Heard the one about the comedian running for mayor? Matt Nippert joined the audience at a Te Awamutu pub to hear Ewen Gilmour launch his campaign for Auckland Supercity's top job.
He steps anxiously from one foot to the other, his eyes locked on the floor. He's performed in front of hundreds of thousand on television, and thousands in town halls, but the nationally recognisable figure with an eye on near-national office was feeling nervous on Wednesday before appearing in front of a couple of dozen punters in a rural pub.
Comedian and perennial Westie Ewen Gilmour shuffles around behind the bar, to the bathroom, and clenches and unclenches his fists. Then the call comes, introducing him to his audience and he's bumping and grinding his way to the stage before he tosses back his Jesus hair and unleashes a grin that causes his diamond-studded gold tooth to reflect in the spotlight.
"I'm using this opportunity, here in Te Awamutu, to launch my campaign to become mayor of Auckland Supercity! F***, yeah!" he shouts, nerves forgotten.
The crowd goes wild, responding enthusiastically to a political platform that is more a procession of punchlines than a serious plan for change in Auckland's largest city. The gig contains equal measures of the beer-fuelled bravado of Oktoberfest and the naive optimism of an Obama "Yes We Can" rally.
"We've got a place in Auckland called Botany Downs - which is negative, like Botany Downs Syndrome. So I'm going to change it to Mongol Heights!" calls Gilmour.
"F*** yeah!" the crowd responds.
"We've also got a place called Flat Bush, and I wouldn't go there. But if it was called No Bush?"
"F*** yeah!"
"I want to make Aucklanders feel good about themselves. I want Auckland to be fun. My idea for a third harbour crossing? Flying fox."
With his hands raised above his head, Gilmour wallows in the chants.
Gilmour has always suffered nerves before stepping into the public limelight: "When I started I lived with a doctor," he says. "He saw me before a show and freaked out and prescribed me some beta blockers [heart medication that can be used to treat anxiety]."
But in October he'll be facing far more than 85 punters in Te Awamutu's Redoubt pub. The comedian will be courting the support and risking the rejection of around a million eligible voters in the first Supercity elections.
Gilmour announced in the Herald on Sunday last month that he would be standing for mayor and he says feedback has been mostly positive since the story ran. He's had people shout "Vote Ewen!", and says he's even had support from public officials who normally keep well clear of politics.
"I was in New Lynn, stopped at the traffic lights, and a policeman leaned though the passenger window and yelled 'F*** yeah!' It scared the crap out of me."
The Te Awamutu gig is a chance for Gilmour to test material before he performs in front of punters who can actually vote. The real campaign for the supermayoralty - and, let's be honest, to sell tickets for his season of shows in the New Zealand International Comedy Festival - begins in Orewa on April 24.
The motivation behind public performers who run for public office raises questions, says senior lecturer in psychology Marc Wilson.
"It's not just a question why celebrities might be interested in running for political office - but why would anybody?"
Wilson, from Victoria University, continues: "Motivation towards politics tends to break down into a variety of little families."
Broadly, people run because of a lust for power, a desire to make the world a better place, or just to get on with their peers.
For his part, Gilmour insists he's running for the good of the region.
Wilson suspects Gilmour is, as befits his profession, a joke candidate, more interested in building his own personal power than in public service, but says the comedian will nonetheless have a constituency.
"Ewen may well be interested mostly in promoting himself. And my guess is he's unlikely to win, but at the same time I can guarantee that some people will vote for him."
The Bill and Ben Party, a pairing of the Pulp Sport comedians, secured more than 12,000 party votes at the 2008 general election - within cooee of United Future, says Wilson.
"They're not voting for Ewen Gilmour and Bill and Ben because they think they can have a large-scale impact," he says.
Instead, he says the strength of the joke candidate lies in acting as a vent for people to let off the pent-up steam of dissatisfaction with politicians generally - and the restructuring of Auckland in particular.
While Gilmour acknowledges the merging of the Auckland region is inevitable, that doesn't stop him promising that, if elected, he'll immediately divide the new council into six autonomous regions.
But, notwithstanding the high-profile success in the United States of Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger, the track record of entertainers trading the stage for government is mixed.
"[Former Alliance MP] Pam Corkery was a good example of this not working," says Wilson. "Despite the fact that many people thought she was a fairly vicious harridan, she ended up leaving [Parliament] because she said the environment was too toxic."
And when politicians try to step back the other way - become entertainers after a career in politics - the results can be darkly hilarious.
Rodney Hide invited widespread ridicule when he played the part of a dwarf in the Corelli School of the Arts production of Snow White, and Georgina Beyer suffered an anxiety attack and pulled out of a production in Dunedin's Fortune Theatre days before the curtain was due to rise.
Gilmour's involvement in the campaign may well draw more people into the voting booth, but it also risks turning the Supercity council race into an extension of the comedy festival.
"You know things aren't being taken seriously when Ewen the Westie stands for the mayoralty," says Wilson.
Back in Te Awamutu, Gilmour has just finished the first half of his set. "I'm still trying some of this out," he says of his mayoral material, "but I was actually pretty happy."
Standing well aside from the crowd milling outside smoking, Gilmour realises he's missed some of his planned material. Taking a pen, he writes "fart", "Jesus" and "variety" on to his hand.
"That'll be good for 20 minutes, at least," he says of those three words.
And of the 20 minutes that follow, at least half is unprintable - involving peanuts, fingers and bodily functions. Gilmour compares the no-holds-barred, no-topic-is-taboo ethos of stand-up comedy to debating on the floor of Parliament.
"It's like parliamentary privilege. I can get up and say 'John Banks'," - and here he simultaneously pumps his hand and puts his tongue in his cheek in an obscene manner - "while others can't get away with it."
He thinks his profession is well-suited to high office. "With comedians, truth doesn't come into it. We don't mind bending it, it's part of the job."
Gilmour's stand for mayor of the Supercity doesn't come out of the blue. He's already served most of one term as a Waitakere City councillor, and when asked by the New Zealand Herald three years ago what he hoped to be doing in 2012, he replied: "I might be mayor somewhere."
But while Gilmour defeated two incumbents to win the Waitakere race in 2007, he ran on popular Westie mayor Bob Harvey's ticket. This time around, he's an independent with no campaign team and no fundraising.
He's stumping up the $200 candidate registration fee from the takings from his comedy festival gigs, and his wife Cathy has put the kibosh on spending any of their own money on the campaign.
Gilmour finds the amount regarded as needed to campaign - Len Brown has talked of needing a million dollars - as ludicrous.
"They're talking about spending a million dollars for a job that only pays $200,000 a year," he says. "There are going be no knee-jerk reactions from my wallet."
Gilmour's Westie persona is his biggest drawcard, but in reality it's getting a bit stretched.
The caricature that has defined his performance emerged first in 1995, and since then the man himself has moved out of Waitakere to Port Waikato and has bought himself a poodle named Rupert the Third.
Bob Harvey, Gilmour's former colleague on the Waitakere City Council, said in a speech last month that he thinks the comedian will run a distant third behind Banks and Brown. And for his part, the Westie himself concedes his chances of winning are probably as remote as those of Te Awamutu native Bishop Brian Tamaki becoming Pope.
Instead, Gilmour's got a more pragmatic target to aim for in October: "If I get 5 per cent, I get my $200 back."
Top comedic quips by politicians
"Yesterday's fish-and-chip wrapper is today's news."
Prime Minister David Lange on the rise of former chip-shop owner Pauline Hanson to international notoriety, 1996.
"I believe we are blessed in this country with the best teachers in the world. I mean, I had the best five years of my life in the fifth form."
National MP John Banks, during a parliamentary debate on education, 1996.
"The Government's skiing at the moment, I think, or mountain climbing."
Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen explains Helen Clark's absence, 2002.
"New Zealand was colonised initially by those Australians who had the initiative to escape."
Prime Minister Robert Muldoon, 1981.
"For that member's information there is a train leaving town at 5 o'clock. Be under it."
NZ First leader Winston Peters, responding to heckles in Parliament, 1997.
"An orchestrated litany of Thais."
National MP Maurice Williamson on Taito Phillip Field's defence against charges of corruption, 2006.
"I wonder how the Greens can care so much for the planet when they seem to spend so little time on it."
Labour minister Pete Hodgson attacks the Green MPs, 2002.
"There's three things you can predict in life: tax, death and more meetings. There will be more meetings."
Labour MP Mike Moore on being in Cabinet, 1985.
"The minister responsible for assisting with the Prime Minister's handbag in Auckland."
Auckland mayoral candidate Matt McCarten assesses the importance of Judith Tizard's ministerial role, 2001.
"It's good to be out on the hustings, where people wave at you with five fingers instead of two."
Beleaguered Labour MP John Tamihere, 2002.
