Get to know Leigh
Leigh was born in Greymouth in 1970. His father was a coal
miner/tunneler. (A survivor of the infamous Strongman mine disaster
that claimed 19 lives in 1967)
While Leigh was just three years old the family moved to Hong Kong
where his father worked.
The next 11 years were spent entirely overseas, and much of it was
spent living high in the Andes in Peru, where Leigh's father worked
on a huge irrigation project. Leigh lived in Peru in a remote
village at 13 and half thousand feet in the Andes for five years.
(This is 1000 feet higher than Mt Cook)
When Leigh was 11 years old he returned to New Zealand a country he
was largely unfamiliar with. He attended boarding school in
Christchurch, taking a keen interest in music and as it happened
getting caned.
During Leigh's boarding school years his parents continued to live
overseas in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Sri Lanka. Leigh would
visit them on holidays and his taste for travel and adventure
grew.
After leaving school Leigh attended University for a year and then
decided to leave and join the workforce.
He moved to U.K in the early nineties and worked on building the
Channel Tunnel between England and France.
At just 20 years old Leigh was one of the youngest people working
under the sea on this historic project.
After this Leigh pursued his first love music and formed a band
with a friend and his brother. They returned to N.Z played the
South Island scene for a couple of years and then returned to U.K,
specifically Scotland to make it big!
This led to work at ski resorts in France, where a highlight was
performing with Jimmy Barnes. The low light was getting sent to
prison for 13 days and then deported!
On returning to NZ, Leigh began to focus on a new career, film and
television.
He re-located to Auckland and eventually got a job with Greenstone
Pictures. Later the 'performer' in Leigh re-surfaced and he landed
a spot on Sports Café as the roving reporter 'That
Guy'.
Highlights included attending 3 Olympic games, and 2 Rugby world
cups.
This led to his own comedy show
Moon TV , of which
to date there have been five series. A new series has already
been shot entirely in New York and is set to air on TV2 sometime
later this year.
Leigh's latest comedic project is entitled Leigh Hart's Mysterious
Planet and consists of Leigh and his unqualified team travelling
the world attempting to solve its' greatest mysteries. Bigfoot, the
Loch Ness monster, the Pyramids, the Roswell crash and the Bermuda
Triangle all feature, as well as a search for lost Inca Gold in the
jungles and mountains of Peru. The Peru episode was especially
poignant for Leigh as he was able to visit the remote Andean camp
he grew up in thirty years earlier.
This work camp had been abandoned ever since and Leigh visited his
over-grown school, and even stayed a night in his old bedroom.
"Nobody had set foot in the house for 30 years and it was the
place of so many formative childhood memories, it was very
bizarre."
