New Zealand’s Chris Parker is heading west again to take part in this year’s Perth International Comedy Festival, but it’s not that long since he was last on our shores.
“I’ve got to build off the raging success I had in Perth last year,” Parker says when we catch up for a phone chat. “I think I sold at least 200 tickets. And I’m thinking, wow, there’s something here. Let’s keep a good thing going!”
Given the number of international acts that have skipped the West Coast on their Australian tour itineraries, I reassure him we’re glad he’s returning again.
He suggests that Perth and New Zealand could probably form an alliance on the issue, given so many bands and big acts tend to skip his whole country. Parker does, however, say he is always taken aback by how far Perth is from everything.
“It is wild to fly eight hours from New Zealand and still only be in Australia,” he says of the trip ahead.
“It is a big country. I just keep forgetting how ginormous it is. Isn’t it the same as the diameter of the moon?”
I comment that in Perth we often say it’s so remote it feels like the moon is closer than the next city. We both vow to actually investigate the dimensions and distance of the moon later.
In recent years Parker has been building his profile thanks to extensive touring, hilarious social media content, a popular podcast, and appearances on many different TV shows.
When he returns to The Rechabite, Parker will be performing his latest work, appropriately titled Take a Good Hard Look at Me.
“Isn’t that the essential premise of stand‑up comedy—just asking people to take me in? I totally lean into that. I’ve gone a bit more honest this year, and what we’re examining is just a really mundane day of my life. That’s really the crux of the show.
“It sounds boring, but I think that’s the skill I’m trying to play with—making something that is really honest.”
The show is a response to the ‘always‑on’ world around us and is a celebration of the mundane and everyday. Parker adds that there’s a lot of content about gay sex, and quite a bit about his dog.
This year Parker is also celebrating the 10th anniversary of his podcast The Male Gayz, which he hosts alongside longtime friend Eli Matthewson.
“We’ve been doing the podcast for 10 years, me and Eli Matthewson. We were friends when we were twenty‑something, and even earlier in our teenage years, and we weren’t out to each other.
“We still have lots to catch up on, and now it’s become this beautiful through‑line of us catching up between the ages of 25 and 35. Life has sort of evolved—it’s gone through, honestly, Trump’s become President twice. We saw the rise of Jacinda. We’ve seen breakups, people getting married, and now Eli moving to London. That’s our new era.”
Ageing is a recurring theme in Parker’s comedy.
“It’s happening to the best of us,” he says. “We try and ignore it sometimes, but we suddenly just woke up one day and we were all mid‑30s, and I don’t know how we feel about that, because we still feel like we are twenty‑one.”
For the record, the diameter of the moon is 3,476 km, while Australia is around 4,000 km wide. The celestial body’s average distance from Earth is 384,000 km, while Auckland is only 5,346 km away.
Chris Parker will be playing The Rechabite on 16 & 17 May, Tickets are on sale now.
