One of New Zealand's best-known broadcasters has died.
Paddy O'Donnell, 65, worked in broadcasting for more than 40 years, including stints in public and private radio in New Zealand and Australia. He died on Tuesday night after a long battle with cancer.
Mr O'Donnell was a radio reporter when the Wahine sank in Wellington Harbour on April 1968, and presented New Zealand's first talkback radio show on 2ZB in the same year.
He was also one of the original radio "pirates" who broadcast from the ship Tiri on the Hauraki Gulf during the 1960s, in a challenge to the then-state radio monopoly.
He also worked in television.
Mr O'Donnell worked in Australia for many years, before returning to New Zealand in 1998, when he established a small community radio station on the Kapiti Coast north of Wellington.
