Comedy Festival 2012: Jamie Bowen

Jamie Bowen's show is being held at the Vault. Photo / Supplied

The New Zealand International Comedy Festival begins this weekend bringing local and international comic heroes to our stages. Here, Jamie Bowen talks about his forthcoming shows.

Describe your show in 10 words or less: Like watching your drunk, musical uncle wrestle a chaotic narrative.

Will we have heard any of the jokes before? Some. It's a fresh version of the show I started developing last year. It's changed a good deal, but also remained the same in some places. However, not many of you will have heard the jokes before, because last time I did it, not many of you came.

Give us your best sales pitch: Why should we go to your show instead of saving our money for a big night out when Flight of the Conchords play in July? I'm taking this show to Edinburgh later in the year. Even though I'm being produced by Awesomeness International, it's still one of the most expensive but professionally beneficial festivals to do. Help a man avoid having to sell off a kidney in order to get there. Or worse; all three kidneys. There's three, right?

What is your pre-show ritual? I enjoy a smokey Scotch whilst having my feet rubbed by a team of orphaned children that I've adopted. The children sing me songs and rub my feet and tell me I look pretty in order to bolster my confidence (I have body issues). Once I go on stage, they normally go back under the stairs.

Is dying on stage a rite of passage for a comedian or something to be avoided at all costs? If you don't die on stage, you'll never know what it's truly like to be alone. The silence is deafening. I think it's less a rite of passage and more a dark, lonely place that you visit once and you try to never go back there. A lot like Invercargill.

Are members of the audience fair game? Or should they be treated with respect at all times? Abuse them respectfully. It's amazing what you can say to a person if you are genuinely smiling and being civil. Smiling verbal assassin. It says that on my business card.

If you were a super hero who would you be? Erotic Eating Man. I'd turn up to a crime scene and save the day by suggestively eating a Banana.

For those of you who don't have a musical aspect to your show ... how do you compete with all those clever dicks offering the double whammy of musical comedy? I'm musical, baby! Ukulele, Guitar and Mini Organ. Sometimes all at once. I can make a lot of noise for one guy.

Who will you be heading along to see during the festival? Idiots of Ants, Terry Alderton, Justine Smith and Irene Pink and most likely the team at the local A&E. Our dance-offs get serious. Last time, I got kicked in the head by a 200kg Tongan man. Just when I was about to bust my big move... Filthy cheat.

Who: Jamie Bowen
In: Munfred Bernstein's Cabinet of Wonder
Where: Vault at Q, 7.15pm, until May 5

- TimeOut