He says he went in to get a pie from the service station at around 1.30 in the morning, after wrapping up election coverage. “I was accosted by a sweaty young man and his mates and threatened to be smashed over and pushed around inside this petrol station. It was terrifying. It was like being a celebrity that was being baited inside a goldfish bowl. People were turning up to view it, watching from outside the glass in the service station.” He says there was “a lot of pushing” as they baited him, but he refused to get violent. “I’m not gonna do that against some angry Southland dude,” he says, saying he tried to talk his way out of the situation. “It was a humiliating experience,” Wells recalls, which went on for half an hour as he couldn’t leave. He says he called the police and they “wouldn’t have a bar of it.” A friend’s mum eventually rescued them, driving up to the petrol station so they could jump into her car and leave. However the angry Gore mob followed them in a procession of cars. “We got bottles thrown at us as we went into our hotel. Luckily there was a cleaner cleaning because it was too late to get back in, otherwise we would have been trapped.” Wells says he called then One News Political Editor Mark Sainsbury who said “do you need me to bring the TVNZ helicopter in for ya?” and “they’ll bring it in, if you need to get out they’ll bring it in!” Wells says the ‘gay capital of New Zealand’ crack “seemed to stick, for some reason or the other, because it was so not true, that it stuck.” It left locals incensed, including the Mayor of the town who stated in a local paper in 1999: “God help them if I ever see them again. If they come back they will be brandished with barbed wire and run out of town by our ageing population.”
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Thursday, 31st July 2014 - 12:12pm