Why not? ‘I know who they are,’ he said. He asked himself: ‘Do I need to know their background?’ And he answered, ‘No. No, I don’t.’
This was fast turning into a nonsense. I asked him whether he was a funny person. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘But I think I’m quite sharp intellectually.’ He said his IQ had been measured at 148.
I remarked that he was probably very astute at business. He agreed. Crow runs a business called Vixen. The biggest income is sales of DVDs. You could say it’s a quick buck: ‘Buying porn is something people tend to do as an impulse.’ Then he said, ‘Actually, I’ll qualify that, because Steve Crow and Vixen don’t trade in porn. We trade in adult entertainment, which is between consenting adults.
‘Let me define some terms. If any parties involved are not consenting, then it’s porn. A child doesn’t have consent, so that would be porn. If you’re dead, there’s no consent, so that would be porn. If you’re an animal, you’re not a human, so that’s porn.’
Amazing. I asked him what had been Vixen’s best-selling DVD. ‘You know the answer to that,’ he said. But I didn’t know the answer. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘Ripe. The pregnant porn star one.’ He meant the New Zealand movie starring a woman who was filmed giving birth. It generated a lot of headlines. Had the thing actually sold? He told a story: ‘We released an adult video last year called Pirates. It’s based on Pirates Of The Caribbean. Cost about six million to make. It was the biggest-selling adult title in 2006 world-wide by a long, long way. Well, we sold six times as many units here with Ripe. And it’s a shit movie.’
Illuminating. What, I asked, were the most popular genres sold by Vixen? ‘The most widely demanded fetish is golden showers. We get asked for it every day. But we’re unable to sell it because of New Zealand law. It’s classified as promoting the use of urine in association with the sexual act, or something like that. Silly. But that’s the legislation. But the biggest genre we sell is amateur. It’s reality adult entertainment – genuine people in their homes doing what they do.’
I began to wonder what Crow does in his home. He had four children; two were from his first marriage to a Chinese woman in Malaysia, the other two from his second marriage, to Gaylene, a policewoman. In each case, he was their stepdad. I asked whether he couldn’t father children of his own, and he said he could have, although not any longer because he had had a vasectomy.
Why did his first marriage collapse? ‘Because I cheated on my wife,’ he said. After he met Gaylene, he had a relationship with a former Penthouse pin-up, Hayley Marie Byrnes, but they broke up and he got back together with Gaylene. ‘My wife’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,’ he said. ‘But my persona and activities have a severe negative impact on her job. We try and keep that separate. She goes alone to police Christmas parties. In fact, until I dropped her at the airport on Monday, I’d never seen my wife in a police uniform.’
He said he’d been in love four, maybe five times. Did that include Hayley Marie? ‘Yeah. I fell pretty heavily. It was the usual grandiose thoughts of a forty-seven-year-old with a twenty-three-year-old.’
Had he ever tried Viagra? ‘Once. About five years ago. I took one tablet. And it gave me a massive,’ he said, ‘headache.’
Poor, stupid, bungling, unlovable Auckland. New Zealand’s biggest city works hard and likes a drink, always puts on a show and never takes itself too seriously, enjoys a mild climate and lots of shops – but it only ever seems to attract wretches to run the place. In this mayoral race, the two likeliest candidates to wear the robe and drag the chain are that gentle incompetent Dick Hubbard and the barking John Banks.
Crow is polling third. His mayoral opponents dismiss his bid as a publicity stunt. Actually, he does have political views. ‘I believe in individual freedom,’ he said. Like most people who follow libertarian doctrine, the quality of his mercy was strained.
His views on Algerian refugee Ahmed Zaoui: ‘Deport him.’ Why? ‘Why not? He’s not a New Zealand citizen. Do we need the grief?’
Does he believe in tougher sentences for criminal offending? ‘Very much so. I don’t believe in parole.’ He didn’t mind the homeless sleeping outdoors: ‘It’s a life choice that they make.’ Were long-term unemployed exercising individual freedom too? ‘No. That’s just being a bum. I wasn’t put on this world to support someone who chooses not to work.’
Yes, he said, he was sticking to recent statements that he backed the Dubai consortium’s bid to buy Auckland International Airport: ‘I would hazard a guess it would prosper much better under the ownership of a United Arab Emirates corporation with pretty much bottomless coffers. Who owns an asset doesn’t concern me at all. As long as the asset can’t be picked up and taken away – I mean, I don’t think you should be able to sell off our antiquities and our … um … tree houses and things like that, and transport them offshore.’
Tree houses! There was something about Crow that was impossible not to like – a kind of oafishness. He was probably just nervous. Yes, he said, he was a very shy person. He had a panic attack the first time he talked in public; that was way back in about 1990, at a conference in Hong Kong – Crow lived in South-east Asia for many years, working on oil rigs
