Kiri: Her Unsung Story. Garry Jenkins

As Brooke drove, Kiri’s head would disappear out of sight at the front of the car. ‘What on earth is she doing down there?’ her older, but less worldly-wise colleague would ask McGifford. He would sit in embarrassed silence. ‘She was clearly besotted by him,’ Tatana said.

      As ever, Kiri wasted little time in introducing Brooke to Nell and Tom. After ‘running him through the grill’, Nell was impressed by what she saw. ‘My grandmother always liked Brooke,’ recalls Judy Evans-Hita. ‘He always made time to chat. He was a nice guy.’

      Nell’s feelings for Brooke were reciprocated. ‘She was a real old battleaxe but we got on very well,’ recalled Brooke. ‘I think she was on my side right the way through the relationship.’

      Brooke’s parents were less enamoured with the idea of the couple. Raymond Monks expected his son to follow his hard-working example. Instead Brooke’s devotion to his university studies in German and Italian waned alarmingly as his romance with Kiri deepened. Having brokered the friendship in the first place, Billie Monks was even more horrified at the turn of events. ‘I suppose my parents thought that things moved a bit fast for them,’ Brooke said. Kiri eventually charmed Raymond Monks into accepting her but Billie remained cool. ‘In those days my mother was looking after her son like Nell looked after Kiri, protecting their own.’

      Brooke’s mother certainly shared Nell’s resourcefulness. When she heard talk of Kiri’s involvement with Vincent Collins, she invited the English actor’s former fiancée to visit her for a chat. Beverley Jordan had put the horrors of Uwane behind her and was now happily married. ‘She asked if I would go around and have a cup of coffee because she wanted to know about Kiri and her involvement with Vincent,’ she remembered. ‘She wanted to know whether she could trust her son with Kiri. I can’t remember what was said,’ she added diplomatically.

      Billie Monks’s frostiness towards Kiri was almost certainly a matter of class. To members of Auckland’s polite society, Kiri was the daughter of a pushy provincial arriviste, a crude country bumpkin with ideas above her station. Nell’s reputation was, by now, beginning to embarrass even Kiri. ‘She could not help be aware of her mother’s background. I think she was insecure about it,’ said Hannah Tatana.

      In the years since her daughter’s breakthrough Nell’s unsubtle blend of aggression and avarice had offended many within the musical establishment. Kiri had begun singing on the radio show hosted by Ossie Cheesman, New Zealand’s top musical arranger and bandleader at the time. ‘Ossie kept getting Nell on the phone demanding more money. After a while he got fed up and stopped using Kiri,’ said one of Cheesman’s closest friends, Neil McGough.

      McGough had heard a similar story repeated all over the city. ‘Radio had a strict regime of set fees for singers. If it was three pounds ten, Nell would demand seven pounds for Kiri.’ For a time Kiri’s voice had become a rarity on radio. ‘Nell simply pushed too hard. She thought the world had to be changed to suit Kiri, but there were plenty of other good singers,’ McGough said.

      Her granddaughter Judy has many happy memories of Nell Te Kanawa, but even she admits, ‘Nana’s life was spent polishing Kiri. Anyone or anything that got in the way of that goal would be removed. Perhaps I would do the same, but that’s the way it was.’

      Even the unerringly honest Tony Vercoe, renowned all over New Zealand as a man whose verbal contracts were watertight, found her an awkward customer. ‘She was not as objective as one would have hoped,’ he admitted. ‘I do not want to be criticising those who are no longer with us, but it could have been difficult at times, I will say that. Nell had her likes and dislikes and they were fairly well defined. If people got across her then that was a bit unfortunate for them.’

      As the winter of 1965 wore on, however, Vercoe did all he could to remain on the right side of Nell. Kiri had become the hottest property his company had come across in years. In the truest traditions of showbusiness, the success of ‘The Nun’s Chorus’ had caught everyone by surprise. ‘There was a bit of publicity, but there was no payola, no palm greasing, no big hype, nothing like that,’ remembered Vercoe. ‘It wasn’t like the Spice Girls, although I suppose there are similarities. It was much more spontaneous. A big wave started to roll and grew and grew, naturally, somehow. The whole country got behind her. It was extraordinary.’