Damian Christie had a chequered career prior to joining the Close Up team in 2006.
Highlights or lowlights - depending on your point of view - include selling waterbeds in the Ngauranga Gorge, farming oysters in the Mahurangi Peninsula and a stint as Peter Sinclair's off-sider, Dr Love, on Lovesongs til Midnight.
A freelance writer for over ten years, Damian has contributed to a wide range of publications, from The Listener and the Herald on Sunday, to Bride & Groom and NZ Pet magazines.
Graduating law school at Victoria University, Damian practised in the field of entertainment law before returning to radio. He managed Auckland station George FM and then spent several years at 95bFM hosting current affairs shows The Wire and Sunday Best, an ideal way to blend his interest in national politics with great music.
Damian also has a keen interest in new media and information technology, commonly referred to around the office as the stories no-one else understands. He has been contributing to New Zealands biggest blog, publicaddress.net, since it began in 2002.
Damian joined TVNZ in 2004 as associate producer for the youth news show Flipside and spent 2005 as a producer for Sunday.
In 2005 Damian was a finalist for Best Current Affairs report at the Qantas Television Awards and was awarded the Reuters Journalism Fellowship to attend Oxford University in 2006.
Damian shares his life with a cat he euphemistically describes as big-boned, and would like to be able to tell people he's off scuba diving a lot more often than he actually is.
