Doug Champion - Champion of the bar and front of house funnyman
One bleak English day while operating a digger a young Doug Champion saw a plane passing over and thought, “Gee, I want to be somewhere else’.
An Agricultural College graduate, he worked hard in his transport company job saving to travel, buying a 327pound one-way ship-jet ticket from England to Perth. It was a week-long journey.
The middle of five kids, he left life in Suffolk behind. Family life was great, holidays in Cornwall with grandparents, and Doug joined the Young Farmers Club. “But unless you had an Old Boys school tie on there you didn’t get anywhere,” says Doug.
He went from sweeping a hair salon floor to driving a combine harvester in the searing 40-degree Western Australian heat along the famous Rabbit-Proof Fence-line, 14 hours a day. More travel eventually wooed him to NZ.
Doug, now a 45-year Kiwi hospitality veteran - most of those years in Queenstown, landed his first job in the industry as barman at The Great Northern Hotel in Auckland – a men’s only business bar. Work at the Intercontinental, then Akarana Tavern on the waterfront followed – the place to be. “When the cruise ships came in it was 10-deep at the bar, all the rich guys in their flares turned up in E-type Jaguars with the ladies all dollied up,” recalls Doug. It was 10pm closing back then and the rules were strict. “They put fire alarms on to get everybody out.”
He joined two Kiwi friends on a trip south, tramping at Nelson Lakes, then on to Queenstown. “The South Island was like another Paradise. The bus came down the West Coast – mostly a metal road, and the driver was throwing newspapers out the door as we passed people’s gates. I couldn’t believe it. They’d have been nicked in the UK.”
Doug landed a job as cocktail barman at Trans Hotel (now Rydges) where resident band Chord 3’s Peter Doyle soon recognised his quick wit, Doug doing a few stand-up comedy gigs during downtime at the bar.
“We lived in staff houses beside the hotel. I had accommodation, free food and power,” says Doug. “It was great. I met my (future) lawyer, accountant, bank manager, doctor, and even realtor John Royds who sold me my first section off a handshake, all at Eichardt’s Pub. I thought this is bloody wonderful. I never locked my house or car.”
However, law enforcement was needed on occasion. A desperate Doug called legendary Police Sergeant Warwick Maloney to Trans after a brawl broke out when two overstaying drunks wouldn’t leave and one punched the manager. Sergeant Maloney pulled up out front where Doug and his managers had wrestled the two men to, via the lift. “One of them then took a swing at Maloney, who picked him up and put him over the bonnet of his car. As he went to lift him away the guy’s right leg got caught between the wheel and fender, then it fell off!” says Doug. “We were gobsmacked, then we realised he had an artificial leg! Maloney picked up the culprit and put him in the back seat, leg in behind him, turned to us and said, “Don’t say a word.”
The Lion Inn at Trans was Queenstown’s first disco, offering a $2.50 three-course meal, and DJ. Doug also operated a movie theatre for a time at Trans with Mark Quickfall.
After one fancy dress staff party an overindulged patron was loaded into the baggage carrier and transported via lift to the back of what was thought to be his Austin Maxi. “We got the wrong car and the waitress drove home with him on her backseat, not noticing until she went to work the next day. He was still fast asleep.”
After meeting partner, Jo, they managed a motor inn in Palmerston North where Doug was confronted, alone at the bar, by the local ‘mafia’ at closing time, one revealing the gun holster inside his jacket.
He and Jo managed Country Lodge for two years, scoring two round the world plane tickets as a bonus.
Tighter drink driving laws meant Queenstown needed another upmarket downtown dining option and in 1985 Doug and fellow Brit, Roger Goddard, built Britannia – a popular nautical-themed restaurant, replacing Bumble’s Nightclub. “Tony Robertson, of Minami Restaurant, and I were the first to offer live crayfish in tanks.”
Here Doug became renowned for his front-of-house banter and before long his one-off Fawlty Towers impersonation nights were in demand at other restaurants – Mike Legge as Basil, Doug as Manuel and Jo as Sybil. Pharmacist Geoff Bradley’s brightly-coloured Australian parrot tie fell victim to one of these Fawlty Towers pranks one night.
Doug and Jo sold out of Britannia in 2000, taking on other roles, including a Monty’s partnership, before buying Amity Lodge Motel. In 2018 they sold up and retired to Pisa Moorings.
“Queenstown and its people have been great to me, but it was time,” says Doug.
