Winners of the Raw Comedy fest, these guys share a surname, Lambert, but they aren’t related outside of the comedy brotherhood. Makes for a good brand though.

Kent begins the evening, gallantly launching his routine to an audience of four people. (The grand opening of the comedy club across the street has usurped the crowd Kent and Patch might have expected, he tells me later.) It’s got to be real tough to maintain an audience of four people in a state of hilarity for a whole hour.

But with such a small audience, the opportunity is there for a more genuine rapport, and Kent is instantly our mate – on and offstage he’s unusually warm and unaffected; you feel like he’s relating to you, not just performing at you.  As for the stories he shares – ranging broadly from kleptomania to masturbation – they walk a teetering ridgeline between uncomfortably hilarious and downright stomach-turning.

Inviting the audience to consciously confront territory that makes us nervous, he brings intelligence to that brand of borderline humour. But in mining the murky corners of political correctness and addressing those things that make us squirm, some topics are just a lot more uncomfortable than they are funny, so it’s got some ups and downs. He’s bold and precarious and sometimes he’s spot on. And bad taste aside, he’s a lovely guy. 

After a drink break, Baz Jeffrey steps up to the mic for a surprise hello. By this time, we have built up something of a decent audience: Baz waves to Patch’s mum in there. Baz’s trademark self-deprecatory awkwardness is just beautifully pitched and as a brief taster, offsets Kent and Patch nicely. I want to see more of Baz so I might check him out at the Comedy Festival.

“Hi my name’s Patch: I’m from the Hutt.” These eight introductory words actually summarise most of Patch’s material; an entire personality and culture, and a wealth of proud bogan stereotypes, unroll from the statement. They’re in there with the Pearl Jam tee-shirt, the deadpan monotone of his delivery, the unsavoury suburban realities (like goings on in Porirua parks), the excruciating small town embarrassments (see the school counsellor’s unfortunate shorts incident) and stories of life as a Bunnings employee with big dreams.  

In one highlight, Patch rounds us up for a city council meeting to talk about solutions to shark attacks, and it’s a very involved discussion for which he dons hard hat and hi-viz vest for extra authority. He has a few technical hitches (accompanied by some entertaining expletives) with his improvised shark model, but believe me, his resulting tribute to Kiwi ingenuity is really something special.

I first saw Patch with the Young Guns at San Fran last year, and I went home a fan. Probably the more local you are the funnier it is, but at any rate I feel like Patch from the Hutt has all the elements of a suburban Kiwi icon. 

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