Garner v Smith

The Herald reports:

RadioLive host Duncan Garner has launched into an expletive-laden public rant against rival Newstalk ZB presenter Leighton Smith.

The former TV3 political editor made his comments in the January edition of Metromagazine in an article titled “Getting drunk with Duncan Garner”.

After a dinner that included five bottles of red wine, Garner said to Metro journalist Steve Braunias: “I’ll tell you a story.”

Only five bottles? Was Braunias not drinking?

“It was about two or three weeks before my show was due to start … We ran into Leighton Smith and he says, ‘Garner, what have you done?”‘ he recalled.

“He said, ‘You’ve gone to some backwater radio station and you’ll never be heard of again.’ There are some moments in life that remain with you. I’ve been waiting to tell someone this.

“I thought, ‘What an arrogant prick, saying that to me.’ This institutionalised guy telling me I would never be heard of again. Every day I get up in the morning now I think of Leighton. And I work harder because of it, if that’s possible. I think, ‘F*** you. F*** you, you old prick’.”

Using even stronger language, Garner said Smith had had a great career and was very successful, so he didn’t need to treat him so arrogantly.

“I was never brought up to be a prick like that for no reason … I’ll never forget it. He just treated me like this piece of dirt, that RadioLive was nothing. That’s really affected me.”

No love lost in commercial radio.