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The Classic on Queen St, New Zealand's only home of live comedy, celebrated 10 years in business this week and is promising 390 live comedy events this year.
Classic director Scott Blanks announced the venue's plans to take comedy to the provinces through The Classic Comedy Network.
Comedians Dai Henwood, Andrew Clay, Michele A'Court and Gish and Sam Wills are going to Hamilton, Tauranga and Whangarei at the end of the month for a one-night-only gig and there are plans to expand farther down the North Island later in the year.
The dedicated comedy venue has been a stepping stone for local comedians, and some have made it big. There was a nod to the Flight of the Conchords, the musical comedy duo who won huge kudos in the US and is making an HBO show, and Ben Hurley, who has scored a job on a new BBC Radio sitcom alongside English comedian Andy Parsons.
There to toast a decade of classic comedy were sharp-as-ever wits Jeremy Corbett, Dean Butler, Brendhan Lovegrove and Andrew Clay, alongside 16-year-old Rhys Mathewson, who is the youngest pro comedian to work at the Classic.
Blanks says the new comedians enjoy a vastly different industry from their predecessors who started out doing stand-up in Auckland pub Kitty O'Brien's when Mathewson wasn't born and the Classic was a seedy adult cinema.
