He broadcast his last sports show on Auckland station The Point in 1997. Bickerstaff was the original pioneer of 'Contra' and for most of his career he was not paid a salary by the radio station. Rather he developed his own list of advertisers and sold their product on "time" – a certain number of minutes an hour – the station gave him in lieu of salary. He had a company called Artnoc (Contra spelled backwards). TVs, refrigerators, microwaves, or Souvenir editions of All Black or All White books – Bickerstaff sold them all, while at the same time drawing listeners with his controversial commentaries on sport. As Rattue recorded, Bickerstaff was responsible for giving Sir Peter Leitch his Mad Butcher "nickname". The two met in the Wiri Trust Hotel bar. Sir Peter, then a dyslexic former grave digger just beginning in business with Rosella Meats, took exception to Sportsline getting stuck into the Mangere East Rugby League Club, of which he was already a keen supporter. He ended up taking (and losing) bets off air with Bickerstaff, so when the radio man tried to sell him advertising he decided it was more sensible to spend the money promoting his business than losing it gambling. Leitch said in a newspaper interview he was sipping beer with Bickerstaff "and this Maori guy walks in, points to him and says: 'Hey, there's that ----ing mad butcher!'" The expletive deleted throw-away-line became a household name through many years of advertising with Bickerstaff. They remained friends for life. Sir Peter attended Bickerstaff's sixtieth birthday party, regularly called him to enquire after his well being, and spoke at his 2009 funeral. During the 1980s Bickerstaff regularly wrote a sports column for the "Sunday News". In 1998 he wrote and published "Heroes and Villains" with Josh Easby, Jenny Wheeler and John Andrews. The book was a nostalgic review of incidents of high and low moments in sport, giving the Bickerstaff perspective on the "what really happened." Sports men covered included cricketer Sir Richard Hadlee, yachtsman Chris Dickson, John Adshead and Charlie Dempsey, the men behind the 1982 All Whites Soccer World Cup campaign, and All Blacks Buck Shelford, Don Clarke and Keith Murdoch. Published by Hilton Valentine, a company the quartet formed for the purpose, it was a Father's Day best-seller.