Tall lanky Ocker and Youtube celebrity Frenchy crashes onto the Q Rangatira stage for his NZ debut swearing like a trooper with his zip caught, but within five minutes two things are obvious: he’s not French, and he hails proudly from the pre-enlightenment days of crass bigotry in which no minority targets are safe, with a particular penchant for outdated women’s stereotypes.

He poses the elephant-in-the-room question up front: why are you called Frenchy?  I don’t recall him actually answering it; instead, he recites a list of various inventively amusing ways people have described his appearance, I suppose to demonstrate his self-deprecating side in order to soften the ensuing harsh cracks of inappropriateness.

From there he embarks on a range of anecdotes on topics including his pre-comedy days working as a relief PE teacher, arguments he’s had with strangers about his exploitative humour and his most epic wins and fails in the dating game.  His supposedly funny-cause-it’s-wrong banter is garnished with original crudely played, badly sung songs on the acoustic guitar about pathetic excuses for infidelity, drunk dicks who start fights, and his alleged formative youth as a horny Hogwarts student.

Like many male comedians, Frenchy appears to thrive in the relative immunity enjoyed by young middle-class white men in his profession.  A quick survey reveals that the majority of the crowd have seen him online so presumably they are fans of his unoriginal brand of lowbrow male chauvinism, as the consistent laughter and occasional round of applause confirms.

Demeanour-wise he has a kind of cheeky charisma to shore up his most outrageous shockers.  Of course, there’s the pseudo post-modern ‘guilty pleasure’ and/or ‘don’t take it so seriously’ arguments but there are two problems with that: firstly, this reasoning tends to suggest anyone finding it questionable are the ones with an attitude problem, and second it’s still obvious and painful.

To be fair, for what it’s worth, I did chuckle at a couple of things, and can’t deny his quick-witted ripostes during various audience interactions were genuinely sharp.  Overall though, it’s an acquired taste like beer or rugby, and unfortunately similarly popular.

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