Trevor’s out and about again, in coronation skit

TikTok star Jeff Rangihuna (left) and Aidan Malone perform in Gladstone Road. Turanga FM pictures

 by Duncan Gillies, NZ Herald

A group of Gisborne creatives who satirised the region’s relationship with Captain James Cook have turned their focus on the King.

The video Cooked was produced by local radio station Turanga FM in 2019 to coincide with the 250th anniversary of Cook’s landing at Tairāwhiti and has since been viewed almost 70,000 times.

A follow-up video, Hear Ye! Hear Ye! to mark King Charles’ coronation, has been viewed more than 8500 times in a matter of days.

In Cooked, Aidan Malone (Te Aitanga-a-Māhaki) plays local man Trevor, who dresses like Cook in honour of the man who “put the Poverty in Poverty Bay”.

Trevor “grew up on Cook St, and then Endeavour St”, holidayed at the “Captain Cook Motor Lodge”, and spends much of his time extolling the achievements of the English explorer, much to the amusement and bemusement of the locals.

Not all, it’s fair to say, share Trevor’s admiration for Cook.

Now Trevor is back as the city’s town crier and is accompanied by TikTok star “Etta Bei Jeff from Kaiti” (Jeff Rangihuna, Ngāti Porou) to translate his cries.

The pair are filmed around the city, Trevor bringing “good tidings from the House of Windsor” (translation: Our man’s got the goss all the way from te Whare o Windsor) and informing “the subjects of the colony of Gisborne” that “great festivities are taking place” (translation: We’re about to have a three-day bender, all on King Dingaling).

Gisborne-based writer and journalist Tina Wickliffe (Ngāti Porou) is the driving force behind the videos and said the aim was to entertain while getting people to think about the topics they covered.

She wrote Cooked as a side-project to Turanga FM’s coverage of the Tuia 250 celebrations which marked the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival, something Wickliffe points out is still a sensitive topic with local iwi — several Māori were shot in the first encounters with the crew of Cook’s Endeavour.

And Hear Ye! Hear Ye! — in which Trevor and Etta Bei Jeff visit neighbourhoods with streets named after English cities — draws a contrast between the events in London and the likes of London St.

“In many ways, we are dealing with the legacy of colonialism,” Wickliffe said.

“It makes us who we are

in Gisborne. But we wanted

to address it in a way that wasn’t alienating. Satire is a legitimate form of political commentary.”

She said both Rangihuna, whose martial arts routines have made him a hit on TikTok, and Malone took to their roles enthusiastically and improvised along the way.

Malone likened their performances to street theatre. “The response was generally positive.

“Things have been pretty tough in Gizzy so it’s good to be able to go out and put a smile on people’s faces.

“The aim is to get people thinking deeply about things but in a light way. We just want people to have conversations,” he said.

Which may mean more work for Trevor.

“Yeah, with an election coming up, I definitely think we’ll be bringing out Trevor again,” Wickliffe says.