The 7 Days team. Photo supplied.
The funny men of 7 Days are coming south,Tom McKinlay
reports.
In a recent edition of topical TVchortle-fest 7 Days, one of
those assembled made the mistake of suggesting it was a
family show.
Paul Ego put him right. He swore at him.
It's not a family show and Ego's sons, the eldest of whom is
13, are not allowed to watch.
That's probably just as well, given another of the show's
regulars, the irrepressible Dai Henwood, is in the habit of
sharing his early sexual experiences - often apropos of not
very much at all.
Highbrow it ain't. Funny it is. And it's a formula that
appears to work, the show having racked up 100 irreverent
episodes in its Friday-night slot.
The show's on the road now, and coming to Dunedin next week,
for one night at the Regent Theatre.
Ego says it will be an opportunity to see the show as the
live Thursday-night studio audience in Auckland does.
"The recording we do for TV is about three hours, so we
normally start shooting at about 6.30pm and wrap up about
9.30-10pm. Then they take the tapes out of the truck and down
to TV3 and start editing that night.
They do that in shifts with the producer, so by the time it
goes to air on Friday night they have something the lawyer
has signed off and everybody is happy with."
Dunedin, as elsewhere on the trip will get the standard 7
Days-live format, with the comedians doing short stand-up
spots first, before splitting into teams for the competitive
current-events section.
Often, Ego appears to excel in the latter but that might be
the magic of television.
"I think I would be probably the most ignorant person on the
show as far as news and current affairs go. My wife and I
tape the news on TV and we might catch it every couple of
weeks," he insists.
"There are those parts on 7 Days where [host] Jeremy
[Corbett] will say something's happened and Dotcom has done
this or John Key said this, because that's basically the only
two stories we have in New Zealand. When I say, 'has he?',
that is me genuinely saying that. I am not just acting
surprised."
The show engages the assembled comedians in a series of
quizzes, among them putting captions to unlikely images,
thinking up questions for answers provided by Corbett, and
trying to work out what recent news story is behind a child's
drawing.
"I love all of them," Ego says.
"Captions is always fun and I really enjoy answers. 'My kid
could draw that' is really great. I just love the surprise of
it because you never really know what the kids are going to
say," he says.
"Sometimes when they are talking about a story in which the
content, perhaps, is quite heavy, or quite disturbing, the
tone in their voice, they sound so deflated like they have
just had their innocence taken away. They shouldn't have to
be describing something like that," he says, with a giggle.
Does he think the kids involved get to watch the show?
"Oh, God, I hope not. No, I hope their parents tell them, no,
it didn't make it, it got edited out.
Apparently the television station broke."
The programme is both a labour of laughs and a labour of love
for the Auckland-based funny man.
"I absolutely love it. It is the one solid job that I have
every week. We all do different things, like live gigs and
corporate work, voice work and stuff like that but it is 7
Days that I look forward to.
"As a comic it is just the best gig. The thing that I love
more than doing comedy as a comedian is hanging out with
other comedians talking s*** and this job is those two things
combined."
Catch them
7 Days is live at Dunedin's Regent Theatre on Friday,
November 30.
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