Feature - Upfront
Dai Henwood
by Matt Nippert
Three things you may not know about the pint-sized and filthy comedian Dai Henwood: he has a BA in eastern religions from Victoria University; his mother, Carolyn, was Wellington’s first female District Court judge; and his father, Ray, is the actor who became well-known as the “Moro Man”. Rather than going into law or drama, Dai, 29, went on to carve out a career as an oddball performer – in the process winning a Billy T Award in 2002. He fronts C4’s music-and-reality show __Insert Video Here__, is scheduled to perform during this month’s Comedy Festival and will host the New Zealand Music Awards in October.
A lot of the music you play on your show seems to be from the 1980s. What’s the appeal of this era?
Before the stock-market crashed, before the PC era, before Tomorrow’s Schools, it was just: “Good old Kiwi kids. Go out, play with fireworks, break your arm, learn by mistakes, don’t get told what to do.” And I suppose because I was born in 1978, the 80s was my first experience of outrageous fashion. I got into wearing some pretty fruity stuff: I rode the Hammerpants bandwagon, I rode the Hypercolour bandwagon, pretty much rode every bandwagon.
But recently you got off the facial-hair bandwagon. Why?
It’s strange: men respect men with moustaches, women don’t. Also, I think the police force in the 1980s have given the moustache a really bad name and this meant that it doesn’t carry the credibility it used to.
So your shaving had nothing to do with your vanity and love of beauty products?
I’m not metrosexual, but I have got an obsession with creams. I think it started when I got a mild case of eczema when I was 16 and I met my best friend “hydrocortisone”. I’m a fan of the 0.1 percent variety, because you can use it as facial hydrocortisone as well as on your elbows. And it blossomed from that. I suppose my first sponsor, who never actually sponsored me because I bought their products, was Nivea. It broadened out and I started experimenting …
That’s what they call the “gateway effect”.
I got into hair products and I’ve now got a cream for anything. If you get bitten by anything in New Zealand, I’ll be able to fix it in five minutes.
You must get heaps of complaints each week about Insert Video Here, given your propensity to work in gags about defecation and masturbation.
We get very little, surprisingly. It’s only recently that I’ve realised the show may be a little filthy. We’re 37 episodes through now, but I can only think of one complaint that’s been brought to my attention. I’m not sure what they were on about. Maybe the language? Drunk kids? I don’t know.
Before presenting music video shows, you used to be an old-school DJ. How did this experience help to shape you?
If you can imagine me: a 5’5” dude in stonewash jeans and billowing pirate shirt with a Chinese collar, going out and DJing weddings and at really dodgy bars in Taita and Wainuiomata. I showed up to this one gig where a guy came up to me and said: “You play the music too loud I’m gonna cut your cords and smash your lights, mate.” He was the guy who hired me. Then he made me play “The Gambler” seven times in a row, then said, “That’s enough. Let’s move on to ‘American Pie’.”
How did you turn your antics into a job?
I slowly chipped away over four or five years, and then I decided to do the make-or-break. I did a show in the Comedy Festival called Story of Funk, for which I won the Billy T, and from there went over to Edinburgh. I had a sell-out first night, 150 people. The next night 40 people were in the audience, who had all come from the bar. I had a costume change 20 minutes into the show, and when I came out there were only two people left. One was an old dude who said, “I think I went to school with your mum in New Plymouth”, and the other was a mate of my technician. Those shows broke me. They were the best shows and the worst shows of my life.
That show was based around another child of the 80s, professional wrestling.
I got tights made for my character P Funk Chainsaw. There’s a woman who makes children’s jazz ballet tights in Pakuranga in a caravan on her back section. I went in there, and she had all the photos from all the troupes she’d done. And then I said, “I want a five-piece tight set.” The legs are separate, the top’s separate, it sits nice, it’s been sprayed. We’ve got four different kinds of Lycra in that.
Speaking of Lycra, where on earth did you get the idea to perform interpretative dance to Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”? I’ve been performing that for quite a while now, but it has this weird longevity. A younger crowd have come along and they request it, and I’m like, “Dude, I’ve performed that over a thousand times.” But it’s still my favourite piece of performance comedy. I got the rights from Cyndi Lauper to perform it in the Comedy Gala. The production team wrote, and she gave it the go-ahead. I suppose one day I’d love to perform that dance with Cyndi Lauper. That would be my crowning moment.
INSERT VIDEO HERE, Wednesday, C4, 8.30pm; DAI-NAMIC SCENARIOS, Wellington’s San Francisco Bathhouse, May 8-12; Auckland Town Hall, May 15-19.
