Alex Casey 
‘We need someone asking what is being done about racist hatred’, says head of African Communities Forum. An African community group is redoubling demands for the urgent appointment of a Race Relations Commissioner following the terrorist attack in Christchurch that has left 50 people dead. The position has been empty for over nine months since … Read more
Fellow kids, are you going on strike for climate change tomorrow? Here are some top tips from seasoned protesting pros. On Friday March 15, school kids around the world will be walking out of classrooms and taking to the streets to march against government inaction on climate change. For many of them, climate change is … Read more
Alex Casey combs through the most furious complaints made to the ASA about sanitary product advertising. In preparing for the period-themed episode of our new webseries On the Rag, I found myself watching a lot of old tampon, pad and liner ads. Remember the one where the lady uses a pad to clean up spilt … Read more
Alex Casey rips open the velcro on Married at First Sight Australia‘s biggest scandal yet. There’s a lot to be said about the latest sordid season of Married at First Sight Australia. For a start, there’s the slimy cheating scandals, the violent outbursts of rage and the relentlessly sexist gaslighting. And then there’s the very … Read more
Alex Casey can’t stop watching Jojo Siwa’s vlogs on Youtube. With the documentary Jojo Siwa: My World arriving to Lightbox this month, here’s your much-needed introduction to a young internet sensation. Most nights I find myself falling down a Jojo Siwa rabbit hole, lying on my side with 400 chins as I let vlog after … Read more
Alex Casey conducts a highly scientific study into the gendering of your morning cuppa. Gendering food and drink is all the rage these days, from National’s sausage sizzle innuendo to Whittaker’s new gender reveal chocolate bars. Blue for boys, pink for girls. Sausages for boys, clueless political chat for girls. It’s made some angry and … Read more
Heartbreak Island is back for another year, bringing more raunch and drama than ever before. Watch as Alex Casey dives in. What is Heartbreak Island? Is it a moral toilet? Is it an ambitious mutant? Is it a chance to get hotties to talk about climate change? Is it all just a bit of a … Read more
Alex Casey talks to Brough Johnson, co-founder of Narrative Muse, about a NZ-made platform that puts the spotlight on women and non-binary creators. If you don’t think representation in popular culture matters, you should really familiarise yourself with The Scully Effect. The study, conducted across 2000 women in America, revealed that nearly two thirds of … Read more
Alex Casey went speed dating with some Heartbreak Island contestants and things got real serious, real fast. Everything around us is slowly sinking. Foot Island. The Tropicana Bar. Even Auckland’s hottie factory The Lula Inn, where I have returned to my favourite booth to do my favourite thing – date a bunch of young, attractive … Read more
The Bachelor NZ royal couple Art and Matilda are having a baby. Here is Alex Casey’s unsolicited gift to them. I thought my days of crying at the dairy were over, but alas. As the man behind the counter grabbed his scissors, cut off the plastic twine and tore back the wrapping on his stack … Read more
It might feel like Cadbury has done enough damage already, but things could just be getting started. First Cadbury came for Roses, and we all screamed. Then they came for the marshmallow eggs, and we all screamed again. Then they cut down their Family Bar size, and we started to tire of screaming. When their … Read more
House of Drag winner Hugo Grrrl says his Wellington events company has had over 100 events disappear from Facebook. Wellington events organiser and drag king George Fowler has been left “devastated” after a targetted attack on Facebook caused the entirety of his companies’ events to be removed. Winning TVNZ’s House of Drag as drag king … Read more
Alex Casey chews on the serious issues with Nela Zisser, competitive eater and YouTube sensation. Nela Zisser is planning her next big meal: an entire block of butter. Or perhaps three kilos of fish and chips. Or perhaps another attempt at eating 100 McDonald’s cheeseburgers. Despite the YouTube star being six years into her competitive … Read more
Alex Casey scours the internet for the top tips to keep your pets cool in this horrendous heatwave. I don’t know about your cats, but mine are pissed off. Zelda in particular. Where her brother Link, cold-blooded Prince of Darkness, spends his blistering summer days lying in the hot water cupboard like the anarchic goth … Read more
A psyschic medium has launched a social media broadside against a comedian and NZ’s biggest 7pm show. Alex Casey retraces the gory details. It’s official: Sue Nicholson is mad as hell and not going to take it any more. Best known for her recurring role on TVNZ’s Sensing Murder, where she can frequently be found … Read more
On Monday night, Joseph Parker, one of a group of young men investigated relating to alleged sexual offences, broke his silence, talking to Newshub five years after The Roast Busters scandal exploded. Many of his survivors were watching. Alex Casey sat down with one of them this week in her Auckland home. Appalled by Parker’s … Read more
Alex Casey woke up at 6am this morning to flick between the first episode for 2019 of both The AM Show and Breakfast. Here are some of the highlights. Nothing captures Monday morning ennui like The AM Show. “Welcome back my friends,” belts out prog rock band Emerson, Lake and Palmer, “to the show that never … Read more
How is Austin Powers still relevant in 2019? And why hire the Queen for your birthday party? Alex Casey talks to the movers and shakers of New Zealand’s celebrity impersonator scene. It ain’t easy being shagadelic. Orewa local Gary Brown, the only legally authorised Austin Powers impersonator in the world, knows that cold hard truth … Read more
Alex Casey breaks down some of the most popular nicknames for vulvas in New Zealand. For the longest time, I thought naming your genitals was something only reserved for horny, sad men in early 2000s sex comedies. Mr Ed. Flesh Rocket. Spike. The Octagon. Through my teenage years, it seemed to be all about the … Read more
Alex Casey guides you through the M. Night Shyamalan universe, and shares some tips on how you can live in it. Movie fans will know that this is a big week for the M. Night Shyamalan universe. His latest film Glass, opening today (January 17), marks his most ambitious project yet – even more ambitious … Read more
Toilet spray product VIPoo has haunted our televisions and pre-roll ads for over a year now. Alex Casey dissects one of the most challenging art pieces of the decade. You know what I was casually thinking, just the other day? Even Hollywood’s sweethearts need to punish the porcelain. If that’s a normal thing to say … Read more
Alex Casey watches the joyous return of TVNZ1’s The Casketeers, a docuseries set in an Auckland funeral home. New year, new us, new season of The Casketeers, new leaf blower for Francis Tipene. The fabled leaf blower defined the first season, an enduring symbol of the funeral home owner’s obsession with neatness and order. For … Read more
Alex Casey takes you on a guided tour of the M. Night Shyamalan superhero universe to prepare you for the final piece of the Eastrail 177 Trilogy. For those of you who crave a good cinematic crossover, there’s a quietly ambitious superhero ensemble coming out next week that has been over 18 years in the making. … Read more
Can a person be both a lifelong hoarder and a Marie Kondo fan? Alex Casey tries, and cries. You can’t know what sparks joy until you’ve known what sparks abject misery. For me, it was when I saw that my partner no longer wanted his enormous orange puffer jacket. Akin to the suit that Maggie … Read more
Alex Casey dives into the murky world of crispy-cuppa-companion nomenclature in New Zealand. Every now and then, a simple revelation knocks your entire world off its axis. You could be staring at your daily box of Shapes, when suddenly your gaze pulls focus like a Magic Eye and you realise that the white background on … Read more
The most anticipated reality TV event of the year, Celebrity Treasure Island may have just got its first castaway. Hit the dab, 2019, you’ve done it again. I might still be moderately drunk from Hogmanay, but The Spinoff has been handed some extremely piping hot intel from a high level source that Max Key is … Read more
Ahead of the release of his new film Glass, Alex Casey looked back at the best twists in director M. Night Shyamalan’s back catalogue. Try as I might, I never seem to see a twist in a movie coming. It doesn’t matter how hard I strain my eyes, how many maths woman calculations I do … Read more
Alex Casey goes on a speed dating mission to get to know the beautiful brains behind the beautiful bodies of Heartbreak Island. This post was originally published 11 June 2018. They were hottest people I had ever seen in my life, all skin tight dresses and sharp suits, hair coiffed and curled for the gods. … Read more
Alex Casey gets to the bottom of a pop culture obsession: what’s the deal with Doc Martin? It’s getting to the time of year where many of us return home to roost like big drunk chooks incapable of doing anything more than chugging prosecco, eating fistfuls of ham and blobbing out on the couch. In … Read more