My Favourite Room - James Griffin

This is the hub of the house; everything feeds off it. It’s the lounge and we attempt to lounge here as long as we can avoid the Lego. I love this room because when I’m here I’m not working. We can just turn off, relax. This room is all about family – a space for hanging with the family; a bit of a sanctuary. It’s a cliché but it makes me feel like I’m home.

 

We like to have fun; we like our family to have fun. The PlayStation is downstairs but there’s a move from the Small People’s United Front of Grey Lynn to bring it upstairs. No way. It’s hard enough to get
to watch what we want to on TV.

The kids are keen on Nickelodeon and Disney channels. I battle my way to Sky Sport. Tania is the prime-time TV guide and My Sky queen; she records everything she wants to watch.

We have a vast collection of CDs, mainly the music of our youth. We like singer-songwriters especially and we’re patriotic. We own a lot of the Finn boys, Don McGlashan and Greg Johnson.

How many DVDs? Heaps, man. Because I work funny hours I don’t watch regular TV. 

So, if I see something I like – West Wing, Entourage, 30 Rock, Weeds, Life on Mars – I usually wait until it comes out on DVD.

We’re both kind of magpies; we collect shiny things. Tania is incapable of throwing anything out. Her collection of plastic hula girls, for example, dates back to her dusky maiden stage. Things move into this house at a faster rate than they move out. The leis are from a bro’Town party; I was executive script producer on the first series. The floppy hat is from Outrageous Fortune.

The Dean Buchanan artwork above the fireplace was the first one we chose together. We decided to buy art on each wedding anniversary. Unfortunately we kept forgetting our anniversary, especially once the kids came along. We really like New Zealand art but we’re not investors; we just see things and go, “That’s cool”.

The problem with, and also the benefit of, being a writer is you can pretend you’re always working. I’m head writer and executive producer on a new comedy series called Diplomatic Immunity. Set in an Auckland consulate, it’s about the Most Royal Kingdom of Fe’ausi and a fallen palagi diplomat who must bring his merry band of thieves back into line.

I’m also writing and storylining for series four of Outrageous Fortune plus writing a column in a weekend magazine. I really like this work; it fits with the way I see the world. People take themselves too seriously. I remind them it’s not all doom and gloom.