1980s: After School
September 15, 2018
By AHNZ
Olly Ohlson, presenter of children’s show After School from 1980-1986. It was the show every kid watched during the week when they got home from the government brainwashing pens.
I remember him fondly as a gentle and friendly guy strumming his acoustic guitar and telling we children interesting new things. In my mind the quality of the children’s shows we had back then were so good that I’d still watch Play School, After School, and What Now? today if they were of the same standard. But this is probably showing great bias.
“Keep cool ’til after school” was the show’s slogan. To the establishment this was probably viewed as sound advice for children to buckle in and focus on their education. To the anarchist it’s a tacit confession that schooling is painful and harmful and that the victim is expected to repress their legitimate suffering.
As I recall, late in Olly’s run a grey puppet named ‘Thingie’ joined him followed by the next man to have the host mantle, Jason Gunn. Olly was eased out of his role and Gunn became a Kiwi huge star with two back-to-back shows. Thingie was his comedic side-kick. Gunn is still around today, talking shallow garbage on easy listening radio stations but even he is getting old now having had a heart attack only last year.
“It’s only good if it’s natural.. Ollie Olson was a fav… he made it a natural language for me. And I learned more from him than the forced language from my parents in school!” – John Baars, 1News, Facebook (2023)“Olly taught me to play guitar…this was when he was a teacher at the Runanga Primary school on the West Coast. Had such an easy going personality and was so likeable…a good teacher.” – Trish Rennie, ibid
Last time I saw Olly on TV was in a great 2008 documentary about Nz migration called Here To Stay. The part-Maori, part-Scandinavian, was telling stories and sporting an impressive looking walking stick. Although I was glad to see him I was a bit sorry to see what a giant Lefty, Greeny, Victimhood Culture champion he had made of himself in these later years.
Olly says, in a recent article, that his great dream was to create a school of Maori Philosophy. I don’t know if that would be philosophy for brown people or did he mean Savage Honour Culture Ontology or something like that? Either way, I would be interested.
Olly’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/ollytehata
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Images: The iconic ‘After School’ intro; Olly on the show with Richard, who joined him later in the shows run (that’s according to my memory as a 6yo)
Update 2023: Added some quotes from recent TVNZ post/broadcast about Olly. Note: Ohlson is a fine example of an Achieved Identity; An authentic. This made his Maori character real and deep in strict contrast to the Ascribed Identity pressed into modern “Māori” coming out of State school factories.
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