Hilary Barry

SUMMER SERIES: Kiwis recommend their favourite beach, a book to read on it, and a song that encapsulates summer. It's a song that's been around since 1974 but I only recently heard it and instantly loved it. Great tempo, perfect to pump up and get that cocktail shaker shaking. Margarita? Yes please. (Source: Getty) An old woman, maybe a fortune teller, wanders down a plane telling each passenger what age they will die and how it will happen.

Graham Norton tells Hilary Barry about his audition with Peter Jackson, and how he keeps up the belly laughs and the A-list lineups on his enduring eponymous show. Somewhere buried deep in Sir Peter Jackson's archive, chat show host Graham Norton believes there's an audition tape with his name on it. "I think basically anyone who had an equity card in the UK got seen." It was the late 90's, and Sir Peter was casting for a little movie project called The Lord of the Rings.

In the wake of the prestigious Bakel's New Zealand Supreme Pie Awards, Hilary Barry and Jeremy Wells decided to test a crucial factor the awards ignore: how easy is it to consume these pies in the car? Because while the award judges assess nuances of taste and texture, every true pie eater knows that a pie that can't be scoffed on the run is confronting. And so Hilary and Jeremy hit the road with the goal of testing nine Gold medal winners in the Auckland region.