r s to ry

s i M o n Fa r r e l l - G r e e n i s a M e t r o s ta F F W r i t e r . H i s l a s t s to r y Wa s a b o u t C H i n e s e r e s tau r a n t s . P H oto G r a P H s b y a n d r e W Co F F e y. Jonathan Marshall and Chloe, pole dancer and cover star of the Marshalldesigned rippin family Christmas card.

d u r i n G i t s s H o r t,

spectacular life in 2003,

television series The Family with her stepfather, Auckland property developer Pat Rippin. The show featured everything many New Zealanders loathe about Auckland: big black European cars, label clothing, champagne or sherbet, as the Rippins call it. Very conspicuous consumption. Pat Rippin watched Jonathan Marshall being interviewed on Holmes in August, after Marshall allegedly rifled through Hoskings rubbish and found emails from Hoskings wife, credit-card statements and lawyers letters and wrote them up on the site. The show began with Marshall gleefully driving around, Holmes reporter in tow, pretending to follow Mike Hosking. Then Holmes led a debate with Charlotte Dawson, Wellington barrister Clive Elliott and columnist Michael Laws.

Heavens to Betsy, said Holmes, private correspondence has got to be able to be private. All agreed. Laws reckoned Marshalls actions were simply a logical progression of the medias unscrupulous Paul, youre getting what you deserve. Holmes huffed but moved on. Then the discussion got all hyperbolic. Holmes called Marshall pondscum, Dawson called him a failed celebrity. Laws called him pathologically disturbed. Marshall says he is considering defamation action. Watching at home in the apartment in The Sands, above Takapuna beach, Pat Rippin and his wife, Peach, thought Marshall had acquitted himself well. This guys got some go in him,thought Pat.I rather
MakeuP : kristen steWart. stylinG karlya sMitH. JonatHan MarsHall Wears suit and sHirt FroM tHe Crane brotHers, VersaCe tie Pin FroM saks and an oMeGa WatCH FroM dFs Galleria. liMo FroM liMousine bookinG oFFiCe.

Jonathan Marshalls nztabloid.com gave us a taste of true, titillating tabloidism. It ran prying pictures of Bronwyn Fitzpatrick, former All Black skipper Sean Fitzpatricks wife, gardening in her sarong; got a picture of separated father Mike Hosking leaving the Victoria Avenue Dairy carrying a pack of nappies; accused the PM of something it would be defamatory for us to repeat. There were claims that the site received more than one million hits. Marshall was then aged 18 and had been recently fired from Queer Nation after the Sunday StarTimes revealed that he and his then-boyfriend, David Herkt, had tailed Hosking. And as Marshall was following people, digital camera in hand, Victoria Williams was starring in the reality

tactics to get a story.The media uses people,he said.

Jonathan Marshall, paparazzo and scourge of Mike Hosking and Paul Holmes, has started a detective agency with millionaire developer Pat rippin and his stepdaughter Victoria Williams, the foul-mouthed stars of televisions the Family. simon Farrell-Green examines the alliance made in tabloid heaven.

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like his bloody style.Peach concurred.A lot of young people are sitting around thinking the world owes them a living. Hes trying to do something. They got his phone number from Sunday StarTimes gossip columnist Bridget Saunders, a mutual friend. Wanting to help Marshall, she reckons, was typical Rippin. Hes just so kind, and he gives so much money away. Pat has a real feeling for outsiders and he also likes people who stand up and say what they think. People who are brave. Rippin and Marshall met for coffee. It was raining, and black dye was running down Marshalls forehead, but the property developer saw something in the paparazzo. They met a few more times, nztabloid closed down and then Rippin asked him what hed like to do. Run a detective agency, said Marshall. One Saturday night at the Rippins apartment, they were thrashing through the details when Williams, famous for yelling at Rippin during one episode of The Family, Go and find some sleaze down The White House, ya fat prick arrived, met Marshall for the first time, and thought the agency sounded a cracker idea. The following Monday, Marshall was in with a formal proposal. By Tuesday, he and Williams were sharing an office. The private detective agency Teen Tracker was in business.I just immediately had faith in him, says Williams.Hes one of the most focussed people Ive ever met.
teen traCkers tarGe t

of Advanced Investigations says someone with such a track record would not be encouraged to join the profession. Youve got people coming to you and telling you personal things that are highly confidential, and the last thing that you would want would be someone with a journalistic background to become aware of that sort of detail, says the former policeman, whose business partner is a former detective inspector. I mean, heck, you just wouldnt go near it. Marshall and Williams have also chosen a fraught line of work. The Privacy Act makes teenagers, even if an investigator has their parents consent, difficult to track, even harder to nab. Its no different to you trying to get a doctor to tell you whether your son has a trace of drugs in his blood or urine tests, says Campbell. So, will they get work? Theyve grabbed the type of publicity including a full-page article in the Sunday News featuring Marshall dressed like Dick Tracy for which many with a new venture would pay dearly. If theyve got money behind them and can market themselves, says Campbell, theyll get people who think that because of their slick presentation, they might be getting somebody reputable. I dont care what they think, says Williams of

the view held in some quarters that the agency is just a dalliance for the daughter of a rich man.Its not about that Pat wouldnt just throw money into anything. He doesnt just give willy-nilly He believed in Jonathan and me to do it. I look at it like were only helping, you know, the children, she says. Drugs are a road to nowhere. month into Teen Trackers existence, Williams, Marshall and Rippin meet to discuss the ventures progress at their office, in a corner of Rippins Markham Development head-quarters in a

basement in Newmarket. Right, says Rippin. Where are those bloody minutes from last time? I didnt bloody get them, says Williams. Werent they bloody emailed? asks Rippin. Im telling you, we didnt bloody get them. Youre in a bloody daze, says Rippin. He lumbers out of the office, goes next door to find out where the missing minutes are. Turns out they were emailed, last Friday at 3.55pm but they didnt bloody arrive. Theyre printed off. An exchange is yelled between rooms. Many bloodies. Rippin

market is the

anxious parents of Takapuna and Remuera, who worry that their children might be hanging around with the wrong people, taking drugs. Teen Tracker will follow teenagers and report back to their parents on their movements, who theyve seen and what theyve done. Williams runs the meet-and-greet end of the business. She is 32, left school at 16 to work for the then fledgling Fashion Quarterly magazine founded by family friends Don Hope and Paula Ryan. Shes spent most of the past 15 years in Sydney, working in the fashion media and then with sister Maria at Designer Exposure, which sources cast-off labels from the houses of the rich and sells them on the web. Marshall, despite his experience in surveillance, has ended up in a largely co-ordinating role: theyve employed former policemen, other private investigators and a bloke from the army as gumshoes. Theyve bought several thousands of dollars worth of surveillance equipment, including ear-pieces used by the FBI, and encrypted radio telephones. Theyve contracted a computer programmer to co-ordinate information from Baycorp, the Companies Office, land title register and the vehicle register into one programme. It is a slick, well-funded and carefully thought-out operation. But not entirely welcome. Told of Marshalls background, private investigator Michael Campbell

niGel Gardiner

Pat Rippin got Jonathans phone number from Sunday Star-Times gossip columnist Bridget Saunders, a mutual friend. Wanting to help Marshall, she reckons, was typical Rippin. Hes just so kind, and he gives so much money away.

left: bridget saunders, pictured with John banks at the rippin Christmas party in december, gleefully follows the clans antics in her sunday-star times column. above: rippin, Marshall and Williams.

comes back in, says nothing. Are you closing the door, Pat? asks Marshall. Im just waiting for the bloody minutes, flea, he grumbles. The meeting covers the state of the office (Williams: Its not not clean, weve just got stuff everywhere), the need to refine the business plan and the need for a comprehensive information package to give to prospective clients. They wander into other territory, too. Marshall is editing an eight-page spoof of New Zealand Truth as the Rippins Christmas card,

featuring Pat with a stripper from The White House, where Rippin had his Christmas party in 2002. They cant use photos taken of Williams because theyre not flattering. The photographer, she says, was hung-over. He was keen on you, says Marshall. Isnt everyone? They discuss Trevor from Waiuku, who owns the teentracker.co.nz domain. Trevor wants a lot of money for it. They dont want to pay. A lawyer is doing an opinion on it. They resolve to put a hyphen

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in the sites address but its not a happy decision. The hyphen shouldnt be in there, says Rippin. Hes got no money to fight it anyway, says Marshall. I say we forget about Trevor.
J o n at H a n M a r s H a l l H a d

school with press releases, including one headed Privacy Commissioner Slams School Principal. Principal Alan Peachey is evidently still sore about the incident. I thought that Metro was a serious magazine, he replied testily by email when asked if he would talk to Metro about Marshall. Please dont waste my time with this matter. (Peachey later agreed to review his response but had offered no comment by press time.) The school records make undramatic reading. Marshall wasnt meek but he was hardly a hellraiser. In general, the comments read like those of exasperated teachers sounding off about a clever but distracted student. Some are occasionally praising especially those who took him for English and drama. After ZB, he produced two badly-written feature articles for Ian Wisharts magazine Investigate. One was on school suspensions for drugs, oddly coupled with grainy pictures taken by Marshall of errant boy-racers. Wishart remembers Marshall wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase the first time he met him, at Newstalk ZB. He was an earnest young man who was modelling himself on Paul Holmes, says Wishart, who didnt fret about sending a 16year-old out into the fray. Wishart didnt use any more of the teenagers ideas, but says he did hear of Marshall using his work at Investigate to get interviews and warned him against doing so.Once sat on, [he] learnt the lesson, says Wishart. nd then, Marshall discovered paparazzi photography, a profession which provokes both curiosity and derision. His first job was during Fashion Week 2001. Television hosts Mike Hosking and Kate

so Herkt and

Marshall set up nztabloid.com.

These days, mention of Marshalls name provokes apoplexy among his sites targets. He is nothing, hes done nothing, hes a nobody, said one celebrity, berating this writer for feeding Marshalls hunger for publicity. Another nztabloid.com victim spluttered with rage for several minutes. The idea that celebrities like me somehow need some kind of fucking correction by someone like him is absurd, squawked the victim. He eventually will die in a pool of his own filth. So what exactly did Marshall and Herkt do wrong? They said cruel things about people and ignored the rules of defamation, of decency and good taste. They were angry, says Herkt, about their dismissal from Queer Nation; they were on something of a vendetta against TVNZ and its stars. I think that, without exception, they were people who had made their careers on prominent, glossy, airbrushed PR, Herkt says. The Holmes one was really good, because you had he and Charlotte sitting there. I said to people at the time, it was like wealthy French aristocrats hawhawing at the revolution. Thats what it was, they were sitting there, fat and swollen on PR, sneering at a teenager with a website. For three months, nztabloid.com blasted out selfimportant, often defamatory articles. The sites domain had a fictitious street address, a phone number that never worked and was registered in Kathmandu in an attempt to use the Defamation Acts technical loophole that defamation action can

a rocky

childhood. His mother was just 18 when he was born and she and his father had separated by the time Jonathan turned two. They moved around: from Howick to Hamilton, to Christchurch and to the North Shore. His mother remarried; by the time he was six, he was exhibiting severe behavioural problems: aggressive at school, disruptive in class, easily upset. He went to counselling after Child, Youth and Family (then Children, Young Persons and their Families) intervened. At 12, Marshall was diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. He took Ritalin for a year, didnt like it, and hasnt taken anything for it since then. ADHD causes him to be disruptive he can wind up a room in minutes, is known for breaking things and often makes inappropriate comments without apparently meaning to. At 14, he had a show on Access Radio, City of Sails, which covered happenings around Auckland. (Access is a voluntary society; you join up, buy airtime.) He was asked to leave after an interview with the organiser of the Asian Lantern Festival in Albert Park. Marshall, according to a complaint from the Auckland City Council, probed the Pakeha organiser deeply about budget, the value to ratepayers and her suitability for organising an Asian event. Marshall then contacted Martin Crump, graveyardshift talkback host at Newstalk ZB, asking to come up and watch him work. He wound up as something of a producer, screening phone calls through the early hours of the morning while still in the fifth form at Rangitoto College. Here, Marshall decided that the pre-recorded 2am news, put together just before the newsroom closed at 11pm, was old by the time it got to air. So he started writing and reading his own news. At 3am one morning in June 2001, Marshall was sitting in the news room at Newstalk ZB when a report came over the wire that Auckland City councillor Maire Leadbeater had been arrested in Indonesia. He immediately rang the then mayor of Auckland City, Christine Fletcher, for comment.
top: the rippin Christmas card. above: a typical nztabloid exclusive.

Hawkesby were there. He took a shot of Hosking with his hand on Hawkesbys back; womens magazine New Idea snapped his pictures up for a figure in the thousands. Great money for a kid with a camera. He was hooked, loved the thrill of the chase. Over the next year or so, he took more photos, escalating to stake-outs and tailing, working out where people lived rather than seeing them at events. Then in February 2003, Marshall landed a job as a trainee director and presenter at Livingstone Productions Queer Nation, a magazine-format current affairs show for the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities which airs on TV2. In three short months, Marshall and his Queer Nation colleague David Herkt, aged 48, a former editor of the gay newspaper Express and a published poet, annoyed a school board in Whangarei when they filmed 15-year-olds about sexuality without consent, annoyed police by filming on police property without permission and, when the police complained, faked a reply without telling their bosses. Marshall was disruptive in the office, continually late, smoked inside and

In late April, Marshall and Herkt were on the hunt for Breakfast and then Sunday host Mike Hosking: he was hot, a newly-minted bachelor and torrid rumours were circulating. One evening, they followed Hosking home from TVNZ. He called the police. (Above: Marshall and Herkt.)

only be brought against publications registered in this country. (Lawyers say its only a matter of time before this loophole is tested.) The main reason they werent sued is that complainants knew there was no money behind them to pursue. If there was, its likely the lawyers letters would have come in thick and fast. The site took a particular interest in Paul Holmes and Mike Hosking, publishing Holmes address, his home and his mobile number, peeking over the fence of his new Remuera house to take snaps of the pool, making claims about his daughters love life and Holmes anatomy. They papped Hosking at the dairy, went through

Fletcher was not impressed, a complaint was made to Newstalk ZB and Marshall was asked to leave. Around this time, Marshall quit school. He was confused, angry, often absent and the work-load of the sixth form year had got on top of him. I never was somebody who went through life thinking much about qualifications, says the 19-year-old. Theres other ways around it. He retained the services of Youth Law to take Rangitoto College to the Privacy Commission for refusing to release his school records to him.I like communities to be transparent, he says.I was determined to get them because the school wouldnt give them to me. Marshall alerted the media to his battle with the

played loud music on his computer, prompting the company to remove its sound card. In late April, Marshall and Herkt were on the hunt for Breakfast and then Sunday host Mike Hosking: he was hot, a newly-minted bachelor and torrid rumours were circulating. One evening, they followed Hosking home from TVNZ. He called the police. A week later, Herkt and Marshall found him again, this time at Hawkesbys house in Remuera, and got photos. Hosking recognised Marshall and dobbed him in at TVNZ. Words were had to Marshall, who promised not to do it again, agreed to a media shutdown and took the photographs off the market. But the Sunday

News got onto the story. Marshall was quoted in the article; he and Herkt were dismissed by Livingstone Productions the next week. The dismissal, which culminated in an Employment Relations Authority hearing in December, whose decision was reserved at Metros deadline, riles Marshall and Herkt: Marshall says he had, at his boss Johnny Givens request, stopped taking photos when the first Hosking complaint came through and that his employers knew what he was up to. In court, Givens, who would not talk to Metro, denied that he knew the full extent of Marshall and Herkts afterhours work.

his rubbish, and, in August, just as the case over whether New Idea could publish paparazzi photos of Mike Hoskings estranged wife, Marie, and their twin daughters was before the Court of Appeal, the site put up photos of the children photographed through Hoskings car window. They kind of charged right over the ethical boundary right from the start, says Russell Brown, host of National Radios Mediawatch and writer of a media column, Hardnews, on publicaddress.net. Keep peoples children out of it, for goodness sake. August was a big month for the site, with intense media scrutiny and some big stories, not just about

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Holmes and Hosking. The site made claims about newsreaders getting shagged in drag, outed celebrities, and claimed that certain MPs used hookers. By September the stories, says Brown, had become lamer and lamer. Herkt and Marshall had resorted to running stories about themselves and got sucked into a hoax about the PM. In October, the site closed. An injunction had stopped one story but the real reason, says Herkt, is that Marshall was bored. Commentators say theyd run out of stories. The site was so controversial no one would advertise on it.
so WHat Was tHe Point?

TVNZ isnt the bad guy.If we [publicists] actually believed that journalists might actually give us a really fair, good, objective story, we wouldnt mind. Because nobody really minds the truth. Back in the 1990s at TVNZ, she didnt ask for copy control, she didnt ask for picture approval. Celebrities werent paid. But its where its embroidered and lots of unnecessary, controversial, scandals brought in to colour and to sell, [that] you try to control it. Sandilands says nztabloid wasnt the way to change the nature of celebrity media. Its destructive, she says. Youre on the one hand raising these people up as celebrities, imbuing them

resource consent. When asked at the time if he had contacted locals, Rippin replied, What for? In Fiji in the 1990s, he met his second wife, Denise Williams, known as Peach, a divorce with four children. She thought he was the rudest man shed ever met. Theyd say, Theres that rude bugger Pat Rippin, because I didnt talk to her, recalls Pat. The Rippin-Williams are regular faces on the cocktail and charity function circuit, where they are generous bidders. In October, at a fundraising tribute dinner for Colin Meads,Victoria Williams bid $13,000 for signed All Black memorabilia. Richard Driver, the executive producer of The Family, wanted to make New Zealands answer to Sylvania Waters or The Osbournes. We wanted people who have money, who break the stereotype of the sort of polite, dont make a fuss, dont draw attention to yourself family, he says. When the research came through I thought it was just too good to be true. The Family had reservations, but they came around. We thought, Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, says Rippin. Lifes bloody short, youre dead tomorrow. So away we went. The first show of the series followed the family during a holiday at the Sheraton Mirage at Port Douglas. There was a lot of drinking, Rippin took his teeth out and stepson Scott was on the hunt for a little pipi. The television critics were immediately savage, especially in the provinces. Susan Pepperell from the Waikato Times on Rippins step-daughters Maria and Victoria: All it would take would be one small push and theyre on their hands and knees in the gutter. Not an unfamiliar position for them, Id wager. Nick Ward from The Nelson Mail: After enduring half an hour of silly sunglasses, booze, smokes and sniping siblings, Ive still got no idea what the point of it all is. It could be the rich family that gets hammered together has a good chance of getting on TV. Others, even bFM breakfast host Hugh Sundae, who subsequently invited Pat Rippin onto the show, probably the first time a property developer has ever been on student radio, loved it. (Rippin and Marshall were also on Sundaes Christmas show.) Driver is unapologetic about the shows depiction of Auckland. It was a very Auckland lifestyle, he says.It just reinforced all of those stereotypes, and I think thats great.You know, what the hell? Were not doing a PR job for Auckland. We dont give a fuck. Rippin reckons the series was fair, showed the family as it is. He gives away DVDs of the show at the drop of a hat; at one stage, he was selling them on ebay. Hes gregarious, up-front with the media. He says theyre in negotiations for a new series but the rest of the family is not so keen on further media exposure: Victoria, for one, didnt like the way she was presented.
in sePteMber 2003,

having almost anything written of him. Theres a certain desire for love there, but he doesnt have to be liked. Marshall, himself, says that hes more stable now than 12 months ago, more concerned about how he is perceived. And he is an immensely likeable person, who is anxious to come across well. Indeed, his persona seems to change depending on the company. With the Rippins, hes the helpful, if cheeky, young man with stars in his eyes and a willingness to learn about business. At Queer Nation, he was publicly bisexual. With his friends as seen at his 19 th birthday at the bar Cuba in December, where there was a fight and David Herkt was arrested for obstructing the police surrounded by pretty girls and his old friends, he is pure North Shore teen. Marshall, who identifies himself as bisexual, lived with a man for a few months last year. These days, he is straight, dating a girl from the North Shore; at his flat-warming in December, Marshall hired a stripper from The White House to cavort around a pole. Im not sure whether weve got a rewriting of history at the moment, says Herkt, whose daily weblogs, generally about Marshall, read like the diaries of a man still deeply in love. You have to earn different things, from respect to having people have loyalty to you, says Marshall of the experiences of the last year and the fallout from nztabloid.com.And I think at 19 Im starting to learn those things.He claims to be passionate about the idea of keeping teenagers away from drugs If [the detective agency] doesnt work, I dont know what Id do. While the medias pull is strong, its hard to see how he could go back. Each time people have given him a break he has blown his chances.
s i n C e t H e Fa M i ly,

Herkt and

with God-like qualities, and on the other hand youre taking pleasure in taking them down. Why? For Marshall, after the closure of nztabloid.com, it was onwards and upwards. Are you going to do nztabloid, earning no money and being hated by the nation? he asked himself. I talked with people, asked lots of people what they thought I should do. The advice was, according to Bridget Saunders, to lie low and let the furore blow over. And it did: Pat Rippin rescued him from tabloid wilderness, he apologised to Charlotte Dawson. In December, at a charity fundraiser, they were photographed exchanging friendly kisses. o who is the godfather who has rescued this errant North Shore kid? Patrick Rippin started out as a drainlayer, moved to the Gold Coast in the 1960s, bought a motel there. He was married, with two kids, played a lot of

Marshall assert that nztabloid.com revolutionised the celebrity media. Is it any different now to when they started? asks Brown. It could have been a healthy, alternative voice, an antidote to the sanitised celebrity gush the function the British tabloids serve but instead became something of a joke. David Herkt, who guffaws when he talks about some of the stories, regarded the site as something of an experiment, calling Marshall a prime delivery mechanism. Marshall is bemused that he has been singled out for opprobrium.Ive been made out as the only one that enjoys paparazzi, and the only one that does it. When really, as a nation, we enjoy it. And, he argues, some of his most vocal critics benefited from his attentions. If it wasnt for Womans Day, and New Idea and people like me who take photos he says, Mike Hosking wouldnt have half the profile he does today. Herkt and Marshall found some sympathy in media circles from those frustrated by what is essentially a pact between celebrity magazines and the celebrities they cover, a meeting of mutual interests: the celebrities are often paid for their stories, which are flattering. The magazine gets a star on the cover, who, the next time they want him or her, will be a bigger star because of the last cover. They pay for what they get, says Brown Occasionally there might be a story that annoys someone. Holmes every now and again gets papped, gets photographed, and someone who doesnt want to get photographed gets all outraged. But they generally play the game and its a game that they play with TVNZ publicity. He argues that TVNZ is happy to play the publicity game, but unhappy about the negative stories: in his view you cant just turn the media on and off when it suits. Its a global phenomenon, but it arrived here in the late 1980s, when the threat of TV3 drove TVNZ to turn its presenters and actors into celebrities. They got alongside the womens magazines, says former TVNZ head of publicity Aline Sandilands, now a lecturer in public relations at the Auckland University of Technology. The week TV3 was launched, there was a TVNZ celebrity on every magazine cover in New Zealand, and theyve regularly been there since. But, she maintains,

footie. He moved back to Wellington in the 1970s, started out in real estate, built himself a small empire, divorced in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, at the height of the property boom, he floated a public company, Markham Developments, expanding to Surfers Paradise. He lost everything after the 1987 sharemarket crash, managed to get the company back and to keep it afloat, and moved to Auckland. He started again with other developers, Dave Henderson, the builder of Princes Wharf, among them. We all started on one block of flats, remembers Rippin. None of us had too much credibility in those days. And then we just kept on going. Through the 1990s, Rippin was one of the larger players in the investor apartment market: blocks in Newton and Eden Terrace; since 1997 he has developed Parkwood Estate, a housing tract in Mangere. Theres no trophy building to his name no Metropolis, no Princes Wharf but hes one of the smart people who buy land zoned for one purpose, apply to have it changed, redevelop it and sell for a profit. Hes sometimes controversial plans for an apartment development on the old Auckland Laundry site in Surrey Crescent, Grey Lynn, outraged locals when the council gave non-notified

He is homo media, says Herkt. I am reported, therefore I am. Hes got a strong sense of self otherwise but if theres a media crew waiting, thats his preferred mode of arrival.
(Above: Marshall and pals celebrating his 19th birthday.)

the Rippin-Williams have

maintained their profile largely thanks to Bridget Saunders, who records their antics gleefully in her Sunday-Star Times column. Their Christmas party in December, at the Westhaven restaurant Pontoon, where guests were entertained by the Candy Lane dancers, was a comparatively restrained affair. The guest list included John Banks and Peter Mad Butcher

police obtained a videotape which showed a group of four teenagers, one of whom was Marshall, with disgraced Takapuna Grammar teacher David Arthur. Some of the teenagers were smoking P. Marshall was not shown using the drug but later admitted he had used it to the police, who subsequently charged all involved the four students for P, and Sunday Star-Times reporter Amie Richardson, the reporter who broke the story and had a copy of the video, with receiving stolen property. Her case is still pending. At a status hearing in November at the Waitakere

looking around the court room, a sheepish smile on his face. Marshall was discharged without conviction. As he prepared to meet the camera crews outside, he lit a cigarette, put on his black Gucci sunglasses, squared his shoulders and forged ahead. Herkt hung back out of shot. He is homo media, says Herkt. I am reported, therefore I am. Hes got a strong sense of self otherwise but if theres a media crew waiting, thats his preferred mode of arrival. Jonathan will give you a good story, usually, an entertaining story, Herkt says, adding that the younger man is thick-skinned enough to stand

Leitch, who are old friends of Rippins; sports broadcaster Murray Deaker; property baron James Kirkpatrick and his young wife, Gilda; lawyer Herb Romaniuk; publisher Don Hope, and designer Keith Matheson, a friend of Victorias. And, in the thick of it was Jonathan Marshall, to whom the family has given a nickname: Joe Black, the shadow of Pat. Hes been to some of those gigs with the family, comes for dinner sometimes, was invited away on the boat at Christmas. But its not all sherbet and laughter: Pat Rippin is a tough man, and Marshall will be expected to deliver the goods. If I thought someone was taking advantage of me, Rippin often says, Id be the first to put my foot down.

Jonathan Marshall was

District Court, Marshall was polite to the judge and he held himself well in the dock but couldnt resist

charged with consuming a Class A drug after

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50 / Metro noVeMber 2002