Proper True Yarn

Knuckles welcomes Dunc Heyde (The Rock FM / Not For Radio) for a tour of bizarre jobs before radio-culminating in his worst day on the tools. Sixth-form work experience lands Dunc at a salmon hatchery during spawning, where “milking” goes wildly wrong in the first five minutes. From there, the chat shifts to 18 years at The Rock, partnership chemistry with Jay, why live radio still rules, building...

Knuckles sits down with Dunc Heyde (The Rock FM / Not For Radio) for the most out-of-control farmyard yarn you’ll ever hear. Teenage Dunc splits shifts between peeling spuds and “catching chickens,” stumbles into the great hormone debate, and — purely for “science” — runs a chook through a bonus growth cycle. The result? Chookzilla: a five–six kilo, driftwood-legged unit that wouldn’t fit the crat...

Knuckles is back with radio legend Dunc Heyde from The Rock FM and Not For Radio — this time diving into the most unhinged calls, yarns, and sky-high stories from his broadcasting career. They kick off comparing notes on “hatfishing” their wives — proving that removing a Country Trucker Cap can change a man’s fortunes fast — before Dunc recalls the most unfiltered live call ever: a Vietnam vet on-...

This week, Knuckles sits down with Dunc Heyde—afternoons on The Rock FM and co-host of Not For Radio—smack in the middle of The Rock 2000 mayhem. Dunc traces the countdown’s glow-up: from wrecked-office afterparties (yes, actual fireworks and a U-shaped ceiling rail) to 6,500 punters belting choruses at Spark Arena. We get inside the machine—votes, curation, and the occasional “how did that get in...

Back for round two, Caamzie drops a chaotic Mardi Gras yarn from Aotearoa: pre-drinks with the crew, an ill-timed bathroom stop, a stall-surfing staffer, and suddenly he’s face-to-face with cops, cuff-adjacent, and shivering on a cell bench while his past record gets read out like a shopping list. A warning later, he’s booted miles from the venue… only to hitch a ride, stroll past the line with a...

We kick off with a quick bit of admin: NZ Mardi Gras ≠ Sydney’s Mardi Gras — this one’s the mountain music blowout at Ruapehu. Then it’s straight into Caamzie’s guest questions: ball-grooming misadventures (the “nut-cutter 2000s” versus a careful no-guard trim), what he’d buy first with a billion (spoiler: box of piss, drift track, houses for the crew, and an open chequebook for mates with real bu...

Kambo/“Caamzie” swings by with a ridiculous travel-skate yarn: starting in a Thai hostel, sees Street League is in Tokyo tomorrow, books a flight on impulse, and proceeds to confidence-speedrun his way into the skaters’ entrance. He helps a media crew carry gear, posts up in the Skaters’ Lounge, warms up on the comp park (until staff clock him), and still ends up beers-in with absolute killers: Ny...

Mel Kerr shares an intimate family epic: nephew Damo Rees—a rising superbike star sponsored by Carl Cox—marries in a sun-kissed NZ ceremony she officiates… then, six months later, dies suddenly in the UK after a catastrophic illness. What follows is raw resilience: dad Tony Rees (56) comes out of retirement to race his late son’s bike, brother Mitch fights an Aussie “bad boy” for the NZ title, and...

Mel Kerr—NZ’s busiest celebrant—drops her wildest funeral yarns: the memorial where a speaker unveiled a secret 15-year-old son mid-service, the tradie send-off fueled by bourbon & cola where a eulogist declared the deceased a “good ****” (many times), and why “open mic” at a funeral is playing with emotional dynamite. Jay adds a jaw-dropper from his own gig where a daughter torched dad’s sain...

Mel Kerr returns with peak chaos: a perfectly innocent (but very wrong) theory about the Vatican’s smoke signals, the fickle end of Good Morning, and the glamorous gigs that followed… Canesten Fungal Toenail and Depend adult diapers (hey, the rollover fees slap). Then we pivot to Mel’s second life officiating weddings & funerals—culminating in a stunning slip on Waiheke Island where she pronou...

We split the guest questions because the yarns wouldn’t stop. James Johnston gets spicy and funny: losing it at 16 to a statuesque first love (“bit of a jungle gym”), the most famous person who genuinely floored him (Michael Bublé) — plus their impromptu push-up contest that inspired JJ’s 50-push-ups pre-show ritual. He explains why he’s a lover, not a fighter, the night a jealous unit tried to sq...

James Johnston swings by to plug the album (jamesjohnston.com), cop a well-earned black hat W, and field guest questions: the autograph he’d chase (hello, Garth Brooks), why phone-free shows feel magic in a noisy world, and his two biggest blow-ups—singing the wrong carol on live TV (Jingle Bell Rock instead of Santa Claus) and a PBR rodeo set where the track slowed, key dropped, and he bailed out...

Global wanderer James Johnston parks the music chat and unloads travel mayhem and magic: a Barcelona blackout (five tequilas → beach wake-up → taxi sprint → passport rescue → somehow Thailand), a 2000km scooter run from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi with a guitar on his back, and a night in a Vietnamese tin shack where a stranger literally snipped his roof to fix James’s bike and refused payment. The thesi...

Australia’s country rocket James Johnston unloads his wildest gig yarns: a DIY “50 gigs in 50 days” van tour (including a bowling-alley Tuesday and a campsite show for one bloke’s dog), then the leap to CMC Rocks main stage in front of 20,000. We go deep on manifestation (five years of crowd-watching and note-taking), the post-high crash the next day, and the moment he ditched covers, wrote 250 so...

Australia’s hottest country act James Johnston drops a bucket-list yarn from South Africa—from armed escorts and stadium shows to a spur-of-the-moment duet sung in English and Afrikaans. We trace the weird radio magic that blew his songs up, the handshake hustle that got him there, a whiskey-room write that turned into a national chant, and the moment 30,000 people in Cape Town sang his brand-new...

Aussie country star James Johnston rolls in hot the week his new album Where You’ll Find Me drops. We talk going “all in” during COVID, buying the farm (literally), and writing in the now. James breaks down lead single “One More”—dreamed up for a scissor-lift, main-stage, 20k-voices moment—and the heart-punch ballad “Can I Keep Talking To You?” written after his grandma’s funeral. We preview Strum...

From a WA cattle station and gold mine to live radio in Whakatāne and seven years inside TVNZ’s Good Morning—Melanie Kerr unpacks how she “just had a go” and became a familiar Kiwi face. We cover advertorial hosting, big-money commercial days, the shift to social media, and the truly unhinged products she had to demo (hello, metal weight-loss belt and the infamous Wonder Whisk motion 😳). Plus: ai...

On NZ’s infamous Crate Day, a routine sober-driver night flips fast. Broadcaster/funeral celebrant Melanie Kerr recounts how a friendly lift request turned into a mongrel mob confrontation, a king-hit that knocked her partner unconscious, and a street-side triage while waiting for police clearance. We get the wild backstory (a stolen Uber, a cop’s party, and a shirt-off metamorphosis), the sound o...

TV/radio fave Melanie Kerr returns with a raw origin story: growing up Pākehā on the Māori side of the 1860s confiscation line in Ruatoki/Tāneatua (Tūhoe country). We unpack what that line actually was, how colors mapped to gangs (Mongrel Mob red, Black Power blue), why the primary school uniforms ended up road-worker orange, and what it felt like to be a blonde farm kid in a staunch community. Me...

On this episode of the Proper True Yarn Podcast, Tooney takes us across the ditch for one of the wildest trips of his Army rugby career. From smashing the Navy at Sydney Football Ground to representing the Australian Defence Force in Wellington, the yarns roll thick and fast. Hear about training like a pro, flying into windy Wellington, and the goosebump moment when an Iroquois helicopter split th...

Ambassador Melanie Kerr joins us fresh from Dunedin’s K9MD lab, where specially trained dogs are being used in research to detect cancer via urine samples. We swap the “fluffy mic” mix-up story for a deep dive on how scent detection works, why negative results matter as much as positives, and what a real research session looks like (controlled, peer-reviewed, and nothing like a pooch sniffing your...

This proper true yarn special with Heath “Tierney” Tierney is full of wild laughs and loose yarns. From shaving mishaps in the Army to the fantasy of billion-dollar boats, Tierney opens up about virginity in a granny flat, fights on the rugby field, and a party that got shut down after projecting porn onto a neighbour’s house with surround sound moans echoing through the street. The lads swap stit...

In this ripper episode of Proper True Yarn Podcast, Knuckles sits down with Team Tooney Fishing to swap stories of being “professional amateurs.” From snapping rods and cooking engines mid-comp, to sinking tins while limping a sand-clogged boat back to shore, these blokes prove that looking pro doesn’t mean fishing pro. The yarns spiral into community spirit, near-disasters on the water, jerseys p...

In this wild episode of the Proper True Yarn Podcast, Tony takes us from army shenanigans to life-threatening moments on a C-130 Hercules. From dangling on a harness at 13,000 feet while filming freefall jumps, to getting blasted by Black Hawk downwash and even staring down a bull at Barkly Homestead, these yarns are equal parts adrenaline, danger, and Aussie humour. Strap in for laughs, near miss...

In this gripping Proper True Yarn Podcast episode, we dive deep into the raw realities of service life with Team Tuning. From a Chinook nearly torn apart by a rogue artillery shell that left a soldier with a permanent stutter, to the shocking story of a cook betrayed and killed by an Afghan soldier while on lookout, this yarn doesn’t hold back. Tony and his guest unpack the chaos of deployment, cl...