Greater expectations

Jeremy Elwood's family were visiting from Canada recently so he showed them what him and his mates got up to last year on comedy show 7 Days. It's fair to say, the Canadians were a little taken aback.

"They couldn't believe what we were getting away with, because you wouldn't get away with it in most places," smiles Elwood, who is part of the revolving cast of comedians on the TV3 show which returns to screens on May 7.

In its debut season nothing was taboo, with at times disgustingly clever takes on everything from female body parts to Tony Veitch getting loud and proud airings.

And because the show was based on the week's pressing issues there was a freshness and sharpness to the gags.

Elwood believes the show has helped raise the standard of local comedy - and made it more bold and daring in the process.

"We get away with shit that we really don't expect to get away with a lot of the time," he admits. "It's the first show that I've been involved with where we really just get free rein to do what we do. They point the camera at us and let us go and I can't emphasise how rare that is."

And it's 7 Days' cavalier yet hilarious approach - as well as the talents of Elwood, Dai Henwood, host Jeremy Corbett, and others - that's seen the Friday night show give the local comedy scene a big boost in popularity.

"For a long time New Zealand audiences were surprised that comedy was as good as it was and now they're expecting it to be better - and I think that's great."

As a result, even after more than a decade as a comedian, he now finds himself taking every show a little more seriously. "I'm not as well recognised as some people on that show, like Dai, but for me it's about living up to that increased expectation which has been very good for me because you can get complacent when you're playing the same venue and the same kind of gig."

With Elwood's profile bigger than ever, thanks to 7 Days and his cheeky and politically slanted blog on the TV3 website, why go and see him live at the Comedy Festival this year when we can see him in so many other places?

The simple answer, he reckons, especially during a festival, is that you will not see the majority of Jeremy Elwood Thinks Too Much at a regular comedy club gig let alone on TV.

"For instance I've got 10 minutes on euthanasia, which you can't really pull out at an 8pm Friday show. That's the beauty of a one-hour performance, and this sounds slightly pretentious, but you can take the audience on a journey. It's the difference between a single and an album for a musician."

His new show is not about the daunting realm of philosophical thought, but more about what makes people think the way they do. He trialled it in Dunedin recently and it went down well winning Best Comedy show at the city's Fringe Festival in March.

"People don't think about why they think certain things - and that's influenced by marketing, upbringing, religion, and politics," he explains.

"So I'm not trying to tackle the entire philosophy of thought, because people have been trying to do that for centuries. It's about five core things that I think influence the way society in general thinks.

"Funny," he considers with a grin, "it never sounds funny when I say it like that but there are lots of laughs."

LOWDOWN

Who: Jeremy Elwood
What: Thinking person's comedian
Latest: Jeremy Elwood Thinks Too Much, Elliott Stables, May 11-15, 8.30pm