Taking a look at life's Black side

By REBECCA BARRY

Lewis Black had been in the country just three days when he had a word with Helen Clark. The New York comedian was at a radio studio doing promo for his Laugh! Festival show when the Prime Minister made her weekly phone call. Black seized the opportunity.

How are things going with Bush, he asked. Then he told her Dick Cheney didn't exist. "Well, have you ever seen him?"

Later, over a latte in an Auckland cafe, he confesses he can't believe he'd spoken with the country's leader. "That's huge. Bush wouldn't call anybody. If he'd called I would've hung up."

A few tender weeks after September 11, when "war on terrorism" was becoming a catch-phrase, Black made jokes about George W. Bush. They weren't particularly funny, according to one critic, but they were significant because he condemned the US President when no one else dared to.

"Bush is an idiot," he says. "It's shocking for a country of 270 million people. We could've done better with a lottery. What really upset me was that he didn't show up in New York City until three days later. Everyone was like, 'We've got to protect the President. What and I gotta be exposed?"

Humour is what separates us from terrorism, he reasons. He laughs at politics because otherwise he'd cry.

On stage, dressed in a black leather jacket, eyebrows raised in permanent disbelief, he attacks not only the government but Starbucks, airport security and major corporations who "make shit up", a tirade accentuated by spitting, wobbling jowls and a strange gurgling noise.

But Black's exasperation doesn't stop at the state of world affairs. The "war on stupidity", as he has called his show, reflects on simple peeves. The fact that when you call the phone company, you get an answerphone. When you move into a new apartment in New York, they remove all the blinds. That a latte in New Zealand is sometimes served in a "soup bowl".

"There's no handle. I'm licking it like a cat."

He admits that after 20 hours of flying, he was pleased to get to New Zealand. "I was just pleased there was anything here."

New Zealand must be a great place to live, he says, citing a front-page Herald photograph of an elderly man enjoying a tipple. "That was fabulous. When that's the prime news for the day, that's a great country. People are worried about whether they're going to get their sherry.

"But you're way too active. You're back-packing with your heavy shoes on. You're quad biking. You're bungy jumping. I don't like freefalling in a dream. I just wanna go sit down at the wharf with a glass of wine and stare at your water. There's not enough insanity in your own life that you gotta go jump off a bridge? What is the matter with you people?"

Black studied at the Yale drama school and became a struggling playwright. It was poverty that led him into comedy and before long he'd conquered the New York comedy circuit.

Now he's working on the pilot for a sitcom and as a mentor, teaching inner-city children to act and write plays. He's also an ardent fundraiser for several scholarship programmes, including the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Black shares the bill at his Laugh! Festival gig with Emmy-award winning stand-up Jeff Stilson, the producer of TV show The Osbournes. While Stilson makes light jokes about relationships, Black sticks to accentuating the negative.

"It's great for your economy that they did Lord of the Rings here but do you know how many [expletive] that's going to attract to your country? How many moronic tourists? You're going to have these people who can't differentiate the reality from the fiction wandering around your country looking for Frodo. People will be dressing up like him.

"Oh boy, you guys are doomed for years. Don't think there won't be a Lord of the Rings amusement park here some day."

Performance:

Who: Lewis Black (with Jeff Stilson

Where: Civic Wintergarden

When: 9 tonight until Saturday