1981 Royal Variety Performance

If it wasn’t for the Poms you’d be the same colour as me mate!

– Billy T James to Laurie Dee

What a feast of entertainment we have for you tonight, featuring the country’s top talent — all here for a two hour spectacular in honour of Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh.

– Presenter John Hayden

Let’s move from trombones to tights as we welcome Limbs.

– Presenter Peter Sinclair

And now we welcome the man who is New Zealand entertainment: here’s Howard Morrison!

– Presenter Peter Sinclair

Your majesty, my name is Lynn and I come from a little place called Tawa. We were the ones who sent you the paua shell tiara for a wedding present.

– Lynn of Tawa (Ginette McDonald) introduces herself, in clip three

Crowds flooded Queen St for the royals' arrival. In the theatre entrance, 175 marching girls lined the path. The couple, along with the likes of prime minister Rob Muldoon, took their seats in the royal box. Viewers around New Zealand tuned their televisions in to the live broadcast.

– Journalist Tom Hunt looks back on the Royal Variety Performance, The Dominion Post, October 2014

Ginette McDonald’s Lynn of Tawa was — I reckoned then, and still do — the jewel in the crown of that Royal Variety Performance... It doesn’t get much simpler — or riskier — than one person on stage, talking.

– Michèle A'Court in her backgrounder

The event that really launched Lyn into the wider public consciousness . . . What’s largely forgotten is that the powers that be didn't want her anywhere near the thing.

– Michael McDonald, in his backgrounder for The Ginette McDonald Collection

[An English Person] would die for his country. The trouble is, he won't live there, have you noticed that? He comes out here!

– Billy T James poking fun at colonisation, clip one