NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Aucklander / Lifestyle

Urzila Carlson: Out of Africa

The Aucklander
25 Apr, 2012 06:00 PM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

I can be pretty funny, but I'd never have the courage to take to the stage. And I'm certainly no match for the snort-inducing humour of comedian Urzila Carlson.

We meet for coffee before her International Comedy Festival shows and I'm wearing minimal mascara so I don't look like a fat female version of Alice Cooper if I cry with laughter - because Carlson is by far the funniest thing with tits on 7 Days, the TV3 comedy gameshow based on the week's news.

Within minutes she's judged me by my coffee, which is soy. "I'm thinking about you a little differently now," she deadpans, after earlier having indicated she thought I was okay, for a journalist.

Carlson has been in New Zealand four years, having emigrated from South Africa with 3158 others in 2008 (the highest rate of arrivals ever), disturbed by the crime and the life she saw ahead for her then-partner's son.

There's not a lot of comedy in the story she recounts. A 10-year-old girl had been raped by three 10-year-old boys at school. Carlson was working as a graphic designer at a newspaper and the paper was not allowed to report it. "Then my partner's boy started school and I knew what had gone on. In the back of the kid's homework book they have these school rules that say, 'You are not allowed to sexually violate a classmate, you are not allowed to take a gun to school ... I'm like, 'He's 6 years old'.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"I decided right then and there to emigrate. I didn't know where." The next day an ad in the paper called for people to emigrate to New Zealand and six months later they did.

Unlike many other South Africans, she didn't choose to settle in Howick or on the North Shore, citing an encounter with some of the attitudes in her homeland she was trying to escape from. She lasted a week on the Shore. Four years on, she's with a Kiwi partner and lives in Blockhouse Bay next door to her sister and two young nephews. Her mother spends six months a year in Auckland.

Carlson's life has changed in a "feel the fear and do it anyway" kind of fashion. She's become a regular on 7 Days, at the Classic Comedy Club and in comedy festivals including Adelaide and Melbourne, and now New Zealand.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

She'd been working as a graphic designer at Ogilvy ad agency, providing her workmates with regular laughs. "We worked in pods and we would always have a good laugh. When I left, they gave me a coffee-maker because I am a total coffee addict, but they also gave me a fake contract to do an open mic night at the Classic."

Open mic night on Mondays involves comedy newcomers getting up and having a crack. "I could think of nothing worse, honestly, but I thought, 'I don't want to be a dick and not go'. It was peer pressure. I was booked in to do five minutes." About 70 workmates turned up and she had them in hysterics. "What we didn't know was it was the start of the Raw Comedy quest. The next day I got a call and the owner says, 'You're through to the next round'.

"I go, 'What?' then 'No dude, I'm not interested in comedy, why don't you give it to someone else?' And he goes, 'No, come back'.

"I thought I would go and do it with no one I knew there to see if they'd still laugh. So I went back and people still laughed."

She didn't win, but the Classic kept booking her ... and she'd designed herself a whole new job as a standup comedian.

"You get really hooked on it. It gives you an adrenalin rush. I don't sleep for more than four hours a night after it ... you can't just go home and crash, especially if it's a really good gig. But if it's a really bad gig you don't want to sleep either."

This will be her first comedy festival in Auckland and Wellington but she hasn't completely left South Africa behind. One show in each city will be in Afrikaans.

At first she was worried people might not go to see her, but is stoked to learn that her I'm Going to Need a Second Opinion shows are nearly sold out.

"I track the sales through Ticketek's website. It's really obsessive, I keep hitting refresh to see how many are left," she roars with laughter, knowing she's only half joking.

She can still scarcely believe she's being paid to have a laugh. "If somebody had said to me four years ago this is what I would be doing I would have said you're out of your fricken mind," she says, toning down the language - briefly - for a young fan nearby.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

But the 37-year-old is as pragmatic as she is funny, keeping up with her design work too - she designed her own festival poster and that of several other comedians. "I never want to turn work down. I may well be flavour of the month this month, but you know ..."

I ask her how many hours a day she does in her new "job", and make the mistake of using my hands to indicate quote marks around the word job. "I love how people put the word 'job' in quotes when they talk about what I do, like I just f*** around all day!"

A flick through her diary shows it's chocker.I am suitably chastised.

Her first gig saw her get paid $40, but these days she does pretty well from TV and corporate gigs. And she's not too fussed if the recession sticks around.

"Ever since the recession hit, comedy has taken off," she says. Guess we all need a laugh, and you'd have to be pretty humourless not to get one from this lady.

HAVE A LAUGH

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

WHAT Urzila Carlson: I'm Going to Need a Second Opinion

WHEN/WHERE Q Theatre, CBD, Saturday, April 28, Tues May 1 to Sat, May 5, 5.15pm and 8.45pm (Tues show in Afrikaans)

HOW MUCH $20, call 0800 TICKETEK (842 538)

WEB urzilacarlson.com or comedyfestival.co.nz

Watch Urzila having a laugh



Thanks to the South Africa Shop in Rosedale for the location and props.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Leave us a comment in the box below or on our Facebook page or email letters@theaucklander.co.nz

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Lifestyle

Lifestyle

Hidden Auckland delights: Hot springs, Staydium Glamping, and weekend markets

Lifestyle

Postie delivers a children’s book about lovable dogs

Lifestyle

Womad's Bab L' Bluz keen on jamming with locals


Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Lifestyle

Hidden Auckland delights: Hot springs, Staydium Glamping, and weekend markets
Lifestyle

Hidden Auckland delights: Hot springs, Staydium Glamping, and weekend markets

Even in our biggest city, there are still ways to get away from it all.

03 Jul 06:00 AM
Postie delivers a children’s book about lovable dogs
Lifestyle

Postie delivers a children’s book about lovable dogs

24 Jan 06:26 PM
Womad's Bab L' Bluz keen on jamming with locals
Lifestyle

Womad's Bab L' Bluz keen on jamming with locals

30 Nov 04:00 PM


Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
Sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

06 Jul 09:47 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP