They have been together for close to 50 years. Next year will mark 30 years since they became engaged. While a wedding ring is unlikely, a recording saying “I love you Alice� is on the Wizard’s to-do list. “So she can play it to herself when I’m gone,� he tells Frank Film, in a personal interview about his 29-year engagement to Australian-born Alice Flett. “Presumably I’m going to go before she does.� Alice Flett and the Christchurch Wizard became engaged in 1992 at Christchurch's first Festival of Romance, but marriage itself he says, is not that romantic. “It’s not romantic being a wife or husband, but it is very romantic being a fiancée. I love you, I love you, all that stuff – I don't like that. It’s shallow and doesn't mean much and they divorce all the time. I cannot say I love Alice so I have to show my love by actually doing things.� They first met at Melbourne University in 1969. Even then, in his first year as a resident Wizard, he was “doing things.� TV clips show him leaping skyward in a long robe, haranguing students on campus. Flett recalls seeing a photograph of him on the front page of the paper, “bouncing around on a pogo stick in a fur coat and bowler hat.� A native Melburnian, Flett was a diligent student and head girl at a Catholic school (she is now a respected classicist and art historian). She loved school, she says, “I was a good girl.� She and the Wizard were introduced in 1970. “I was curious,� she says. “He was interesting to talk to.� “She just moved in quietly,� explains the Wizard. A subtle process? “Very subtle.� But not altogether sanctioned. Some were not impressed, says Flett, at the idea of a 19 year old young woman teaming up with a man then twice her age (the Wizard will be 90 next year). “But they either got used to it or… I didn’t particularly care what they thought anyway.� In 1974, unsettled in Melbourne, the English-born Wizard set his sight on Christchurch, in particular Cathedral Square, which became an unofficial Speakers Corner. It was here, with a customised passport in the name of The Wizard of New Zealand, that he staked out his space as an officially designated “living work of art�, railing against authority, feminism and of course religion. “He loved it best when he was baited by some rabid evangelical,� recalls Flett. But his own apparent powers could be unnerving. When Waimate was seeking relief from a long period of drought, they asked the Wizard to do a rain dance. He did; it rained. When Auckland was suffering a water shortage, he danced again. Again, it rained. “Then he did one in Tamworth in New South Wales where there’d been a terrible drought,� recalls Flett. “He did his thing and they sloshed water over him from every direction. He beat his drum – and then it rained. He frightened the life out of himself and said he wouldn't do it anymore.� Today he still waxes prophetically if politically incorrectly outside the Arts Centre – “The Gothic Wizard outside the Gothic Arts Centre! What more could you ask than that?� Shoulder to shoulder in their Christchurch garden, he and Flett are comfortable, companionable, if still a little bemused by each other. “We’ve had arguments,� says Flett. “But he does still surprise me after all these years, which is probably a good thing.� Is there going to be a wedding? “Everyone asks that – I don’t know whether there will be a wedding. I’d had hopes.� Director: Oliver Dawe Produced: Gerard Smyth Special thanks to: Archive New Zealand Getty Images

• published: 18 Mar 2021
• views: 5940