Great Question Mate, Bloody Great Question

WORDS: LONNIE BERG - PHOTOGRAPHY: MICHELLE HYSLOP

He calls it talking shit. The fine art of making people laugh and getting paid for it.

It’s an art that requires a unique set of criteria to get right. Well, thinking of slipping on a banana peel, that might be putting too fine a point on it. You do at least need to be funny and for a few stars to align. For Jason Hoyte it’s a chemistry with his long-time partner in crime Leigh Hart, which means they simply riff off each other without scripts on their daily drive time show on Radio Hauraki, TV fishing show parody Screaming Reels and the Alternative Commentary Collective, amongst other collaborations.

For me, the art of making shit up, like this article for instance, requires only one thing; the frozen terror of a fast looming deadline. And it’s today. Right now in fact. Why, why, why do I do this to myself? I find myself hoping the offices of Plenty magazine burn down. But no, damn them and their cheap-as-chips-hot-desk-nonsense-runon-the-smell-of-an-oily-rag-two-laptops-and-anangry-redhead productivity model; Plenty doesn’t have an office.

I briefly contemplate creating an accident for myself. Nothing too painful that would cause serious harm or mean that my dog would go walk-less, just bloody enough to elicit sympathy and get me out of doing this.

No such luck.

I’ve tried the dog ate my homework line on my editor but he’s a hard-hearted bastard so after two weeks of guilt-ridden havering and a flurry of white lies I reluctantly open my phone to saved recordings and press play.

The Jason Hoyte story is not a rags to riches one. Despite being a comedian he comes from a perfectly respectable family. And I bet it wasn’t that many years ago that his father was still wondering when he was going to get a real job. That’s not to say he’s not successful. He is, and he looks it too when we meet in a Titirangi café. I can imagine him doing a late night comedy gig in the United States like The Daily Show. He’s got a nice, well-lived-in face, is well-spoken and has four beautiful daughters who are doing well. So, well, how did he get into comedy and what’s he doing in Plenty?

First things first, the Bay of Plenty connection is that he grew up here, in a manner of speaking. He moved to Rotorua when he was four and has fond memories of Kuirau Park, but was sent off to boarding school at the tender age of eight. I ask him if his parents were posh English people – that being the only race who routinely send their young off to be raised by strangers – but no, his parents were middle management but divorced and Jason was living with his dad, whose new partner’s son attended Dilworth and loved it and so Jason followed suit. And he loved it too, and even missed it when he left, but that didn’t last long thanks to the joy of being a young man in the ‘80s, free for the first time in his life. I’m thinking shoulder pads and a lot of hair product. But that’s just me.

Like the economic lives of most actors, the early years were feast or famine the early years were feast or famine"

Jason went to teachers’ training college in Epsom but found the strict rules and regulations were too much like being back at school; it didn’t take. He then attended Auckland University, to please his father mainly and started the ubiquitous BA or as it is universally known Bugger All, but that didn’t last either. Not that he didn’t enjoy it. He just didn’t attend any lectures.

Next up was a year long stint with Greenpeace, going door-to-door all over Auckland trying to get people to sign up for subscriptions. Good for the soul and the planet, and if any Aucklanders out there were thinking that bloke on the telly looked familiar, well now you know.

But while all this was going on Jason Hoyte - the real Jason Hoyte - was assiduously working away at his true passion: acting.

By his last year at school he was acting in plays outside Dilworth, but like many a creative type he wasn’t encouraged to put all his eggs into that particular financially fickle basket.

Jason Hoyte. © Photography: Michelle Hyslop

“I was always told, ‘You’re a big fish in a small pond, but outside of school you’re going to be a little fish in a bigger pond and you can’t make a living’, so I never really believed it could be done. But while I was doing an amateur play of Twelve Angry Men at the Dolphin Theatre in Onehunga I met Scott Blanks, who ran comedy nights at Kitty O’Briens and was starting a comedy festival. I used to talk a lot of shit during the run of the play, and Scott said to me ‘You’ve got to do stand up comedy’.

We had a duo called Sugar and Spice which was the naffest name we could think of."

“I had a great mate, Jonny Brugh, and I asked him if he’d like to do stand up with me and so we had a duo called

Sugar and Spice, which was the naffest name we could think of, and that did really well and from there I got an agent and started getting acting work and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 20 years or so (as well as raising the aforementioned four daughters).”

Like the economic lives of most actors, the early years were feast or famine.

“You’re on the bones of your ass for most of the time and then when you do get work you end up giving it all away ‘cos you owe everybody.”

The joy of being a young man in the 80s, free for the first time in his life... I'm thinking shoulder pads and a lot of hair product."

At this point we launch into the obligatory conversation about Auckland house prices and the good old days when houses were affordable but interest rates weren’t and I learn that his mother lives in Matatā, a little BOP village I’ve been smitten with for decades. The All Blacks were invented there, among other things, but that’s another story, though you can see Plenty 03? if you don’t believe me.

Being a life-time National Radio listener I hadn’t caught Jason’s radio show on Hauraki and, not having a TV, hadn’t seen him on the box.

Or so I thought. Looking them up on Youtube I instantly recognized Leigh Hart from the Hellers commercials (even without owning a TV for many years I knew the ads) promoting bacon and sausages around New Zealand. And I watched the one where the pair explained the Idiot’s Guide to daylight saving while waiting for their mates to turn up to a BBQ. As someone perpetually confused by daylight saving, it spoke to me. Here’s an excerpt:

HART: It’s a tough time of year ‘cos people get confused.

HOYTE: You gotta put our clock back an hour don’t you?

HART: Your watches. You gain an extra hour so you gotta put ‘em back.

HOYTE: Yeah, the days are longer so you put ‘em back.

HART: It feels longer. You just get a sense of longevity, the world’s not spinning faster or anything.

HOYTE: The whole spectrum of time doesn’t change.

HART: But when we put ‘em back and we lose the hour. . .

HOTYE: Well we’re not losing the hour, your gaining the hour ‘cos you’re putting it back so what would be my nine o’clock would be your ten.

HART: Only if I hadn’t put my watch back though – we’re still in the same zone.

HOYTE: That’s irrelevant, whether it’s 24 or 12. So now would actually be. . . one.

HART: Again.

HOYTE: Again.

HART: I just know that when we lose the hour, every time we lose the hour, that’s the time I normally go to the gym. It’s really annoying.

And that ain’t nothing compared to the confusion and outrage caused by the pair’s deadpan fishing show parody Screaming Reels, where no fish are ever caught but sexual innuendo is ceaseless.

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