Local elections: Comedian Tom Sainsbury's alter-ego Fiona running for Auckland mayor

Fiona - aka Tom Sainsbury - is running for the Auckland mayoralty. Photo / Facebook

Comedian Tom Sainsbury - best known for his hilarious impressions of MPs - has made a late bid to become Mayor of Auckland.

He'll be campaigning as his alter-ego "Fiona", a softly spoken blonde who was introduced to Sainsbury's Facebook followers this morning.

Fiona said she had put in the application on August 1, after getting very drunk to celebrate getting through Dry July.

She had made "a terrible mistake" in putting forward her name but she was going to see it through.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time."

Fiona is running for Auckland Mayor... Tom Sainsbury has kindly offered to be her campaign manager: https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/elections/Documents/draft-candidate-list.pdf

Posted by Tom Sainsbury - Comedian and Snapchat Dude on Friday, 16 August 2019

Sainsbury has gained fame for his use of Snapchat's face-swap technology to post musings from politicians - including a grim post from "Paula Bennett" confessing to running over the Prime Minister's cat, Paddles.

Fiona said the comedian would be acting as her campaign manager in the mayoralty race, in which she will run against Phil Goff and John Tamihere among others.

She said the move was "most likely" a big mistake. But her father had told her if you commit to something you must see it through to the end.

She did not give any indication of her policy platform.

Candidate nominations for Auckland's local body election closed at noon on Friday. A draft candidate list for Auckland shows 21 people have put their names forward for mayor, including Sainsbury, who is running as an independent.