Being a comedian has taught me when to be appropriate. Different people like different things at different times. You'll be surprised at the amount of times someone has heard me say something naughty on TV at 10pm and repeated it to me loudly in a cafe within earshot of children and judging mothers. A Grey Lynn cafe is not the place to discuss my hideously deformed genitals.
Recently I got to work with Jemaine Clement. I'm a big fan and he was directing an episode of Short Poppies. I was going to play it "cool" and not look like I was trying to impress him by being funny or whacky. I introduced myself, shook his hand and then sat down on a deck chair near a parked truck. At a painfully slow rate, the deck chair collapsed and folded up, with me inside it. I then somehow managed to roll, heels over head, backwards under the truck - still folded inside the deck chair. It took Jemaine and about six other dudes to drag me out and unfold me from the deck chair. I'm not sure if he thinks I'm cool, but I certainly made an impression.
Being woken up by the smell of crepes being cooked by Mum is one of my happiest memories. She would make them in winter, when it was still dark on those frosty South Island mornings. It was brown sugar and lemon juice heaven. The earlier you got up, the more you got. My body will now violently awaken itself from any form of slumber if my nose gets a whiff of batter frying in butter.
My first professional acting gig was painful. It was a Christmas Revue in Timaru, and therefore was a mishmash of that year's most popular movies, including The Full Monty. This means we had to do a strip. During rehearsal I ripped my pants off and threw them up in the air. They wrapped around a stage light and caught fire. I tried to jump up and grab them, but landed on my big toe and tore the nail off. I had to go to A&E in a yellow g-string with a smiley face on it.
If I could be anything else I'd probably be a soldier. Not because of the fighting thing, I'm a pacifist. Mainly because of the uniforms and the ration packs. I spend probably an hour a day total deciding what to wear and what to eat. If someone else made these decisions for me I'd be stoked. By the end of the week I'd have like seven spare hours.
