Phil Gifford
Book Phil Gifford as MC or after dinner speaker at your next event.
Phil Gifford is a well known radio and sporting personality, an entertaining speaker and professional MC.
In 1970, Phil Gifford's alter ego “Loosehead Len” the satirical rugby figure was born. Phil is a very entertaining speaker and professional MC. He is one of New Zealand’s leading all round sporting journalists and has twice won the New Zealand Sports Journalist of the Year Award. He writes for the Sunday Star Times and Rugby News and is author of many books including biographies for rugby personalities Alex (Grizz) Wyllie, Joe Stanley, Mike Brewer and ‘Skipping Rope Man’ Billy Graham.
Phil Gifford is equally at home writing, appearing on radio or television or public speaking. He co-hosted a breakfast radio show in Christchurch with Simon Barnett for several years and is also heard on many other radio rugby or sports programmes. He has numerous radio awards including two Paters (for Australasia) and five New Zealand Mobil Awards. He has won a Dulux Award for coverage of the burning of the “Capitaine Bouganville” and won another Dulux Award for his coverage of the Springboks tour in 1981.
He has been a sportscaster on TVNZ’s One Network News, fronted national television programmes “That’s Fairly Interesting” and “Mud and Glory” and had a talkback programme on Canterbury Television. Now, having returned to live in Auckland, Phil Gifford is writing columns in various publications and presenting on Radio Sport every evening from 4 – 6pm. No speaker can offer a more informed perceptive look at New Zealand sport.
Cadillac Dreams: Baby Booming across the Southern States is the story of four kiwis living the dream of a lifetime, a musical journey across the southern states of America in 2006. Written by Phil Gifford, a multi-award winning journalist and radio host, the four revel in live music at a juke joint in Clarksdale Mississippi, a crawfish festival in Breaux Bridge Louisiana, the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, the Continental Club in Austin Texas, the National Blues Awards, and rock and roll's legendary Ponderosa Stomp in Memphis. They visit Graceland, Jerry Lee Lewis' family home in Ferriday Louisiana, Elvis' birthplace in Tupelo Mississippi, and have close encounters with alligators in the Louisiana bayou. They stay at Heartbreak Hotel in Memphis, and a former sharecropper's shack in Mississippi. They eat ribs in Memphis, frijoles in Texas, hushpuppies and catfish in Mississippi, and onion-mums in Louisiana.If you've ever dreamed of visiting the land that brought the world the blues, country and rock and roll music Cadillac Dreams is a must read.
“In an after dinner speech I want to make people laugh, and to do that I increasingly tell true stories. They’re easier to remember.”