Billy T’ Billy: Jeremy Corbett and Michele A’Court on the early years of the Comedy Festival

Jeremy Corbett, Michele A'Court and Rhys Mathewson on the Billy T' Billy podcast. Photo / NZ Herald

When you are trying to start a festival at the bottom of the world and you want to lure international talent over, how do you convince them to fly all the way to New Zealand?

By letting them stay at your aunties bach, apparently.

This year marks 30 years since the first New Zealand International Comedy Festival - or the Auckland International Laugh Festival, as it was known originally. As part of the celebrations for this milestone, the NZ Herald podcast Billy T’ Billy will be spotlighting the festival for a special trio of episodes looking at how the festival was formed and how comedy has changed during that time.

Speaking to host Rhys Mathewson, Paul Horan, one of the founders of the festival, recalled how the festival had no money to lure international guests to New Zealand, but knew that the country itself was a selling point for these visiting comedians.

“Bill Bailey is a great example of someone who we lured to New Zealand with shit money, but we said we are going show you the best of New Zealand. And one of the ways that we brought them in was we said we’ll take you mullet fishing at Murawai Beach. Someone’s auntie had a house in the Coromandel and we gave them that.

“So we were spending money on pulling favours and doing things like that, and so people like Bill Bailey would go back to England and saying, New Zealand is the best.”

Simon Pegg pre-Star Trek and Mission Impossible was one of the early comedians courted to New Zealand, and Horan remembers his agent calling after Pegg got back stunned at the treatment, after being taken sky diving and rafting during his tour.

The festival quickly though became a local fixture, with the Gala featured on TV since nearly its inception, and big budgets started to come in for the opening night. Jeremy Corbett, who hosted two Comedy Galas at the turn of the century, remembered one opening night where he drove a Jaguar on to The Civic’s stage before a choreographed dance.

“It’s kind of still happens a little bit, but now people just want to get to the laughs.”

Before the shows got big though, the late 90s saw local comedians set up the New Zealand Comedy Guild in response to the growth of the industry. Michele A’Court, who alongside Corbett drove the guild’s formation, said that there was a point where the only people not being paid for taking part in the Comedy Galas was the guilds.

“So you know your camera, sound director, producer, ushers, stage manager, floor manager, everybody got paid their normal commercial rate. But comedians were told that you were lucky to be in the show and that it would promote your career. So we started the guild and threatened to strike. And it worked!”

For more from Jeremy, Michele and Paul on their early Comedy Festival memories, listen to the full episode of Billy T’ Billy now.

Billy T’ Billy is a NZ Herald podcast celebrating local comedy, in partnership with the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. New episodes are out every Tuesday.

The festival is now on in Auckland and Wellington, and runs until May 28th.

You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.