KEY POINTS:
It could have been disastrous.
Welsh comedian Mark Watson had been in New Zealand less than four hours when he took to the stage of the Classic last night. His arrival marked his first ever visit to Aotearoa and he was somewhat uncertain of what to expect.
"Can you understand me?" he asked seriously in his bubbly Welsh accent, before laughing at his own trick question.
Watson likes to laugh at himself. Well, you would, if you were as funny as Watson.
Frantic, rambling and ever so slightly erratic, Watson is simply delightful. He spends as much time analysing his jokes as he does telling them, explaining why they were funny, or should have been funny.
Apparently New Zealanders have a different sense of humour to Watson's usual crowds.
"That was my best joke," he declared after a gag about Gillette razors, "and it barely got a laugh."
But as he launched into a energetic diatribe as to why that was his best joke, he had the audience in fits. As Watson put it, "You lot find the bits in-between the jokes funnier than the jokes. It's like comedy in reverse."
Humour comes naturally to Watson, as his numerous rounds of improv testified. While trying to stick to a format, the Welshman constantly found himself waylaid by his own random thoughts.
As the smell of toast wafted into the theatre - presumably from the kitchen next door - Watson forgot all about his kinky handcuffs story and embarked on a energetic tangent about heckling.
His logic being that someone deliberately taunting him with the smell of toast would be a particularly bizarre form of heckling.
Ending the night with a final rundown, a self-deprecating Watson declared the show a reasonable success. He felt it could have gone better and would improve gradually as he becomes better acquainted with New Zealand society.
"But we've had fun, haven't we?" he said hopefully.
Yes, Mark we have. We had a grand time. And even if the show doesn't improve, it is simply delightful as is.
* Mark Watson is at The Classic, until Saturday May 26
