Comedy Fest Questionnaire: Idiot of Ants

Comedy Fest Questionnaire: Idiot of Ants

1) Tell us what your show is called this year?
Our show this year is called ‘Idiots Of Ants, Model Citizens’


2)  Why?
Comedy festivals always ask for the title of your show six months in advance so as they can start compiling their brochures. Six months before the Edinburgh festival where we first performed ‘Model Citizens’ we planned to write a show about air fix models that came to life and took over the world. It was a terrible idea, terrible. We binned it and just wrote an hour of the funniest sketches we could think of. Only the name remains.

3) Can you give us a few hints as to what broadly your festival show is about? Sketch comedy is what we do best. Fast moving, joke filled big silly comic ideas performed slickly and with maximum razzmatazz. There is no story as such, it’s just the best stuff that fell out of our comedy brains over twelve months.

4) How much time have you spent crafting the show over the past 12 months since the end of the last festival?
It’s been a tough year.
Because we won the NZ Comedy Festival Best International Act Award last year we felt a tremendous pressure to bring back the best show that we could muster. We spent eleven months panicking and one month writing funny bombs. All we gotta do is light da fuse a dem funny bombs gonna blow your butts off.

5) The comedy festival is turning 21 this year – it’s a big age 21 – what you’re your memories of being 21?
Wow! 21! Old enough to drink alcohol in Fiji! Congratulations Comedy Fest!

6) The Comedy festival is one big party and catch up for a month - is there anyone you’re looking forward to seeing over here either socially or on stage?
We met so many lovely people at last years festival. It seems that NZ folk are super generous, last year two people allowed us to stay in their house when we messed up our hotel reservations and girl lent us her car.
We had a fantastic festival last year and we are eager to return. We will be drinking at the Q bar, join us, bring snacks.

7) What’s the comedy scene like at the moment who do you rate and why?
There is so much great work being created at the moment and so much of it is coming to NZ. Check out Ellis James and James Acaster, two acts who had amazing Edinburgh Festivals.
And please please please see clown Dr Brown. There is nothing better than good clowning, hilarious.

8)  What’s the best piece of audience interaction you’ve had?
Once, at a gig in London, we were doing a sketch in which we picked on a man in the third row. It was only when he stood up that we realised how big this guy was, he was seven foot tall and built like a brick shit house. It turned out that he was a professional wrestler. The night ended with this guy on stage demonstrating wrestling moves on us. We spend a long time trying to write sketches that are funny… but nothing is as funny as watching Elliott squealing and giggling simultaneously as he is put into a wrestling move called the ‘double chicken wing’.

9) What’s the most memorable part of performing for you within the last 12 months?
There is a sketch in this show where Jim drops his trousers. At a gig in a full 400 seat theatre one of Jim's nuts escaped his undercrackers. Jim has very dangly nuts, like the nuts a very old man might have . Half the audience was treated to this monstrosity… The others could not work out what all of the giggling was about. Andy got very close to the nut. It was very traumatic.

10) When we say New Zealand International Comedy Festival to you, what’s the first thing you think of?
Last year's trip to the festival was our first time visiting New Zealand, so when we think of our trip we think of bungee jumping on lake Taupo, the Skyjump at the Auckland Skytower and the Fear Fall at the Rainbows End theme park. We did a lot of plummeting in New Zealand… all except for Elliott, who was too scared and spent the whole trip holding the coats.

11) How would you persuade people to come and see your show?
We think that this is the best show that we have ever written. We love it, and we have n awful lot of fun performing it. We honestly think that, if you come along, you will have a good time.
Also, we have booked a really big venue for our show this year. The cost of putting on this show is very very high. If you don’t come then we stand to lose a lot of money. So do come. Please. Please please please come. Our children need shoes.