Calum Henderson 
Waiting cautiously in camouflage behind a piece of shrubbery, Calum Henderson observes a rare endangered species in its natural habitat: current affairs television. You almost don’t want to make too much noise about Sunday in case someone in an office somewhere remembers it still exists and realises they’ve forgotten to cancel it. TVNZ 1’s weekly … Read more
Australian comedian Matt Okine sat down with Spinoff comedy dunce Calum Henderson to discuss radio, early-90s cricket memories and his unquenchable thirst for cooking and property shows. Every NZ International Comedy Festival is the same: I pick up the programme, scan the list of names for any of the three to five comedians in the world … Read more
When your first album sees you described as the savior of folk music, how do you turn around and make a second album that’s even better? Nadia Reid talked with Calum Henderson about her new album Preservation, released yesterday. For months after Nadia Reid’s debut album Listen to Formation, Look for the Signs came out, … Read more
We review the entire country and culture of New Zealand, one thing at a time. Today: Calum Henderson watches Australasia’s fast and furious new bowls tournament. The North Shore Events Centre was absolutely going off last night, but not as the result of a Mika Vukona putback dunk to send a Breakers game to overtime or … Read more
Rumour has it that when Mark Weldon threw Campbell Live down a well, a tearful John Campbell cursed the 7pm slot on TV3: Road Cops, Come Dine with Me and Story have all met grisly fates there since. But last night Spinoff prophet Calum Henderson watched a live dress rehearsal for The Project, and predicts … Read more
Calum Henderson spent season one of 800 Words helping main character George Turner turn his shambolic column excerpts into finished newspaper copy. In season two, Turner has lost his writing job – and the show is better for it. George Turner made it as far as the second series of 800 Words before someone at … Read more
Close to 100 cricketers have represented New Zealand in limited overs internationals since numbers were added to the backs of players’ shirts, but none have ever worn the number 69. Why not? Calum Henderson investigates. When Lockie Ferguson runs in to bowl for the Auckland Aces in T20 and one-day cricket, he does so with … Read more
Every year Shihad’s 1997 single ‘Home Again’ helps countless New Zealanders remember how Daylight Saving works. But as Calum Henderson discovers, its famous opening line was almost something completely different. Jon Toogood was 24 years old when he wrote one of the great New Zealand song lyrics. “Put your clock back for the winter” is … Read more
Calum Henderson review Maigret, the two-part detective drama featuring the man in the Mini as you’ve never seen before. Mr. Bean is back, baby … only this time he’s a pipe-smoking police detective in 1950s Paris. It’s not quite “Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher” levels of outrageousness, but Rowan Atkinson is still a bit of … Read more
It was a different, more innocent time, when a sex toy thwacking into a senior minister’s head made global headlines. Relive Steven Joyce’s great day in Calum Henderson’s frame-by-frame analysis of the 2016 Waitangi Dildo Incident. Originally published February 5, 2016 Steven Joyce speaks to assembled media. His hands clasped at his waist, leaving him … Read more
An in-depth Spinoff investigation reveals exactly who invented What Now gunge and unravels the mystery of the secret recipe. Calum Henderson reports. “I was gunged while wearing a huge chicken suit in 1999.” “I was gunged in the presence of Lana Coc-Kroft.” “I was gunged on completion of the High Flyers course during a Shrek … Read more
The Australian cricketer’s refusal to sign an R.M. Williams boot during last night’s One Day International forced me to reconsider his character, writes Calum Henderson in a stunning flip-flop. https://twitter.com/rustyjacko/status/806059078724108288 Like most New Zealand cricket fans I have spent the last seven years thinking the Australian cricketer David Warner was bad. Since his international debut … Read more
The new FIFA Mobile game is a satisfying but less life-destroying alternative to its console counterpart, writes Calum Henderson. Every couple of weeks I entertain an increasingly vivid fantasy in which I quit my job, buy a PlayStation, withdraw from the world and spend all my time at home playing video games. By video games … Read more
What happens when you get two soap immortals and sit them down together for a chat? Calum Henderson was there to recount the making of television history. WATCH: History is made: Sparks fly when Chris Warner meets Alf Stewart It could be a vision of the end of the world: Alf Stewart and Chris Warner, … Read more
Calum Henderson has his first date with First Dates New Zealand, and finds an odd mix of charm, milk and Tom Hardy tattoos. If a guy orders a tall pint of milk on the first date it’s probably not a good sign. That’s one of the hard-earned lessons from the first episode of First Dates … Read more
The New Zealand Spelling Bee finals have made it to TVNZ 1’s Spellbound. It’s like a 3-hour long penalty shootout where you don’t want anyone to miss, writes Calum Henderson. “Furlow. F-U-R-L-O-W.” This is how I bow out of the finals of the 2016 New Zealand Spelling Bee. It is the third word of the … Read more
An extreme latecomer to the Richard McCaw fan club reviews his heroic new autobiographical documentary. Watching the All Blacks pull apart Wales then the Wallabies in their trademark clinical fashion this year, something hasn’t felt quite right. When the bus stop billboards started going up for the autobiographical Richie McCaw documentary Chasing Great a couple … Read more
Westside has finished for another year, but the good news is there could be at least 23 more seasons to go. Calum Henderson previews some highlights coming up between now and 2039. Season two of Westside concluded on Sunday night with the West family right in the thick of the 1981 Springbok tour. The Outrageous Fortune … Read more
Calum Henderson asks why our taxpayer money continues to fund rose-tinted documentaries about the sexist hellhole known as Gloriavale. Our annual visit to Gloriavale is becoming a weird New Zealand television tradition. Every winter for the past three years we’ve been offered another rare glimpse inside the controversial West Coast Christian community, through a series of … Read more
Summer Bay bait shop owner Alf Stewart (aka actor and legend Ray Meagher) talks Calum Henderson through some of his famous Aussie vernacular. One of my favourite things to do as a teenager was come straight home from school and binge eat little bags of chips while watching Home and Away. It was an idle … Read more
Calum Henderson tuned into Breakfast this week to witness what was potentially going to be the end of the Rawdon and Nadine era. What he discovered was a conspiracy theory that probably requires urgent global attention. It’s 6:21am on Monday morning and Breakfast co-hosts Rawdon Christie and Nadine Chalmers-Ross are watching footage of a distressed … Read more
It was one of the greatest things that has ever happened in a game of rugby league, but at what cost, asks Calum Henderson. Fullback Ben Barba scored two first half tries to lead the Cronulla Sharks to a 26-10 victory over the Penrith Panthers at Pepper Stadium on Sunday afternoon – the team’s 13th … Read more
TV One’s documentary The Secret Life of 5 Year Olds is full of backstabbing and manipulation and tearful emotional breakdowns – it’s also very cute and ultimately quite heartwarming, writes Calum Henderson. Lily walks up to Alfie, who sits alone at a picnic table, and asks in a seductive Geordie accent: “Who d’ya want to … Read more
Calum Henderson watches the return of The Block NZ, and pines for the rhombus daybeds of yesteryear. Host Mark Richardson took a deep breath and began to speak slowly, measuredly, the way a judge might deliver a long prison sentence. “Welcome… to The Block… for 2016.” It has been 178 days since the last edition of … Read more
Before the Housewives, before the Bachelorettes, there were the Flatmates. Calum Henderson revisits one of New Zealand’s first gritty, no-frills attempts at reality television. Like everything else on this dying earth, reality television is subject to a slow and irreversible erosion. Over the years, the genre’s rough edges have been gradually worn down, leaving a … Read more
Calum Henderson watches I Can’t Stop Farting, a TVNZ On Demand documentary about those afflicted with bad smells and sounds. Sarah counts her farts. She keeps a daily tally, using a colour-coded system: red for “loud”, blue for “silent”, and green for “smelly”. On a bad day she farts 40 to 50 times, which is apparently almost … Read more
The NRL set up the @NRLBunker Twitter account in an attempt at transparency. Instead it has become a multi-media sideshow brimming with fan fury. Calum Henderson scoured the account for this list of devastating burns. Getting absolutely fuming mad and shouting at the ref every time he makes what you perceive to be a wrong decision is a hugely important … Read more
With Mastermind returning to our screens this week for the first time in over 25 years, Calum Henderson visits the set to watch the brainiacs at work. A couple of days before I went to watch the new series of Mastermind being filmed, I emailed the show’s publicist asking if she could tell me the … Read more
In the middle of a whirlwind New Zealand press tour, Gabriel Macht, star of Lightbox legal drama Suits, reveals the show’s darkest secret to Calum Henderson: there are no actual records in Harvey Specter’s record collection, just shelves of empty sleeves. The elephant in the room, and pretty much every room that Gabriel Macht ever … Read more