Jeya Wilson and David Lange. Photo: Supplied
No-one could have predicted the twists and turns Jeya Wilson's life would take between being born in Sri Lanka in 1951 and living a "hermit-life existence" in Whanganui.
Between being bullied as a 'blackie' during her childhood in England to helping Barack Obama become the United States' first African-American president, she helped kickstart the anti-nuclear movement, toured apartheid South Africa with her white partner and won a student election with Boris Johnson as her running mate.
But what she is perhaps best-known for is getting David Lange to take part in the 1985 Oxford Union debate, in which he delivered the famous line, "If you will hold your breath just for a moment - I can smell the uranium on it as you lean towards me."
"It's regarded as the place that produces prime ministers because so many prime ministers have come out of there," she told RNZ's Nights.
But mindful of the abuse she got as a child in England, she never planned to go to Oxford University.
"My father had tried to persuade me to go to England because he had studied there and I'd been there as a child, and I told him he was an anglophile and I wasn't going to do what he wanted… But after I saw Oxford, I thought maybe I would like to go there after all."
Unable to afford the fees, she studied hard and got a scholarship. Soon she found herself running for the presidency of the Oxford Union alongside Johnson, the future prime minister of the UK and her successor at the union, and became just the second woman of colour to hold the prestigious title - behind Benazir Bhutto, the future prime minister of Pakistan.
"My father was a principal, his last job was as the principal in Samoa of the teacher training college. You know, whereas Benazir, her father was a president of a country, and so there were great differences there…
"It was only being able to debate that got me there, you know, rather than any social or other connections, which I didn't have any."
Jeya Wilson and Boris Johnson. Photo: Supplied
Before that, however, she was on the standing committee which set up the famous debates.
"The then-president jokingly said, 'Jeya, can you get the New Zealand Prime Minister to come?' And I said, 'Maybe.' And so I wrote a letter to him. Now, I had known him before through the anti-apartheid movement, and so I wrote to him and said, you know, 'Would you consider coming?' And he wrote back and said yes…
"It's to his eternal credit that he was willing to take that risk and come and debate, not knowing how the debate would go. Because when I was president - and this is quite important - I won't name the country, but another prime minister wanted to come… and I said, of course, will you be very welcome and we'd love to have you here. But he said, the person who wrote on his behalf, can you guarantee that he will win the debate? I said, no, I can't.
"And so then I realised, you know, what a risk David Lange was taking coming there. You know, he could have lost the whole debate which was broadcast all over, live broadcast."
She was the first speaker in the infamous debate, on the motion "that nuclear weapons are morally indefensible". The rumour was that Ronald Reagan himself was watching.
"The atmosphere was electric because there was quite a lot at stake in the sense of, you know, you don't often get a prime minister coming and debating - they come and speak and there have been lots of them. But debate? That's a different story…
"David Lange got a standing ovation like, in my time there, I'd never seen a standing ovation like that… he wasn't expected to win because he was against, you know, a lot of Americans and the way he handled it… He held that whole audience in the palm of his hand throughout."
Nowadays, Wilson lives a quiet life in Whanganui.
"I am living a hermit-like existence by choice. After 14 years in living on the shores of Lake Geneva, I always said I'll come back home to die, to Aotearoa.
"And so my husband and I came back here, and I didn't want to live in Wellington, and it was Te Awa here in Whanganui… as you know, it is the first river in the world to have been accorded legal rights, and just love being here and leading a simple existence, and I wouldn't change it for anything.
"And you found me - how you did, I don't know."
Listen to the full interview for more on Jeya Wilson's incredible life story.
