It’s lucky last for Whangārei on Saturday when one of the country’s most accomplished comedians Pax Assadi wraps up the national tour of his show Handsome Boy.

After all, Assadi says, he’s had 10 gigs already to hone the show and adapt it and it’s now as good as it’s going to be.

”Yeah, Whangārei is going to get the best Handsome Boy show. I’ve refined the jokes as we’ve gone along, added some bits, some observations, and it’s just got better and better as I’ve added things,” he says.

”So Whangārei will get the best version of the show, the most refined, the most polished and the best version of me.”

The 11-date tour, which started in Hamilton on October 13, is hot off the heels of his acclaimed semi-autobiographical sitcom Raised by Refugees. Celebrated by peers and critics alike, Assadi is one of Aotearoa’s strongest and most important comedic voices.

His career started in 2011 and has led to continued success as a stand-up comedian, writer, media personality and actor who has established himself as a mainstay on NZ television screens.

He has appeared on Have You Been Paying Attention, 7 Days, The Great Kiwi Bake Off, and 60 Seconds, and in 2020 he hosted the NZ International Comedy Gala to rave reviews.

He’s picked up an impressive array of awards over the years. At the NZ International Comedy Festival, Pax was nominated for the coveted Billy T and Fred Dagg Awards.

He has also been nominated for Best MC, Best Comedy Performance on Television, and Best Male Comedian three times, and has won the award for Gag Of The Year. Assadi is currently working on his debut novel.

It seems you can’t look anywhere these days without seeing Assadi in one role or another, but he says that widespread exposure, particularly on TV, was not something he planned when he started out.

”I never thought I’d get all these opportunities to be on TV and doing all these different things. Don’t get me wrong I’m really grateful for them all, and it’s been amazing, but I really just wanted to be the best stand up comedian I could be.”

He reckons that the Tik Tok age has dumbed people down so now they can get his level of comedic talent, but joking aside, if you do become a good stand up comedian then wider exposure is usually the outcome. And that 11 years of constant gigging and refining his act has paid off big time.

”Really I think if I’d had these opportunities five or six years ago I probably would have bombed them. I just wasn’t ready then, but I am now.”

Assadi once sold vacuum cleaners at his dad’s Godfreys store and that experience helped him refine his act too.

”I was developing a teenage stand up routine while selling vacuum cleaners at my dad’s store from the age of about 12. I was trying to be affable and funny and seeing if I could do it.”

So with all this exposure does the pressure to perform and make people laugh increase?

”No, there’s not really that much extra pressure on me. Stand up is where I feel most at ease so there’s no extra pressure at all. I love it.”

But it wasn’t always that way. Assadi recalls doing a gig supporting Ewen Gilmour in a Waikato town just a few months into his stand up career.

“It was this small community hall, packed with about 150 people there, the biggest crowd I’d had at that stage. I was to do six minutes before Ewen came on. But I was just dying on stage. It was so quiet that when a woman in the front row smacked her lips everybody could hear it.

”Then this woman at the back stands up and yells ‘ Mate, you’re not funny get off the stage.’ So, and this is something you should never do, I said ‘ hey come up to my face and say that’. And she did, she came storming through the crowd, which parted like she was some kind of bogan Moses, and she jumped on the stage, and took a swing at me.

”It just missed my face and I fell over and scurried off the stage. I looked at Ewen and he was laughing his head off while the woman was on stage raising two fists to the crowd, which was yelling as if she’d won the world heavyweight boxing championship. There was no comment from Ewen or anything, then he goes out and slays them for an hour and 10 minutes. I suppose that was the lesson.”

• Pax Assadi performs in Handsome Boy at Forum North, Whangārei on Saturday, November 19. For tour and ticket information, visit: paxassadi.com/touring.

Win tickets

The Northern Advocate has three double passes for Handsome Boy on Saturday. To enter tell us the name of Pax Assadi’s semi-autobiographical sitcom?

Email your answer to regionalcompetitions@nzme.co.nz along with your name, address and phone number by noon on Thursday and the winners will be emailed their tickets.