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WATCH: The Great Spinoff Mt Albert By-election Candidates’ Debate

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Watch an abridged version of The War for Mt Albert By-election Candidates Debate and read why the candidates think you should vote for them. Last night at Satya Chai Lounge, the most whispered-about bar in Sandringham, The Spinoff held a debate between the three leading candidates in the Mt Albert by-election – Jacinda Ardern of … Read more

Inspirational Valentine’s Day gift ideas from the trusty old television

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We’ve assembled some Valentine’s gift inspiration from the only thing you can rely on in this cruel life: the television.  Forgot about Valentine’s Day? Short on time and money to pull off the romantic gesture of your dreams? Never fear, for the path to hell is paved with good intentions and the longest running TV … Read more

Chris Warner saw Harry Warner’s dick pic… what happened next will shock you [WATCH]

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Witness the incredible Shortland Street moment in which Chris Warner comes face to face with… his son’s dick pic.  It had been a pretty dramatic week in Ferndale last week, from Kylie skinny-dipping with badboy Frank to Drew proposing to Harper (again). But nothing came close to the closing 10 seconds of Friday night’s episode, … Read more

The best of The Spinoff this week

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Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Simon Wilson: PM Bill English gave two speeches on Waitangi Day. Both were remarkable. Both were almost entirely ignored “English chose not to go to Waitangi, preferring to attend a breakfast hosted by Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei. When it came his turn to speak during the powhiri, … Read more

Why is Duncan Garner wearing all Paul Henry’s old clothes?

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A new promo video for The AM Show has unearthed a grisly revelation: Duncan Garner is not only replacing Paul Henry, he is… becoming him.  Everyone is talking about +HR=E this week, be it the confronting new rebrand or the inexplicable colonial garb worn strictly by comedians in their bold new channel vision. But there’s … Read more

The Unity Books best-seller chart for the week ending February 11

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The weekly Unity Books best-seller chart at their stores in Wellington and Auckland. WELLINGTON STORE 1 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family & Culture in Crisis (HarperCollins, $35) by JD Vance Number two over at Amazon, behind Orwell’s 1984; Vance’s book about America’s so-called “rust belt” has set the US on fire, and is seen … Read more

Watch: Pop on the couch – Guns N’ Roses N’ Dolphins!

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To celebrate Guns N’ Roses‘ two massive shows in New Zealand over Waitangi weekend, Alex and Joseph dive deep into GNR’s ‘Estranged’ music video – the sixth most expensive music video of all time. Welcome to the latest episode of our bi-weekly pop music chat for umusic. It involves two pop rookies – Alex Casey and … Read more

Inside the Lightbox: Heavenly shows arriving in February

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Inside the Lightbox is a sponsored segment where we peruse the extensive Lightbox catalogue for shows you might like to watch. This time, we round up the sizzling new content coming this February. LIVE ON LIGHTBOX NOW Pushing Daisies (S1-2) Pushing Daises knew about everything cute before it was cute. Bushy eyebrows. Zooey Deschanel dresses. … Read more

The best of The Spinoff this week

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Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Murdoch Stephens: Trump’s refugee ban is a moral outrage that shames America. When will PM Bill English say so? “France and Germany have already stepped up and denounced Trump’s refugee policies. But where is New Zealand’s Prime Minister Bill English? One can imagine his strategists talking … Read more

The return of the Unity chart!!! The week’s best sellers at Unity Books

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The weekly Unity Books best-seller chart at their stores in Auckland and Wellington. AUCKLAND STORE 1 Swing Time (Hamish Hamilton, $37) by Zadie Smith Interesting! So in the first chart since Xmas, the best best-seller at Unity Auckland is the latest novel by English writer Zadie Smith; it must be word of mouth, because the reviews have … Read more

The best of The Spinoff this week

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Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Duncan Greive: Announcing The Spinoff app “That’s the business motivation though – what’s in it for you? Well, mainly a really incredible experience as a reader. We consider the app – access to all our stories, sortable via author and section – to be the very … Read more

Watch: Pop on the couch – Summer special!

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Alex and Jospeh are back for 2017 to dissect summertime jams from Machine Gun Kelly and Camila Cabello, The Vamps and Matoma, and Amine. Welcome to the latest episode of our bi-weekly pop music chat for umusic. It involves two pop rookies – Alex Casey and Joseph Harper – listening to state-of-the-art pop music and … Read more

The best of The Spinoff this week

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Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Alex Casey: Shocker: Turns out Jimi Jackson’s a misogynist bully too “The real kicker is that this wasn’t even conducted outside a vineyard, or inside a fictitious locker room where there might have been a vague thought that only a handful of people would ever see … Read more

The best of The Spinoff this week

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Compiling the best reading from your friendly local website. Annabelle Lee: Silly old sausage: Why the Mad Butcher’s Waiheke comment matters “To argue that someone is incapable of making a racist comment because they have a connection to, or interest in, a particular community is a bit like saying a man is incapable of sexism … Read more

The greatest Spinoff Golden Globes live blog you are likely to see today

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Alex Casey and Madeleine Chapman live blog the highs and lows of the 2017 Golden Globe awards, for all of you poor folk stuck in the office pretending to work.  This content, like all television coverage we do at The Spinoff, is brought to you thanks to the excellent folk at Lightbox. Do us and … Read more

Summer reissue: Revisiting the Spinoff’s ‘War for Auckland’ adventure

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In 2016 the Spinoff launched the humbly titled ‘War for Auckland’ campaign. Here we republish the editorials, from June and August, that bookended the bellicose, unruly crowd-funded enterprise Announcing the War for Auckland Originally published June 27, 2016 War?! We know, we know. But what else would you call the vastly differing visions for Auckland … Read more

The ones that got away: 10 Spinoff stories we thought were great but bugger-all people read

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It may surprise you to hear that not every article published on the Spinoff is read by tens of thousands of discerning punters. Here are some of the (relatively) neglected crop that we think warranted more click-love. Yesterday we published the top 20 most read posts of the year. Today we turn our attention to … Read more

Spinoff Top 20 Countdown: The most-read stories across the site in the year AD 2016

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Clicks and content, content and clicks: these are the posts that attracted the most eyeballs on friendly fledgling website ‘the Spinoff’ this year. Tomorrow we’ll be publishing the Spinoff stories that were unfathomably spurned by readers, but for today, these are the 20 most clicked-upon articles from 2016, in reverse order. 20 From June, Madeleine … Read more

Last-minute Xmas shopping crisis solved: 10 books for 10 kinds of people in your life

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FFS! It’s Xmas Eve, and you still haven’t done your Xmas shopping? We identify 10 kinds of readers and match them with 10 books published in 2016 guaranteed to bring pleasure and that. Non-fiction FOR SOMEONE WHO LIKES DRUGS Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany (Allen Lane, $55) by Norman Ohler  * FOR SOMEONE WHO LIKES NEW … Read more

The 10 most memorable New Zealand television moments of 2016

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After much heated debate in the Spinoff television department, we present this list of local TV moments that made 2016 the weird and wonderful mess that it was.  Mark Richardson apologises to Brendon McCullum on The Crowd Goes Wild The funniest four minutes of New Zealand television all year. It took fifteen long years but … Read more

Hey Shamubeel #6: Are we going to be OK?

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We wanted to better understand the changing New Zealand economy, and who better to explain it than superstar economist Shamubeel Eaqub. This is the final of six short videos featuring Shamubeel giving it to us straight while sitting comfortably in a classic Kiwi chair. In the last episode Shamubeel takes all that we’ve learnt over … Read more

The top 10 New Zealand television shows of 2016, as voted by you

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It’s been a huge year for local television, from the time Jordan Mauger did that Gollum impression to when Rachel McKenna walked out of Shortland Street forever. But which New Zealand show did you lot vote your favourite for 2016? C’mon, let’s go the results party.  10) Grand Designs NZ Grand Designs is Chris Moller’s … Read more

The top 10 best-selling books of 2016 at Unity Books in Auckland

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Middle-brow fiction, Hera Lindsay Bird, literary fiction, and studies of loneliness, death, and Flying Nun feature among the biggest-selling books of the year at the best bookstore in Auckland. 1 All the Light We Cannot See (Fourth Estate, $25) by Anthony Doerr So there you have it: the most popular book of the year is a novel … Read more