Tim Bickerstaff

Herbal Ignite director Tim Bickerstaff had a massive heart attack on 31st October 2009 as he sat in his favourite chair in his Whitianga home on Halloween Night, confident that the company he founded 13 years before was strongly positioned to continue and grow into the next decade. And continue it will, on a very sound base of sales from direct marketing in New Zealand and overseas via the Internet and radio.

For the past two years Tim has been fully in support of his company Happy Families business strategy to launch Herbal Ignite as a truly international men’s health product, selling in Australia, the US and Asia with the same success it has enjoyed in New Zealand.

Tim was fully engaged in these plans and was excited about the prospects for Herbal Ignite, because he knew better than many men from personal experience how demoralising erectile dysfunction can be. The co-founder of Happy Families, former NZ Listener editor Jenny Wheeler remains closely involved and new staff have been brought in to head the company’s marketing strategies.

Willing to Speak Up
It was Tim’s willingness to speak up about his personal experience in shopping around for answers for erectile dysfunction that led to him launching Herbal Ignite in the first place.

His willingness to be up front, and at times controversial, in talking about a previously hidden problem that has helped thousands of other men have the confidence to start talking about their health in the same way as women have been talking about theirs for the last 30 years.

Tim and the company he founded, Happy Families Ltd, believe there is a transformation going on in men’s willingness to finally stop being shy and embarrassed and to start talking about their health, not just in the sexual arena but also about depression, prostate cancer, and other “hot health topics” for men.

Speaking the Same Language
Right up until the day he died Tim was very actively involved in planning the company’s radio advertising, voicing many of the ads and personally answering many of the customer calls, because he understood men like to talk to men.

And that was although increasingly in the last six months ill health from his well-known hard living and hard drinking lifestyle meant daily discomfort and challenge.

He enjoyed running a company offering the men’s sexual enhancement product Herbal Ignite because he's in the age group when he needed them himself, and he didn’t mind admitting it. He had “been there, done that and got the T-shirt.”

Brilliant Broadcasting Career
Men’s health was a second career for Tim, who enjoyed a prominent radio and television profile spanning 40 years in New Zealand and Australia before starting Herbal Ignite. In the mould of Melbourne’s Derryn Hinch or US “shock jock” Howard Stern, he enjoyed provoking controversy.

Tim began his broadcasting career as a TV sports reporter with the New Zealand Broadcasting Service in Rotorua, Dunedin and Wellington. He worked for 3DB in Melbourne in the 1960s before he returned to Auckland with his young family and began broadcasting with Radio I.

With his passion for sport and a prodigious memory for sports trivia he pioneered talkback on Sportsline with Geoff Sinclair on Radio I, and then moved onto more general talkback with his two hour Radio Pacific show, interviewing 2000 outstanding world personalities including Glen Campbell (singer), Mickey Rooney (actor) Billy Connelly (comedian), Ruth Westheimer (sexologist), Jack Nicklaus (golfer), Jackie Collins (author), and Xavier Hollander (porn actress)

When interviewing high profile real estate auctioneer Dick Gladding ‘live’ on air in 1989 Tim asked Gladding if his agency used “ring-ins” to boost the bidding. Gladding replied “Tim, I feel sick”. To which Tim replied “I thought you would say that”.

There was a long silent pause and Tim looked at Gladding. He had suffered a heart attack and was dead in the studio chair. (This was believed to be the first time in the history of world radio that this had ever happened).

Wrong Choice for Sport
From a keen sporting family, Tim’s athletics career ended almost before it began when he damaged his right knee contesting the junior national hammer throw title. He moved on to golf and then billiards, (he was NZ master’s billiards champion in 1982). He reckons giving up golf for billiards was one of his stupider decisions, because instead of enjoying the health benefits of roaming golf courses he ended up standing around billiard tables late into the night - with subsequent impact on his weight and his fitness.
He has admitted his media lifestyle was never very “family friendly and Tim and his wife Sue amicably separated 15 years ago. For the last ten years Sue, son Scott and daughter Brenda and their partners have all lived in Queensland, Australia.

Lifelong Sports Fan
Boxing has been a lifelong obsession, and Tim attended several world title fights which included Muhammad Ali regaining the title from Leon Spinks and Sugar Ray Leonard avenging his defeat at the hands of Roberto Duran. In Tim’s best-selling sports book Heroes and Villains, Muhammad Ali was his pick as the greatest fighter that ever lived.

Another highlight was attending the Superbowl in Atlanta in 1994 when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Buffalo Bills. The trip was made more memorable when he managed to lock himself out of his hotel room in the nude while pushing a room service trolley into the corridor.
It was a final irony that he didn’t live to see Saturday night’s All Black’s-Wallabies Test in Tokyo, though he was all primed to watch both that and the Kiwis playing Rugby League In France later in the night.

Aging and Excess
A “man's man,” Tim made his own rules on his own show and sank his Vodka with the same vigor as his billiards balls. So when he noticed the inevitable effects of aging and excess on his sex life in his mid 50s, he wasn't about to just “grin and bear it.” He investigated this “hidden health issue” for mid-life men first hand – and found he wasn't alone. In fact 50% of men over the age of 40 suffer from some episodes of sexual inadequacy – but most of them don't want to acknowledge it.

It takes most men three years from the time they first notice they can't perform sexually as they want - experiencing isolated episodes – till when they gather enough confidence to make a call seeking help.

Not Tim. He tried all the sexual enhancement products available, talked widely with his mates about erectile dysfunction, and then came up with a scientifically formulated erectile dysfunction solution – the male enhancement product Herbal Ignite.

He hung up six times before finally making the call to a specialist men’s clinic for help. “It’s a bloody hard call to make,” says Tim. “I know what it’s like." In the days before the little blue pill made men’s sexual health an acceptable conversation topic, Tim was a pioneer in his willingness to “talk about it”.

The specialist clinic gave him an injection which he says “pretty much worked – but injecting yourself didn’t exactly excite me, and I couldn’t stand having a syringe beside the bed – I found it just horrific, not natural.”

That was the mid 90s - before US Senator Bob Dole fronted his sexual performance issue on television commercials, before Rugby League coach Graham Lowe appeared in Cialis ads, Tim was talking about his personal experiences in looking for support for sexual health.

The Little Blue Pill Helped
Just about then, Viagra, the little blue pill was launched in the US and Tim was one of the first New Zealanders to legally import it for his own use. But when it became an accepted pharmaceutical item Tim says “I didn’t like having to go to the doctor to get it, I found sometimes it didn’t work, and I got bad headaches with it.”

The whole subject of sexual performance is getting a lot easier to talk about, Tim said.

“We get men who have been recommended Ignite by a mate in the pub, and we have a lot of couples who discuss the problem together and then the wife rings up and orders for her husband or for both of them. People from all walks of life ring up now.”

There’s no doubt that Viagra and people like Bob Dole coming out and talking about it has helped get rid of the ‘cringe factor’.

“Men still make the excuse they are ‘too tired’ or ‘too pissed’ or they try to get to bed first or last so they don’t have to think about performing… The great thing is now there is a natural alternative that doesn’t involve doctor’s bills and men can feel free to talk to us or one another about it.”

The Seaside Beckoned
After many years living on a country lifestyle block on the outskirts of Auckland (where he was one of the first people in NZ to get satellite TV with a backyard dish) Tim moved to a smaller property on the Coromandel peninsula with panoramic views. He loved to sit on his deck and watch sky, sea and boats.

Until Halloween 2009, that is, when Tim peacefully and with no trauma passed away, and was found by some local teens out trick or treating. They reported to a neighbour that all did not seem to be well, as they could see through a window that Tim was not moving, although they’d been banging at the door. When the neighbour investigated, she found Tim for all the world looking as if he had fallen asleep in his chair.

A wonderful way for a man who had known controversy and a certain amount of pot-stirring to exit.

Tim has gone, but the company he founded that has helped 70,000 men find new sexual vigour is going as strongly as ever in countries where the men have never heard of Tim Bickerstaff, broadcaster. You can see why they swear by Herbal Ignite by ordering some today.