After School - the Olly Ohlson years
After School
Ollie (in green)
By Kathryn Stewart
If you kept cool till after school you were probably one of the
thousands of Kiwi kids who grew up watching Olly Ohlson on
television.
Ohlson fronted After School for about six years from the time it first went to air in 1981, and was the first Maori presenter to front his own children's programme.
Together with producer Ian Cumming, the pair crafted the programme, though Ohlson has his daughter to thank for his well known catch phrase.
"One of my daughters gave the show the name 'After School' and then she happened to say 'keep cool till after school', and that's how that came about," he says.
The original concept for the programme was created by Hal Weston, head of TVNZ's children and young people's programming at the time, who was determined to have more Maori representation on air.
But, Ohlson almost never made it on the show. He had previously been on the children's programme Seagull, but at the time After School was getting off the ground he was a parish worker in Timaru and was shaping up for a career in the ministry. Committed to his youth group, he initially turned down the audition.
It was Cummings' powers of persuasion that helped win Ohlson over. Parents had been calling for a more mature role model on television, in particular, a positive male figure given the growing number of solo parents.
"Cumming said to me 'you'll get to more children this way, to more young people, you'll affect more lives than what you're doing here'," says Ohlson.
Ohlson was 36 when he started fronting the programme, which he says was "really old" for a children's presenter. But, he saw his chance to educate and entertain and ran with it.
He drew on his background as a teacher and began using phrases in his first language, te reo Maori (Ohlson is Ngati Whare and Tuhoe), as well as sign language.
Although he was considered a 'link element', in other words the glue that introduced each programme contained in After School, such as Video Dispatch and W3, his popularity rose.
"The kids just liked him, they hooked into him. They liked his 'keep cool till After School' sign language. He was very engaging on camera," says Cumming.
Similarly, parents warmed to his laid back, engaging style.
"The feedback that we got from parents was the personable feel of it and the fact that they felt safe letting their children watch television," says Ohlson.
As his profile rose, Ohlson says he became increasingly aware of doing the right thing in public. Though, his public image really got a dressing down when the make-up girls from work spotted him shopping downtown with his two daughters in his old "dungy" clothes.
"They threw me in the truck and took me back to the studio and changed my clothes and did my hair and said 'you're a public figure now!'" he recalls with a chuckle.
Before Ohlson left the show in 1986, Thingee (played by Alan Henderson) - the puppet who talked as much as his nose was long - made his debut, heralding a different direction for the programme.
Cumming had departed the show earlier to work on different projects. Without Cumming and Ohlson, After School continued until 1989, with its last host being the next household name in children's television, Jason Gunn.
Since the programme, Ohlson has continued with his passion for education and communication, but in the field of violence prevention training. However, he remembers his After School days with the greatest affection:
"I loved every minute of it!"
Watch Olly Ohlson's interview with Paul Henry.
