New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key has given two bottles of personalised wine to an Auckland waitress who threatened to ‘actually hit him soon’ if he did not stop pulling her hair.

The anonymous cafe worker posted an online account of the “humiliating” incidents on Wednesday, which she said occurred between September last year and March 2015, prompting a public apology.

“He was like the school yard bully tugging on the little girls’ hair trying to get a reaction, experiencing that feeling of power over her,” the woman wrote for the left-wing Daily Blog.

• Former president jailed
• Gabi Grecko charged with obscene exposure
• Julie Bishop contrasts French, Iranian freedoms

At first, the waitress interpreted the gesture as “playful and jolly”, but began feeling “tormented” and tried to avoid Mr Key when he visited, she said.

That only seemed to embolden the politician, resulting in a “game”.

Mr Key described the ponytail tugging as ‘light-hearted’. Photo: AAP

“It seemed as though the more I disliked it and made myself absent the more fun it became for him, the more he enjoyed the challenge of approaching from behind me, unsuspected.

“He would come up behind me when I was at the ordering terminal, tug on my hair and then pretend that his wife, Bronagh, had done it (much to her embarrassment), and she would tell him to stop it.

“That’s a very tantalising ponytail,” Mr Key said after one tugging incident, the waitress claimed.

The final tug resulted in Mr Key’s wife Bronagh telling him to “leave the poor girl alone”, and the waitress threatening to “physically stop” him, she claimed.

Despite this, he allegedly pulled her hair again.

“[A]s he motioned to leave and I turned towards the computer, he couldn’t resist that satisfying tug and once again he pulled my hair.”

Soon after, he gave her two bottles of JK 2012 PM’s Pinot Noir, and said “sorry, I didn’t realise”, the woman said.

New Zealand’s leader apologised in a statement for his “light-hearted” behaviour shortly before the blog was posted.

“It’s a familiar cafe which he [Mr Key] regularly visits with [wife] Bronagh and both have a good relationship with those who work there,” said the statement.

“It was never his intention to make her feel uncomfortable and he has apologised to her.”

-with AAP.