Martin Devlin is one of New Zealand’s leading sports broadcasters and columnists.
The 44 year old father-of-two is a radio veteran who has won many awards including Sports Broadcaster of the year 4 times.
He writes several regular columns for national newspapers and magazines, hosts TV One’s high rating show ‘Game of Two Halves’, is a regular on Sky TV’s ‘Press Box’ and does a weekly segment on Radio Sport.
While Devlin is well known within sports circles he ventured outside of his comfort zone in a very public way earlier this year when he agreed to be the ‘train smash’ on Dancing with the Stars. He never had delusions of great dancing but didn’t want to be voted off first. He thanked the ref and waved to the crowd when he was voted off after episode three.
You can see that Devlin has had many claims to minor fame. He believes his most notable was not through his own achievement but by virtue of birth and spent his youth leveraging the success of a relative. Martin is the nephew of 1950s Rock and Roll Legend, Johnny Devlin.
After realising that name dropping only gets you so far and accepting the undeniable fact that he can’t sing Devlin decided he’d have to give up the idea of getting rich and scoring chicks courtesy of Uncle Johnny.
With his focus firmly on getting girls he decided to reinvent himself. The make-over involved not washing his hair for months to transform his Upper Hutt mullet into dreadlocks just in time for Victoria University orientation in 1982. The new-look Devlin was trying to attract women by adopting a ‘thinking man’ look. He confessed to dabbling with the scary idea of doing women’s studies but settled on a B.A. in political science and philosophy.
After two years and a poor attendance record he dropped out to pursue a career in unemployment.
At 25 he succumbed to the society’s expectations and got a full time job, though many would say ‘not a real job’.
He headed south to do the 3 month course in Broadcasting at Christchurch Polytechnic in 1987 and it was here he met the love of his life, radio.
Devlin began writing advertising and won several copywriting awards. He was quickly identified as an on-air talent and has offended listeners all over the country for 20 years.
He worked on beach and ski stations, Energy FM in the Naki and was the first breakfast host of both The Edge and Channel Z before making the move to breakfast on the station he is most identified with, Radio Sport.
Devlin had a brief flirtation with news but said he found it too grim and depressing. However, it was during his time on Radio Live that he discovered that he had a famous fan. The admission still surprises and humbles him.
Martin was interviewing David Lange’s brother, Peter about the former Prime Minister’s death after the funeral and he said...
“I used to sit with David quite a few nights right through the night. Come 6 o’clock in the morning, the hospital would start to wake up a bit and David’s first request was for the radio, ‘Could I listen to Martin Devlin?’ That was his first request every morning”.
Peter Lange, August 2005
During his career he has been privileged to attend and broadcast from several Olympics and Commonwealth Games including Sydney 2000, Manchester 2002 and Athens 2004.
During Beijing 2008 he will be firmly fixed to the couch and remote control in Auckland.