“Ben was the first one who believed in me, even down to setting up the speakers and stuff like that.
“Big shout-out to him.”
Faavesi is part of Chocolate Humour, a comedy collective featuring Kajun Brooking, Luke Tawi, Opeti Vaka and Shady Tupu.
He and Vaka will perform together at the NZ International Comedy Festival this year.
Brooking will be there with his show Kajun Brooking Escapes The Hood.
Caldwell, a redhead, had asked to be part of the group under the alias Orange Roughy, Faavesi said.
“We were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll think about it, aye Ben’.
“‘Maybe you can be like Jerry Heller, the white manager of NWA’.”
Caldwell said Faavesi was a perfect example of how comedy could be a force for good.
“There tends to be a lot of middle-class comedians coming through at the moment because that’s where it’s easily accessible – you can afford to take the risk,” he said.
“Richie provides a very unique voice on the scene.
“The first gig he did was one of the best first-time performances I’ve ever seen.”
Richie Faavesi will perform at Whanganui's Hello Comedy Gala in June. Photo / Mike Tweed
Some in the comedy industry, particularly those in larger centres, had been sceptical about Chocolate Humour’s material and branded it “borderline inappropriate”, Faavesi said.
He embraced the tag: “I’m wearing it.
“It’s ‘hood humour, it’s garage humour, it’s street humour.
“We used to think it was a brown thing, but we’ve found there’s so many New Zealanders who went to school with or were brought up in the same neighbourhood as Māori and Pacific Islanders.
He said he “didn’t really want to be Orange Roughy anyway”.
“A mix of orange and white chocolate doesn’t sound very nice.”
Mike Tweed is a multimedia journalist at the Whanganui Chronicle. Since starting in March 2020, he has dabbled in everything from sport to music. At present his focus is local government, primarily the Whanganui District Council.