Taking the laughter from living room to stage, Ego and his fellow funnymen have hit the road for 7 Days Live, stopping at Napier Municipal Theatre next Tuesday. Audiences can take part by drawing pictures for My Audience Member Could Draw That and creating their own captions via text message for Caption That.
"If people have seen us on TV, it's not much different except of course we have more freedom, there's also a stand-up component - the beauty is that we are all experienced stand-ups, to be able to see a bill like that and the show as well is pretty great."
He encouraged locals to get their tickets and forget their worries for the evening.
"It's a really good way to end the year, even before I started comedy, I used to like seeing it because it makes you feel good - it's been a particularly stressful year financially - I can relate to that because I don't have a proper job."
A signwriter by trade, Ego got his break in comedy at a London pub in the early 90s, with five minutes of original material and a responsive crowd.
He was 28 and had been convinced by his sister-in-law to give it a go. "After that I just started doing more and more and more - but doing stand-up in New Zealand is still quite new, people weren't doing it until Andrew Clay had tried it in Australia and introduced it here in the mid-90s."
After returning home from Britain in 1994, Ego won the Billy T Comedy Award, worked on the Kim & Corbett Breakfast Show as a presenter and become part of the The Rock's Morning Rumble team.
But perhaps his best known guise is that of the Pak'nSave stick man for which he takes on a classic Kiwi accent.
"I'm actually most famous for that, when I go to pick up my son, he's standing there with a group of boys and he's like 'can you do the voice?'."
7 Days Live will be at Napier Municipal Theatre on December 17, available through Ticketek.
