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A chance invitation set Andy George on a path that now sees him supporting his Canterbury community. Daniel Alvey reports.
Whether answering 111 calls or riding on a fire truck, Lincoln Volunteer Fire Brigade firefighter and Fire and Emergency New Zealand dispatcher Andy George has made serving the community his way of life.
The 45-year-old Lincoln resident has been a volunteer firefighter for about 10 years, first joining the Thames Volunteer Fire Brigade in 2016 while working as the breakfast host for More FM.
Each Wednesday, the brigade joined his radio show for a community advice segment. One day, they invited George along to a training night.
“Basically went to the training night, I loved it, they liked me, and I went through the process of becoming a firefighter,” he said.
Two years later, George’s two worlds came together during a devastating house fire.
He had been waiting outside a school to collect his children when he spotted thick black smoke drifting across the grounds.
“The siren goes off, I pick up the kids, and go to the station with them; there was a big toy box there and someone to look after them.
“I jumped on the truck and found out it was this family I was just waiting with at the school.”
The family’s home and everything inside was destroyed. The next morning, George and his breakfast show co-host launched an appeal for donations.
“At the back of the radio station was this massive shed and within two days we had it full of clothing, furniture, and food.
“We even had someone give them an apartment for a couple of weeks, while they found somewhere to stay,” he said.
It remains one of the calls that has stayed with him most.
Born in Rotorua, George moved with his family back to Wales in 1989, where they were originally from.
At age 12, he attended an open day at BBC Radio Wales, where he was invited to read the weather forecast.
“That for me was a moment that sparked something.”
George does not know if it went to air, but he still has a cassette tape of the recording.
While living in Reading, near London, in 1999, George became what he describes as a “super fan” of a breakfast show on local station 2-Ten FM, hosted by New Zealander Robert Scott.
After regularly calling the programme, he was eventually invited to help out at the station part-time.
Returning to New Zealand in 2001, George volunteered with ZM’s promotions team before completing a six-month broadcasting course in Wellington. With a month left in the course, he landed a job with Classic Hits 99FM in Timaru.
He later spent two years in Invercargill before becoming More FM’s drive show host in Rotorua in 2009.
When the network consolidated its drive shows a few years later, George was made redundant.
Rather than leave, he worked his way back through sales, production and operations management before eventually becoming host of the breakfast show.
In 2015, he transferred to Thames to host the breakfast programme, remaining there until 2020 before he, his wife Dayna and their children moved south.
Initially they lived on Dayna’s sister’s farm near Leeston before finding a home in Lincoln in 2021, at which point he joined the Lincoln Volunteer Fire Brigade.
After working on the farm for two years, George was hired as a dispatcher for Hato Hone St John in Christchurch before becoming a FENZ dispatcher, answering 111 calls and dispatching fire crews across the South Island.
As a dispatcher, he often sends the Lincoln brigade to incidents and can keep track of where the crew is responding.
When he is out on calls himself, firefighters from other brigades sometimes recognise his voice from the dispatches broadcast over station speakers.
“A few of them have said at 3 o’clock in the morning when we hear your voice it’s such a soothing way to wake up,” he joked.
Alongside his firefighting and dispatching roles, George also records voice-overs for radio advertisements, a skill that grew from entertaining friends with celebrity impressions in the late 1990s.
His first impression was former Who Wants to Be a Millionaire host Chris Tarrant, which he would do for his mates at parties.
He can also do the voice for SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, David Beckham, Waylon Smithers and Mr Burns from The Simpsons.
Only once has he performed an impression in front of the person he was imitating – broadcaster John Campbell.
“One day he walked into the radio station in Rotorua while I was on air. I pulled him for a wee interview, and I impersonated him to him, and he thought it was brilliant.”
These days, George does a wide range of accents for radio advertisements or voiced characters while reading bedtime stories to his children.