On this week’s episode of Billy T’ Billy, the NZ Herald’s comedy podcast, Stuart, Hotene and Dom got together for a discussion about taking part in the award, their nominated shows and the comedy scene in general.
Stuart, who emigrated to New Zealand from Scotland during the pandemic, said that he was told the Auckland comedy scene was “cliquey” when he arrived.
And while he didn’t find that to be true, he has found that some comedians avoid the open mic nights.
“I think people are snobs about the open mics. I don’t think they do them because they think that they’ve moved past them, but it’s not a status, it’s a tool. If you know how to use it, you’ll find you’ll get good stuff out.
“When I started doing standup [in Edinburgh], everybody used the open mics. From your beginners to pros, they were all using open mics to test material and write material. And it’s not because the open mics were any better – they did get better because they were better attended by pros, so people would come because they were like, you never know who you’re gonna see.
“But we don’t have that sort of unity here because for some reason they’ve set it up as it’s a status [that] you are an open mic comedian.”
Live comedy is now being profoundly influenced by social media, with viral clips helping to make or break a comedian’s career.
It is something Hotene experienced last year, after getting more than two million views on Instagram for a set about being Māori and ginger.
“Your phone just doesn’t stop. [It] just keeps going and going. And then people were commenting, commenting a lot. I think everybody thinks that the internet’s gonna be real bad, so it’s really strange when you’re just getting like kind of a lot of nice stuff.”
Listen to the full episode for more from David Stuary, Hoani Hotene and Itay Dom on jobs outside of comedy, and their strangest-ever gigs. And listen next week for the other half of this year’s Billy T nominees.
Billy T’ Billy is a NZ Herald podcast celebrating local comedy, in partnership with the New Zealand International Comedy Festival. New episodes are out every Wednesday.
The festival runs from May 2nd to 25th in Auckland and Wellington.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
