Henry: no regrets over 'retard' remark

PAUL HENRY: Courting controversy again.

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Breakfast TV host Paul Henry is unrepentant about calling Scottish singing sensation Susan Boyle "retarded" and claims he is the victim of an orchestrated campaign by the IHC.

Speaking yesterday for the first time about the complaints which followed his on-air remarks on Monday, Henry said he could not see what he had done wrong, and that it was fine to use the term retarded about people with intellectual disabilities. "The remarks I made were specifically with regard to Susan Boyle and they were light-hearted," he said.

On Breakfast on Monday when reading a piece from a women's magazine about the runner-up in the show Britain's Got Talent, Henry laughed as he described how Boyle was "starved of oxygen at birth" and suffered an intellectual disability.

"If you look at her carefully, you can make it out," he told viewers. "Here's the really interesting revelation: she is in fact retarded. And if you look at it carefully, you can make it out, can't you?"

The comments are just the latest in a string of incidents to land Henry in hot water. Earlier this year he ran foul of the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) with his "moustache on a lady" comments after interviewing Greenpeace worker Stephanie Mills; he also got into trouble for calling a teenage mum a "slapper", and for suggesting obese children "should be taken away from their parents and put in a car compactor".

This time disability advocates IHC took offence at his use of the word "retarded", claiming Henry's comments were in "extremely bad taste". Since then it has been circulating details of Henry's comments via email and encouraging people to complain to TVNZ and the Human Rights Commission.

"These are emails that tell people they will be outraged," Henry said. "They will be outraged for these reasons. Go to this link and be outraged and then do this to complain about it. In my mind that doesn't represent a group of outraged people.

"It represents a group of people who are toeing some line for some particular reason."

They were not people who had been the subject of his comments and been able to form their own opinions.

"I don't know that the outrage exists. I think this is an orchestrated campaign by IHC," Henry told the Sunday Star-Times. "I think it is shameful ... because they are misrepresenting me."

Asked whether he had been rapped over the knuckles by TVNZ for his comments, Henry said: "It's very early days. I'm assuming an official complaints procedure has started.

"To be honest, this is water off a duck's back to me. The only reason I'm particularly interested in this – I've never spoken this much about a complaint before – is because I've been aware before with certain things that I've said that certain interest groups have got together and sort of encouraged people to complain, but I think when it's an organisation like IHC it is actually quite different.

"There's a question of free speech here. At the end of the day if I am not breaking rules – and I don't go out to do that – I'm just saying what's on my mind, what I think. I'm trying to be entertaining, or trying to be informative, but I'm not checking myself all the time as most people do."

So does Henry regret making the remarks about Boyle – or any of the other comments that have got him offside with viewers and the BSA?

"I can't recall a time that I've regretted saying anything."

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