A golden hour of crispy comedy _{by Madelaine Empson}

Jaye Xu, Thomas Chapman, and Jack Caldwell all set out on Auckland’s open-mic comedy scene in 2018. After circling the same circuits for a couple of years, they decided to try their hand(s) at the NZ International Comedy Festival.

“When it comes time to apply for the Comedy Fest, the newbies generally get in as a three, so we all asked around until we stumbled upon each other”, Jack exclaims. “We knew we could back ourselves and each other to put on a good hour because we knew we all had plenty of material that had done well in some tough Auckland rooms!”

The trio put together a show and called it Shoestrings.

“The Shoestrings theme was basically us realising that we’re all skinny people and so are fries, really that simple. Gonna be tough to do the show in February now after a few lockdown pounds.”

Jack is referring to a golden hour of crispy comedy coming up at The Cavern Club on Friday the 4^th. Shoestrings promises much more variety than fast food – from the eccentric to the deadpan and everything in between.

Since coming together, the three comedians have all made it at least to the semi-finals of the Raw Comedy Quest and describe themselves as a nerd, a jerk, and a genuinely nice person. So, who’s who?

“I’m definitely the nerd, no question”, Jack says. “I studied engineering science which means even other engineers call me a nerd.”

“Jaye is very nice”, he continues.

“Thomas is the jerk, probably just by virtue of being the enigmatic 21-year-old that he is. I’ll let his material speak for itself though!”

When Thomas was asked to write a bio, he put down: “Hello, since 2017 I’ve dropped out of university and have been doing nothing but comedy since. Glad it seems to be working because I have no backup plan.”