Sometimes, in a taxi, say, people will say to Susie Ferguson after hearing her voice: “Do I know you from somewhere?” Or, “Have we met before?”
She is on the other end of the phone from Wellington. I know her, or think I do, from somewhere. We have, after all, met before, most mornings, via the wireless, where she has been for eight and a half years, the calm, crisp, Scottish-accented co-host on RNZ National’s Morning Report.
The relationships we have with those voices on the wireless are weird, really. We do know what the face behind the voice looks like these
days, but they are, as she says, different from the relationships we have, or think we have, with the faces on the telly.
“I’m probably a friend and an enemy of all politicians of all stripes at various times.”
A voice on the radio is disembodied, as is one on the phone. It’s funny, I say, hearing her off the radio. That she sounds, surprise, just like her. “People tell me that,” she says. Her wit is as crisp as her radio persona.
Our interview did not get off to the most auspicious of starts. This was entirely
