Bryan Gould was a New Zealand Rhodes Scholar who obtained a fist-class postgraduate law degree at Oxford and then joined the British Diplomatic Service, serving first in the Foreign Office and then in the Embassy in Brussels. He returned to Oxford as a law don at Worcester College, before embarking on a political career as a Labour MP, first in Southampton and - after a few years in television - then in Dagenham. He unsuccessfully contested the Labour Party leadership and returned to New Zealand in 1994 as Vice-Chancellor of Waikato University.