i’ve not been so good at spotting new zealand celebrities for a number of reasons. but mainly because i don’t recognise any. this is someone from shortland street which is a local soap opera thing. spotted by a work colleague. nope. i’m not the wiser either.
i don’t see so many celebrities here. although i might do, it’s just i don’t recognise them. i’d recognise rhys darby though. this is a window display designed by the man rather than him himself.
there’s the international comedy festival on in Auckland and it’s great. we took the kids to see the Mr Boon show on Saturday which was totally excellent and featured standup by Jared Christmas (seen above on the way to his own gig this evening)
and then this evening i saw the most excellent Al Pitcher who is also an observer of the mundane and a great noticer through the media of photography. he’s also a fantastic stand up comedian.
i was pleased to see a number of photos taken in auckland which have also appeared here on funkypancake so we’re tuned in to the same things.
If you are in Auckland for the next few days go and catch him before he exports himself. more details here
oh, and i had morning coffee with David Farrier this morning which was also very cool.
a jolly good day (despite me being rubbish at taking people photos in the dark)
fantastic trip to see the The Cryptid Factor live yesterday with local hero Rhys Darby
the show was like a living bric-a-brac shop full of fun and laughing
you know sometimes you go to something and you think, wow, that was special. well, that was how it was. And you can go and see it yourself on either of the next two sundays if you are in Auckland !
this character was called hotrod
when i was about 16 my parents let me stay with a friend from school who lived in Hong Kong for a few weeks. i had a fab time, and even got to see Kylie Minogue do one of her first concerts.
i found these snaps when i was cleaning out some drawers.
just a minute, isn’t that nicholas parsons ? yes it is. he kindly agreed to let me take his photo as i stomped across london between meetings with mark
strange thing at our industry awards ceremony on thursday evening as dave rowntree (drummer from blur and various other even more worthy activities), billy bragg and feargal sharkey were all very much there.
old rock and roll is the new rock and roll is the old internet. or something
it’s nigel planer who kindly let me take his photo as he went about his business. he’s better known as his alter ego neil on the young ones who of course sang ‘hole in my shoe’. My favourite bit ever is around 40 seconds in to this . the timeless wonder of it: we sow the seed, nature grows the seed etc. A quick youtube search for ‘nigel planer’ reveals how many fantastic comedies he’s been involved with.
this girls was the star of some music video being shot on the southbank a week or so back
i took a couple of photos then a lady with a clipboard came and asked if i was a paparazzi photographer. so i told her i wasn’t and she seemed to be ok with that.
no idea if it’s anyone well known though. sorry about that.
andrew marr was doing some program on darwin at the henley show. no idea why. but there we go. he was playing it very cool, but we stopped and watched
i walked 20km on thursday and at one point nearly crashed in to lenny
henry (his fault, i was walking along minding my own business [as much
as i ever do with camera in hand] and he was talking on the phone and
suddenly turned round in to my path
i realised who it was (from his voice) so turned round by which time he was leaning against a building with the same colour as his jacket so he wouldn’t be seen.
i walked past this yesterday morning and saw it on the telly when i got to my destination. toyah was wandering about chatting to the cooks with the other main presenters. probably not worth missing my meeting for, but vaguely interesting neverthelessormore
this was in the place where they were doing the advert earlier in the day (when i walked by on the way to my meeting). i guess it makes sense to have half a taxi on a truck to do filming of in-taxi scenes.
once more the magic of TV is destroyed by seeing behind the scenes. sorry about that.
london is great for seeing thing like this – apparently they were filming some sort of beauty cream advert.
i watched for about 2 minutes then moved on.
