Man Behind
p. 126 · Read in the full issue
The King
Tonga’s best public relations man is King Taufa’ahau himself.
He proved that during the news conference he gave at the end of coronation week (p. 40).
This was the first meeting be tween the king and the big corps of overseas newsmen and women who flew to Tonga for the coro nation. Until the meeting he had appeared to most newsmen as a large, stolid figure without a sense of humour, who probably took himself too seriously.
At the conference he revealed himself as a man of intelligence, humour and wit, quite capable of relaxing. Said one reporter later: “If I had known he was human after all, 1 might have written my earlier stories from a different angle”.
The pity of it was that most newsmen had gone home by the end of the week and so missed the man behind the man. — Sl.