That's me fulfilling a dream right there! For the first time in an almost 30 year corporate entertainment career I got to do a big Oscar's style opening musical number for a conference gala dinner. And better than that - I had a choir as back-up! Thanks to Mike at Con-sol and the folks at Insurance AdviserNet I got to Hugh Jackman-lite for a night. And right there with me was what seems to be a constant companion in 2018 - the blue military tail-coat. Behold below a selection

It was a Sunday and I'd just got back from a week worth of conferencing in Australia. So I should have been knackered. The one thing I'm finding about taking on less performance work is that my match fitness is not quite what it was - a big week of conference MCing takes it out of me. But this Sunday Dr. Theatre kicked in because I was MCing one of the coolest events I've been to in a while - the 1st ever New Zealand iteration of the Maker Faire. As you can see from the pictu

I do not believe that a 46-year old man has ever looked so delighted to be in a cheap Stormtrooper onesie. But the delight wasn't fake news - I was at Orange Day again! Always one of my favourite gigs of the year and a pleasure to share it once again with the talented Jen O'Sullivan (who also takes a mean onesie based selfie). There was all of the craziness, the loud cheering and screaming from hundreds of school patrollers but this year there was added onesies. Why? Because

Last year I was in drag for these guys as an air hostess - this year, much simpler. In case you couldn't pick it from the pic I'm a ringmaster and the theme is Carnival. Well, actually, the theme is a celebration of achievement. The guys at Z know how to recognise their frontline staff. Gathering a couple of hundred gas station staff together in one place makes for a great night out. These guys are usually too busy working to be partying but when they let their hair down it's

Here we go folks - my 2018 look for the Wellington Gold Awards Quiz! It's the Duke of Wellington (although in historically inaccurate blue uniform). Sometimes just the sheer ridiculousness of the costume is enough to provide inspiration. Certainly, for the Duke, that bicorn was a masterpiece. I don't believe the angle of this photo does true justice to the magnificent stupidity of the hat. The Costume Cave have a treasure right there. When you've been doing characters and ent

It's always great having family in the crowd. That way they can snap pictures of you in action (like the one to the left) and then troll you with them! It was also really nice being asked to MC the first two tests of the All Blacks/France test series. It was a bit of an unexpected surprise but i never say no to rugby! I got to talk to some pretty cool people during the pre-match entertainment as well, Kieran Read was one of them, but my highlight was interviewing Sir Michael

Here's me interviewing an award winner at the Redshift annual awards show. She looks a little worried. I hope, by the end of the next bit of our show, she wasn't worried any more. That's because Jen O'Sullivan and I took the information I was gathering from her and turned it into a Shakespearean tribute to her. There's Jen mid-tribute. It's an old corporate improv trick but it still gets the same kick every time. The hero of the story gets something special. They become the a

I think I'm trying to smoulder here. That expression is certainly not because I'm bored. In fact, I'm in the middle of a great night's entertainment for the folks at Insurance Advisernet. Not content to let their Australian cousins have all the glory in the performance stakes the Kiwi crew organised their own challenge. This time they divided all their team up into smaller teams and tasked them with coming up with a lip sync to a classic song featured on the show "Soul Train"

When you're on the Earnslaw why not claim to be its eponymous captain? I see no reason not to (or to casually drop in the word eponymous). Captain Earnslaw appeared as part of my work for the IPENZ Transportation Group Conference for this year. I've done more than a few of these now and they are always a nice mix of comedy characters and just me being me (or a conference friendly version of me). Captain Earnslaw appeared as part of a welcome breakfast which was a new addition

I've been known to do a little bit of cycling now and then - for laughs (take a look at that stunning fellow on the left) and for my own amusement and torture. Today, however, I wasn't on a bike myself rather I was encouraging others to get on theirs as part of WCC's "Bike to Work Day." I joined a team of hardy volunteers underneath the sails on the waterfront to spread the love of cycling. I was joined in this by an eclectic mix of people promoting everything from staff wel

This picture was taken just moments before I had a stupid idea. Certainly not my first. I thought that it might be good if all the kids in the picture, and their parents, pelted me with soft stress balls as a way to close my cross to the big screen. Stress balls aren't that soft when they are coming in large numbers at your head! But that's what the Sevens has always been about, making silly choices. Silly choices of costume, silly choices of how to spend your time and silly

This is me at the side of the stage at Christmas in Dowse Square which was great family day to mark Christmas in the Hutt this year. And that's some more of the action on the stage - with Porirua's own Virtuoso Strings in full flight. Such a fun event and, as you can see in the photo, one with a bit of a Kiwiana theme. Lots to do for families with more stages than just the one I was on, plus activities, food trucks and a beach in the middle of the Square! As a Dad it's always

Seems lie a great idea to have a long term recurring character like Des Lawson, quizmaster for the Wellingtonian of the Year awards. And it is. I'm 12 years into playing Des. I've talked about the 2015 appearance and the 2016 one in this blog. And in the last post I talked about how important the ever changing costumes are for Des. But I may have reached the back of the wardrobe with this year's look. When next year rolls around I'll be in uncharted territory. There will need

Nowadays you can find me doing a different sort of creative job during the day - I'm a Creative director for a Sales and Marketing agency called Stun. How I ended up there is another blog post in itself but it's a great way to fill in the day, continues the sorts of things I like doing for a living - research, learning new things, meeting interesting people and coming up with creative and cool ways to get their message across. That job still gives me the flexibility to pursue

Traumatised by this? You should be. After almost 30 years of dressing up as hundreds and hundreds of characters I have never done Frank N Furter - until now. Achieving this look is no mean feat for a man of my stature - corset and shoes had to be ordered from overseas for the occasion but it was certainly worth it. The client was Insurance AdviserNet. I've done quite a few jobs for the New Zealand part of the business, but this was my first outing for the Australians. And it

This is the 2nd year for me MCing the Wellington Community Rugby Awards and, once again, it’s a great night! The cool thing about these awards is the way they actually celebrate the achievements of those people who are the heart and soul of Wellington rugby- the club stalwart players and volunteers. You could go a couple of ways with an evening like this. The first would be to do something simple at a local club. Or you could make it special. Getting these guys and gals into

It's a tradition at Orange Day celebrations for me to take a selfie from the stage. This year we got photobombed by the Mayor - nice! This must be my favourite gig of the year. As an ex-teacher I just love winding kids up, getting them to make a heap of noise and then know I can walk away. Sort of like grand-parents (although I'm not sure Jen would take well to that description). Another year down - this year we decided to be Council Orangeness Inspectors - another celebratio

Every year Z Energy holds their "Gathering of Heroes" which is an award show that recognises excellence from their front-line staff. I've done these in 2014 and 2015, but this time I wasn't Corrugated Iron Man. The awards were held at MOTAT and there was a bit of an airline theme so I started proceedings as an airline pilot - so far, so good. But an awesome thing that sets the "Gathering of Heroes" apart from lots of other in-house awards is that it is equal measures recognit

That's the relationship status that's gets the most intrigue on social media. It also goes towards describing how I felt about the recent Lion's Tour I've worked on. It would be pretty obvious to anyone who has even dipped just a little into this blog of gigs I've done that I love rugby. More than that, I love sharing rugby with people. The great thing about the sports presentation gigs I get is that I'm sharing my love of rugby with people who are just as passionate about it