A wheelchair couldn’t restrain Pulman’s spirit

Money meant absolutely nothing to Hill; he died with millions in his bank account. His only desire was to keep doing what he had been doing, for three decades: to work in his native land.

When CCS Disability Action celebrated its 80th anniversary it chose its cast carefully. Mike Pulman, a Hamilton freelance writer and blogger, was no stranger to public speaking.

First diagnosed with Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a disease that causes muscle wasting and mobility impairment, at fouryears-old, Mike had been confined to a wheelchair his entire life.

Mike was the scheduled third speaker. The fourth – obviously the ‘headline’ act – was the then Prime Minister.

Mike was under strict instructions to curtail his oratory when John Key was ready. The organisers would give him a ‘‘wind-up’’ signal and he would graciously cede the podium. Key’s time was limited. Things did not go to plan. Mike grasped the importance of the moment. If ever there was an opportunity to articulate problems with disability funding and politics, it was this.

When given the signal to conclude, he chose to ignore it. With the most powerful man in the country waiting in the wings, Mike Pulman continued to speak his truth.

Courage and a healthy dose of obstinacy paid off.

Impressed and engaged, John Key insisted that Mike be allowed to finish, quipping that he could use people of Mike’s calibre ‘‘down in Wellington’’. More to the point, he invited Mike to the capital, to personally address the issues raised.

Whatever the physical discomfort such a trip entailed, he didn’t pass that chance up, either.

Mike Pulman could speak directly ‘to power’. Though he once claimed he was ‘‘not a social person’’, he was comfortable mixing with elites. Kane Williamson once took Mike’s store bought black cap off, replacing it with a bona fide New Zealand cap from his own head. Oft-troubled cricketer Jesse Ryder regularly sought Mike’s advice in late night phone calls.

He had a special rapport with the Chiefs rugby side, attending training sessions and most matches.

Michael Lewis Pulman was born prematurely on the 17th of December, 1991, to a mother who had no knowledge of her pregnancy.

He spent the first three months of life in the neonatal unit of Waikato Hospital.

In February, 1992, he was adopted by Lewis Pulman, a forestry worker from Te Kuiti and his wife Nanette, a nurse, becoming the younger brother of Jenna. His take home weight was a mere 1585 grams. When he failed to crawl at nine months, Mike was thought to have Cerebral Palsy.

The inaccuracy of this diagnosis was revealed when he began to talk.

Though efforts with standing frames and splints only ultimately confirmed his inability to support his own weight, Mike never lost his voice.

From the earliest age he was a sports fan. He would sit in front of the television

Hill’s sight gags and to-camera mugging speak directly and hilariously to an audience and arguably have out-lasted the work of much of the so-called ‘‘alternative comedians’’ of the 1980s and 1990s, some of whom were his direct critics.

In the era of so-called ‘cancel culture’, when past entertainments are being looked at critically for their prejudicial subtexts, does the story of Benny Hill have relevance? Well, the first thing I would say is that critical appraisal is always a positive. You would need a very narrow mind indeed not to recognise that Hill used his angels as ‘‘sexual objects’’, as props in a game which at once sent-up and celebrated male desire. A fair judgment of man and artist would also acknowledge his healthy, even warm working relationship with those young ladies, who knew what they were getting themselves into and had no issues with the material. Feminism is all about choice, isn’t it?

As the owner and operator of Hamilton’s last surviving DVD rental store I have a vested interest in the preservation of cultural artefacts. We stock some Benny Hill. Proudly so. We also have Gone With the Wind, with its flagrantly inaccurate portrayal of slavery, civil war and reconstruction. Worse still, we have available for rental Birth of a Nation, at once nasty white supremacist propaganda and groundbreaking narrative filmmaking.

We have Al Jolson in blackface, singing ‘‘Mammy’’ in The Jazz Singer. We have to. The film itself isn’t really very good but it’s history: the first commercially successful, partially sound film, which revolutionised the art form, ushering in the talkies.

All this material should be criticised, albeit with an awareness of historical context.

What it should not be is banned, particularly if those doing the banning are motivated by emotion or blinded by ideology.

News this week about the mass burning of Tintin books in Canada in 2019, on the grounds of racial stereotyping, brings such issues into sharp focus. There is a thin line between civilisation and barbarism: whatever your motivation, if you stand with the Nazis, building a pyre, stoking the fire with pages and hatred, you have crossed it.

A Life Story tells of a New Zealander who helped to shape the Waikato community. If you know of someone whose story should be told, please email rj.swainson@gmail.com