He is not quite a farmer, he is not quite a comedian and he is not quite serious — but every so often he will don the hat that fits.
When he was called up for a chat about his new book Kiwi Country, he was digging a hole to build a fence on his 10-acre block at the bottom of the Waitakere Ranges.
"This is going to be a nightmare, I thought ‘how hard it can be to stick 60-odd posts and seven wires together’."
His book, written with wife Ruth Spencer, is a humorous documentation of Rural New Zealand through 100 of its objects.
It is an entertaining history of rural life in New Zealand told through artefacts, gadgets and ephemera that tell a story that goes deeper than the objects themselves.
Having researched much of rural New Zealand for the book and being brought up on a dairy farm in the north Waikato Ohinewai, building a fence might be second nature.
"You would think so, I have watched some YouTube videos.
"I am going to call myself a cosplay farmer, with my 10 acres and I have just enough land to be a pain in the bum.
"And no tractor, I drive on my ride-on mower with my little trailer and I call it a tractor."
"Low hill country, it’s not steep, well some of it is steep, it is foot hilly."
His book follows this line and sense of humour; a self-deprecation take of the rural Kiwi object, be it hay bales in the paddocks, Sir Edmund Hillary’s bee smoker in the orchard, bungy cords, a mountain goat bike, the trusty No. 8 wire, quince jelly, Waimate’s giant White Horse monument, Sir Robert Muldoon’s stuffed one-eared lamb of 1976, or the hilltop trig.
"I was really surprised how many jobs involved men spending very long periods alone, doing things like living at trig stations, or in the mountains literally yelling at sheep.
"We’re a country that’s always had a sense of humour about itself," he said.
Te Radar laughed at himself often too and proudly admitted to owning Mr Muldoon’s taxidermy lamb.
"A friend pointed out there was this lamb in a shop in Milford which was gifted by Sir Robert Muldoon to the young farmers, so I bought it."
He paid less than $100 for it about two decades ago and it was not for sale.
"I am looking at it right now, it sits on the bookshelf behind the desk with its one ear missing and has a curious, delighted look at the world," he said.
The couple decided to tell the story of rural New Zealand through its peculiar, useful and fascinating objects because they all have a culture behind them.
"Initially 100 objects was a little daunting and then Ruth said, well let’s break it into 10 sections.
"It made me look at things again in a different light.
"Stuff you see all the time and never really think about."
The book was broken into 10 sections of rural New Zealand, such as the shed, the homestead, the side, the orchard and completed in record time — 100 chapters written in 150 days.
"The object tells a story, first about the object itself and then the wider sense of what’s around it, the stories, how it changed things."
The duo are the perfect book writing pair, but that was according to one half of them.
"She would research it in the morning and throw a draft out by the afternoon, we moved on relentlessly," Te Radar said.
The couple would write at opposite ends of the house and communicate via email, and text, he said.
This is the opposite to how they work on stage, having travelled and collaborated for the past 20 years on the road, on stage and off the back of his own TV series.
They will be touring the country early next year, landing in Wānaka for the Aspiring Conversations festival on March 27-29.
