Two schools are on fire and several are dead tonight after veteran broadcaster John Campbell signed off his final show by going on a reckless, alcohol-induced driving rampage in aid of Campbell Live’s official sponsor, Mazda.
When the show returned from its final ad break on Friday night, Campbell was no longer at his desk, and all was eerily quiet.
After ten seconds, Campbell abruptly smashed through the back wall of the studio in a Mazda CX-9, honking the horn loudly, with the window down, apparently yelling “Buy a fucking Mazda!”
“Eleven fucking years,” slurred Campbell directly at the camera, as he drove the Mazda forwards and backwards, smashing everything on the set. “Eleven years and you still haven’t got the message.
“Christchurch, earthquakes, kids without lunches, raincoats, GCSB, spying, accountability, Ali Ikram. All of it, and for what? All I wanted you to do was buy a fucking Mazda.”
“This is a great car,” he claimed, emphatically, before driving it directly into the camera.
The show then cut to Campbell driving through Christchurch’s quake-ravaged streets, before ploughing his Mazda into the front of the council buildings, smashing their glass doors and causing alarms to go off.
Campbell stepped out of the car and once again addressed the camera directly.
“I look at life as a corridor,” he began, “a long corridor. And all down that corridor there are doors, doors on either side. And when you’re your age, they’re all open.
“But when you’re my age, you look back, and you don’t even realise it’s happened, but they’re all closed.
“Which is marvellous, really, because it means you can drive your Mazda down the whole bloody thing.”
Campbell got back in his car and drove it through a different glass door than the one he’d come in.
A montage of Campbell driving his noticeably damaged car through the countryside was shown, ending at the Waihopai spy base, which he reversed into repeatedly.
Police were seen pursuing Campbell during this montage.
The show ended at an undisclosed South Auckland school, where Campbell drove in circles on the school field, throwing poorly-made lunches at children as they were splattered with mud from his tires.
“Ka kite ano, New Zealand!” he screamed from his vehicle. “And a very good career, indeed!”
This before driving his Mazda into the back of the truck that had transported the meals, which itself was propelled into a classroom that partially collapsed on him and the two vehicles.
John Campbell now rests, peacefully, in his Mazda CX-9, beneath a pile of rubble and school lunches.