Everyone's good mate Billy T's back

"Air, hair, lair"
If you're a Kiwi over a certain age, chances are you'll remember the famous sketch from The Billy T James Show.
In the parody, Captain Cook, played by Peter Rowley, taught the Maori how to say hello in his homeland.
After pointing out the words for air, hair and lair, "Cook" ran them all together to form the perfect-rounded vowelled greeting: "Air, hair-lair".
Rowley spent five years writing and performing with James on The Billy T James Show, which was a television phenomenon in the 1980s.
The show hit its peak in 1985 and 1986, when more than half the population tuned in to watch it each week.
Now in a new stage show, Rowley offers a trip down memory lane of the well-known Kiwi show.
Billy T & Me is an audio-visual stage show which tours New Zealand this year, including Tauranga, on February 4.
The retrospective show celebrates Rowley's association with New Zealand's most-loved comedian, which started in 1977 on A Week Of It.
The pair also worked together on McPhail & Gadsby, but it was The Billy T James Show which was the peak of their partnership and produced sketches such as "Turangi Vice" and Jock Cousteau.
Rowley has great memories of that time, and will never forget the phone call from James asking him to get involved.
"I was doing stand-up comedy in Melbourne at the time. I had met him a few times in the TVNZ corridor and we sort of clicked. He was very good at accents and I thought of myself as an accent man, and I think he liked that.
"I wrote as well as performed. When I wrote with him, I actually lived at his house," Rowley recalls.
"Working with him and writing shows was just unbelievable. We thoroughly enjoyed taking the mickey out of just about everything, Maori, Pakeha, Americans, Chinese, South Africans - everybody.
"We had a lot of fun off screen. We became mates and did some pretty bizarre things together. We liked guns a lot, we used to do target shooting - we got up to a bit of mischief, had a lot of boysy boy fun."
Billy T & Me will show 50 minutes of remastered footage chosen from the archives by Rowley.
"The rest of the time is taken up with me talking about what it was like working with him, why he chose me, what we got up to both on- and off-screen. I incorporate stand-up comedy as well."
Rowley has been overwhelmed by the response to the show's first performances.
Billy T James is a much loved New Zealander, he says.
"For the first time in my career as a performer, I have people coming up to me after the show hugging me, because Billy was a part of their lives. They held him very dear to their hearts.
"He did a lot of good for this country. He allowed us, especially after the Springbok debacle where it was racially divided, he put his arms around the people and said we are a multicultural society, let's laugh at ourselves as well."
Almost 20 years after his death, the comedian's popularity hasn't waned.
He is the first and only New Zealand entertainer to go platinum posthumously, with the last DVD selling 45,000 copies.
Rowley said YouTube had introduced a new generation to his comedy - one of the sketches has received 110,000 hits.
The performer puts the enduring popularity of James to the fact he is "incredibly, overtly, Kiwi".
"He's our Elvis. It's taken 20 years for people to realise he can never be replaced. Elvis is Elvis, and Billy T is Billy T. He is going to be forever a part of our history."
And Rowley says young people appreciate the skits for their refreshing lack of political correctness.
"A lot of people, especially young people, are quite sick of it, they would like to see more humour directed towards ourselves."
Rowley hopes to take the show offshore later in the year to target ex-pat Kiwis in Australia and London.
The show has been accepted for the Auckland Comedy Festival in May.
Rowley will also contribute to an upcoming documentary about Billy T which will be directed by Ian Mune.
Billy T and Me, Classic Flyers, February 4.
Tickets from Classic Flyers or www.dashtickets.co.nz