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okay Runners only with dime Harley 's only with Don Harvey and the legendary die inward g'day mate oh get a
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legendary I love it well I I mean I was doing some research yesterday and I was thinking about
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um how long I've known you and and you are a religion yeah by the way I've seen
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your research I like it looks very Hefty but you've also double spaced it like I
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used to back in school to make my essay seem longer I did 50 last week so I need
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a Big Font otherwise I Gotta Wear the glass no I remember I remember meeting you yeah you know back in the old old
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Radio Days promoting various um shows for comedy festivals and that I think it seems like I've been around for
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ages because I started pretty young um 1997 was when I started doing comedy and I would have been
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um yeah 19. no 18 then yeah with some thick black hair like the shiniest black hair imaginable I had swim through an
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oil yeah I had I really had a lot of I was always very hirsute I had um my eyes full guide School eyebrows joined in the
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middle and they and they joined my hair line and um so yeah no but to prove it I
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shaved my head except for a sweatband appear because you know I was always the one if you're gonna be mocked you've got
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to lean into it and Own It Well my my first memory of you I'm not sure if this
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is the first time we met but I think it is um it was the age breakfast show with JJ
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Mike and Dom we were trying to work at a different level to other shows so we we
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when we had Comedians and we're trying to rip off the format of you know Letterman and Leno and we'd say to say
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archbarker give us a leading question and you can give us some of your routine and comedians were notoriously
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protective about their material so we'd want to say to her something like oh how
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was the flight over and he'd be like oh let me tell you about airline food yeah
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the comedians were so predictive about their routine and we'd be like you need
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to understand it's like if we just give the dates of your show people aren't
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going to buy them they need to think this guy's funny where can I see them and then you came in you had a CD with
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an instrumental on and you you wrapped as um this character you were doing at the time P-Funk chainsaw yeah and you
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walked out and we were just blown away we're like this guy's the [ __ ] deal
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this guy's prepared he's organized he's funny so I um I have it's it's like I understand why
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um Comics do that but then what I don't understand is you you're selling a show you're going on to do PR
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for your show so you know a lot of people can come in and then be a bit Sullen they're not answering questions
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properly they don't feel like they want to be there and it's like this is my
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chance man yeah I gotta get out there and also people are listening if they go oh he's
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funny or he's that's different I'll go and see that show so also I think
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happened to be going out with publicists help who will I um and also I I myself come
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from a radio background in terms of the fact that I um was early and radioactive
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down in Wellington um then when I moved up to Auckland I did like an arts and culture show on
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George FM when that was just a little tiny thing on Vermont Street in ponsonby um
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bits and Bobs and Commercial radio so I was aware that you've got you've got to
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have content and I it also made it fun coming in because when I put effort into to to an interview then the next time
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I'd come in people are like are way more relaxed because they're like oh sweet
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he's bringing something to the table I feel like yeah you've just had a level
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of professionalism before anyone else and something I've always respected that's what my dad taught me because I I
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grew up in a theater and he was always look you've it's a job it is a job so
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you've got to work at it you've got to prepare at it and also a thing he
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taught me which I think has really stayed with me is that people actually have quite similar set of skills if you
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get to a point in an industry where you've moved up a bit people have a very
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similar set of skills so if you're easy to work with and professional you'll
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often get the job over other people because you know if you're hiring someone you go oh they're really fun to
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work with and they're real Divas we'll go and also it's New Zealand word gets
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around you know even in competing radio stations everyone to a point is mate so if it gets around that you're easy and
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look how many I don't even want to count how many voice breaks you've probably
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done right I couldn't count either but if you have a guest who comes in a regularly and you go right we don't
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actually need to prep that much they deliver we'll probably get one more Voice break out of this than we're
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hoping that's gold yeah you know because then you it's not okay well we don't
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know how this interview is going to go we've got two voice breaks but they might clam up you know we've got to but
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if you can sort of look through your morning rundown and go right Tic Tac toys we're gonna caught him and plug two
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brakes yeah that's what it was it was like plugging brakes and radio yeah well
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so now we're recording this in um early February 2023 you turned 45 on Tuesday
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happy birthday thank you very much um dude this might seem like a weird question but do birthdays feel different
00:05:53
now with your diagnosis I've never been a massive birthday person like they sort of Mark
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do Mark time and I've I'm in an extrovert on stage but still quite an introverts
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um and this year I thought I'd have a bigger party we've got a family place out at Piha by
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the beach and um I've had over the last three years have been private with my diagnosis
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people sort of knew here and there but I've had a quite a staunch group of around 30 so I wanted to show them some
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love and put on some Kai for them and and had a party and it was a bit different because
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um when you'd start putting the clock on things a bit more of or not put putting
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the clock because I don't know how much time I have I might have heaps I might
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not um just being aware of that clock does make moments stand out a bit more and it was
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just it was awesome you know and I am I I really love turning 45 I think I actually think um
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even though even though my 40s has been a bit of a shambles on the health run and not a shambles it's it's been
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dealing with some heavy stuff it's actually the um the happiest of being and the most grounded I've been so now
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it was an awesome birthday what do you think that is um just more like more you're more
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mindful more appreciative yeah I'm more I sort of feel like I've figured
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what life is out like I've figured it out and um I mean now I am back in the
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day I I used to go to Japan quite a lot from when I was 13 my dad toured Phantom of the Opera not the
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Andrew Lloyd Webber Phantom of the Opera there was one was there another one yeah
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written by Ken Hill it was actually written before Andrew Lloyd Webber same storyline okay and he had two of that
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around Japan and I'd go over I went over a couple of times with them and um one
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of the one of the actors was a Buddhist and and I had a real I've always had an
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interest in um sort of spirituality I've been allergic to organized religion but something
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about spirituality and um she took me to uh uh zazin Temple and I learned as in meditation and all that and um that's
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recently just massively come back into my life and um I just I I sort of feel way more connected to everyone I don't
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have the the I've sort of dropped any hassle and I just like taking what comes
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along and and living life I thought you were like that so you've been living
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with this um I feel like there's an easy time stamp you can put on it you've been basically
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dealing with this since the beginning of the pandemic so earlier it was like April I was April 2020 so we went into
00:09:05
lockdown what March um and the hardest thing is before that the the year before that in August my father
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passed away he had had an 18 months of dealing with sort of stroke stroke induce dementia which
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um was uh really really hard I am I remember actually one of the first times that had clipped for me I was
00:09:32
doing a radio interview and they had they'd sort of be funny to ring up my dad and
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to sort of have a what station wasn't the edge was it I have a back and forth
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and um and then just it was during that I went [ __ ] dad's not quite right there yeah no
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just not yeah just different and missing a couple of things and then it was like
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um oh wow that that it um something's up there then I took him to like a rugby game and we'd
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scored these lovely tickets in a box and there are a couple of X all blacks from
00:10:08
when I was a kid sort of in days dad's Heyday and like he's not recognizing
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sort of these old old school all black Legends and I was like oh this is something's a bit weird there's so so
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it's dealing with that then dad passed away and then sort of a few months later
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and I'm an only child so it meant um mum and I sort of were were pillars for each other
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there wasn't a wider family to share that with and um and then cancer diagnosis came along at
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the same time I got funding for a lockdown TV show that I was shooting in my garage with where I was a camera
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person my son who was seven at the time he was trying to run the camera it was awesome because it was a real
00:10:59
a real kiwi number eight wire show that the time of lockdown absolutely yeah completely but at that same time I
00:11:10
was going through figuring out I I had bowel cancer or colorectal cancer as they call it and it
00:11:16
was in my bowel and on my liver this is the one thing about cancer I hadn't figured out you have so now I have bowel
00:11:24
cancer but it's only in my lungs it's not in my bowel I'd never thought so
00:11:29
when it changes it's still the same cancer yeah you think lung if it's in
00:11:33
your lung it's lung cancer yeah but so so it sort of has had spread and I knew nothing about cancer I've had no
00:11:41
cancer in our family so I was like what I suddenly just chucked into this learning curve and we suddenly I've
00:11:52
always been very um Hands-On with my own life and very responsible for my own life and then I
00:12:01
was chucked into this situation where it was I have to lean on people who know things and so who I've
00:12:09
got I suddenly went from having no doctors in my contacts list and now like I've got so many specialists frequently
00:12:17
called numbers so many specialists in that um and then it was just scans straight
00:12:24
into chemotherapy I didn't even know how you did chemotherapy I had to get a port
00:12:29
which I've still got in my chest that connects to an arterial line and they sort of jab you at like Pulp Fiction to
00:12:36
plug you in and um I was scared of chemotherapy just from TV it wouldn't be just from TV though because I was like
00:12:45
everyone on TV shows is staggering around with a bandana and yeah bald thin pale sick looking yeah very frail and
00:12:53
vomiting yeah non-stop for days on end and I'm not saying it's it's much
00:12:59
different to that because it's really hard and um so I went into chemo but then I had to
00:13:06
learn I went like I'm a learner I've always been intrigued with back in the
00:13:12
day I suppose it was like fads you know like I was very early on to your Wim Hof
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ice bath thing and he was out early you know back in the day used to come to Tauranga and just go and sit in the
00:13:24
streams yeah so like a dirty come mate when half and I and I went down but I missed him it was and so I was big into
00:13:32
your ice baths I was beginning to breathing techniques and so I went right I've got to start researching and um
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I've I've I think people who aren't passive patients for anything have better
00:13:48
outcomes so instead of just well you mean more engaged and yeah who I'm just
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I walk and I sit down I listen to this so they say do this I do that right spring as proactive as you can yeah of
00:14:01
learning okay now chemo what what are we trying to achieve with chemo because chemo doesn't cure
00:14:08
cancer no oncologist ever claims chemo cures cancer it's a tool and trying to
00:14:14
you're trying to reduce all the tumor load basically and then cut it out or fingers crossed your body figures out
00:14:21
how to do it I feel like that's um that's a good attitude you've got
00:14:24
because it's like you're the CEO of your own body right yeah and so I went at the
00:14:28
end of the day it comes down to me I so I was like how do I make my body as healthy as I can to do chemo how what
00:14:38
tools can I use to tolerate chemo better so then I just started researching reading all scientific papers I could
00:14:48
sort of unfortunately with something like cancer there's a lot of snake oil that comes along with it I I put that
00:14:56
down to the fact that no one knows where cancer comes from no one knows how to cure cancer properly so
00:15:03
I was out of desperation people are trying anything exactly so I you have to start being very wary of
00:15:11
sources and that and there's a lot of good info out there and so I was like I
00:15:17
stumbled across thing like okay if you fasted in in and out of chemo it made you tolerate it better and it had more
00:15:26
efficacy so I mean I'll give that a bash and then I went [ __ ] this actually massively
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helped me deal with chemo and there were some studies behind it and I'd sort of
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show my oncologist the studies and go to me this says I should do it what am I missing like I obviously can't I'm not
00:15:45
trying to read these and it it sort of has been so supportive and also that thing of if it's not toxic and it's not
00:15:55
gonna hurt the treatment I'm doing then I'll give it a go and then I went from
00:16:01
chemo to got almost half my liver removed I got my bowel half a huge section of my
00:16:09
bowel taken out and I had an ileostomy bag which is a people mainly know colonoscopy so
00:16:16
ileostomy bags the exact same principle just on a different part of your bowel so you still have that now or no do they
00:16:23
no so I had that for three months and then while about where this they Stitch the Bell together sort of reconnects
00:16:34
um and then got it reversed but while I was getting it in that they found some stuff in my lungs
00:16:41
on which I just they rang me on my birthday I remember it I'd taken my door my daughter who she's six now she's four
00:16:51
she'll like staying in a hotel over then overnight was amazing so we I took her
00:16:56
to a hotel and we stayed overnight and had pizza and we'd just gone for a swim
00:17:01
and came back and get a call and then Hayward found three you're all clear but we've found three
00:17:07
subjects in your lung just you and your daughter in the hotel not yeah no just me and my my daughter we're having a
00:17:14
daddy daughter thing and then I was do you managed to like keep a brave face on for her or like yeah that sort of just
00:17:21
put me in a spin because that was in the moment every with cancer there's never any there's
00:17:29
nothing's black or white there's never good news or bad news everything is gray
00:17:34
everything has so it's like we've found these three spots but we can where they are we can operate so then
00:17:44
when I had my bow removed I had one lung operation then I went back a month later
00:17:51
in hand another lung operation like luckily due to my um breath work and everything I had
00:17:58
sturdy lungs and and I I tolerated the the the um the surgery as well and then sort of
00:18:08
came out and then in September just before we went into that weird lockdown you know oh yeah
00:18:14
yeah yeah one that went up to Christmas where only Auckland was in it I was in between 2021 yeah yeah I was clear I it
00:18:21
was all clear and I was like wow this is awesome then my blood started going weird in December
00:18:28
and then uh last year in May they found another spot which I got taken off and then I
00:18:38
had a break and I thought things were going well and then they found 10 more tumors in my lungs
00:18:44
um and one against a lymph node in my pipe and my windpipe and they were like well we can't
00:18:51
actually we can't operate on this too many to operate on I mean you could take
00:18:56
a whole lung out but then that actually causes more that will impact my life more than at
00:19:04
the moment yeah having them there so I went back into chemo which was so confronting because it was a thing I
00:19:10
didn't want to do because chemo is really full-on um so they um they inject you with it
00:19:17
right yes you get plugged in on your chest and then I sit in there in the the hospital for about four hours four to
00:19:27
five hours then I'd take it away and a baby's bottle on a bum bag for two days
00:19:32
where you just sort of cruise around Finland I bet um worked out and yeah what's it what's
00:19:40
it is there anything you can compare it to us it's like having a brutal hangover
00:19:45
right it's a brutal hangover which is a similar I think it's similar because
00:19:51
it's your liver your liver is processing all this poison and um so the ones the only thing that
00:20:01
really got me through was THC and medicinal cannabis because it's like um what it's proven to have
00:20:12
um in terms of efficacy of helping chemo of helping you tolerate chemo um it helped me amazingly through my
00:20:20
surgeries because I can't take opioids like Tramadol and that they just they
00:20:25
react badly yeah I get really upset stomach and constipation and all that so I was blessed to um sort of discover
00:20:35
um not like I discovered weed I've lived in New Zealand I've recreationally used
00:20:40
it but um then actually discovering and medicinal qualities yeah and using it medicinally rather than
00:20:49
um just recreationally so that massively helped and then it was for me it was just working on mindset the whole time
00:20:57
working on mindset and um and trying to because the thing is what the the things I know that you can you
00:21:06
can help is basically um exercise diet sleep and meditation and things as I feel like
00:21:17
um you were doing all that stuff pre the diagnosis I mean for a couple of years I
00:21:21
feel like there was a transition in your life there was uh you're doing all that
00:21:25
stuff I got I basically spent 10 years trying to get sober and then I got sober in 2019 and
00:21:33
um I I'd been transitioning that way I've been I've always the thing was I've
00:21:40
always been relatively fit and that's where a lot of anger came in because I'd
00:21:45
be out and see people who are morbidly obese smoking ciggies and smashing a pie and I'm like
00:21:56
I've had my hard times and my party times but not drastically more than other people you
00:22:03
know moderation yeah not not drastically more than other people so there was a lot of anger that I had to deal with
00:22:11
um and I'm a classic passive aggressive Kiwi from back in the day you know I
00:22:16
didn't let my anger out or just Bubble Up in weird ways like hey I don't see
00:22:21
that in you at all I had it quite well yeah I definitely had a passive aggressive sort of side and I was never
00:22:27
when I was a booze or a party I was never aggressive I was full party guy which sort of was detrimental in a way
00:22:35
because then people don't see that you could be suffering with a booze issue
00:22:40
yeah right and um and I started to get all my emotions under check and I wasn't getting angry I
00:22:49
was meditating more I was bringing more meditation I suppose to everyday life and that the hardest thing is Oh no
00:22:57
you're a runner I was loving my running as status yeah even the Queenstown Marathon yeah I love the
00:23:06
Queenstown Marathon I sort of um I've done two half marathons and then um you
00:23:12
know I was still running half marathon it's quite regularly just in training
00:23:17
and I was always sort of under two hours as um you know so I was at a nice place and
00:23:23
I was at that point where I was like well I'm regularly I'm getting under two
00:23:27
hours now I could really push for a quicker half marathon maybe I will try a marathon
00:23:35
and um and then just with chemo the running just I couldn't run yeah is that
00:23:43
so it was just so then I had to realize actually I'm trying to exercise too hard
00:23:49
out I need to just do everything slowly you know like instead of doing I was um before my
00:23:58
diagnosis I I was having this amazing time training um with Monty batham and his sort of he had a small group of
00:24:06
people he was really training up and it was just hardcore exercise boxing physical cardio weights a bit of
00:24:13
everything and then I was like I've got to do the opposite of this I've got to
00:24:18
work out slowly so I was like walking or like so instead of going around under 100
00:24:26
push-ups today I'm gonna do 20 slow perfect push-ups oh and I can't touch my
00:24:34
toes properly I'm gonna get to a point where I can squat um in a full deep squat for five minutes
00:24:41
sort of you know like you'd see in Indonesia or something how um those sort of cultures just squat the
00:24:49
whole time yeah so it's like I'm gonna learn to squat I'm gonna really work on
00:24:53
my knees there was a guy knees over there oh very familiar with knees so in knees over toes guys so I started
00:25:01
adopting a few of those and I'm went I'm gonna go for mobility and strength slow
00:25:09
strength and that and that sort of really worked and walking like do an hour walk a day
00:25:17
um which is a blessed Bliss we got a dog just after my diagnosis and I've never
00:25:23
been a animal person I mean I've had two fish and a turtle in my tongue yeah fish
00:25:30
don't count yeah why why why what was the decision to get a dog my wife loved dogs the kids sort of
00:25:37
wanted a dog it was the perfect so it was nothing to do with the diagnosis it was no it sort of was a little bit and
00:25:44
it was um it was the perfect distraction and um animals like I mean there's there's
00:25:51
so much proof and with animals of just patting them hanging out with them how much it helps oh it's so cathartic your
00:26:00
body as well so and that also means when I didn't feel like going for a walk I
00:26:05
was like oh I've got a the dog's gotta have a walk and then once you're out
00:26:08
you'd know it was running so many times you're on the borderline of maybe not
00:26:13
wanting to but once you actually get a few k's under your belt you're happy you
00:26:16
went out oh yeah the endorphins yeah you never regret going out for a run no so I'd take the dog out for an hour
00:26:22
um and then I'd just work where I could on on my um on my fitness and then I read this
00:26:30
amazing book by this guy called Tim Baker who he is a a surfer he's a professional surf writer
00:26:39
um and he got stage four prostate cancer and prostate cancer is a whole another kettle of fish because they have to
00:26:47
remove all the testosterone from your body you basically get chemically castrated it's a bit almost similar to
00:26:56
um if you're going through transition um so and he got it quite young so it's
00:27:01
quite confronting for a young guy to have the testosterone removed it creates a lot of because it's diffusion yeah and
00:27:09
a lot of hormonal imbalance and stuff so he wrote this book and he said just focus on your meds which was meditation
00:27:17
exercise diet and sleep and it's a really confronting book but it gave me so much power is it because it's like
00:27:26
focusing on the things you can control yeah and he he he's a big proponent for
00:27:32
integrative oncology which there isn't a lot of which is about empowering people
00:27:38
with um knowledge around nutrition knowledge around spiritual practices which traditionally Western medicine has
00:27:48
stepped away from because it's very hard to prove new is you can't prove
00:27:55
nutrition's role in a way in cancer because it's very hard to study nutrition because people lie about
00:28:04
what they eat and so forth so I I just took that on board that really helped me then I was like I need to get
00:28:13
I need to be public this was nagging away at me and I never wanted to go public early in my diagnosis because it
00:28:20
wasn't I didn't want to cry and thing that was about the cancer I wanted to
00:28:27
get get it out there in a way to show people I'm living with cancer yeah I wanted to want to ask you about that
00:28:35
because the day we're recording this it was exactly two weeks ago that the um
00:28:39
incredible interview that you did with Jackie Brown on the project uh went out so it was like five minutes of TV time
00:28:45
and then a 45 minute clip on YouTube which um I've watched twice and it's a
00:28:50
have you watched it it's a hard [ __ ] watch yeah it's you I mean Jack is a
00:28:55
good friend of yours she did a good job at just your vulnerability and just complete
00:29:00
transparency it was yeah it's the that was the hardest thing in terms of um coming out to talk about it because
00:29:09
I'm I've always been I don't know whether this is a comedian thing or I'm quite
00:29:16
transparent and quite authentic so my thing is once I got going on the interview I couldn't really hide
00:29:23
anything the hiding things is not is not me and that's also part of why I started
00:29:29
to um want to be more public with it was because I do stand up I do corporate talks and
00:29:39
that no it was like there was this a big part of your life that this elephant in
00:29:43
the room that I'm not talking about and I'm just sort of mucking around and then
00:29:46
I was like actually if I added this into my talks I could really help people because
00:29:52
there's all these tools that I'm using that could translate to different not to mention from a person I
00:30:00
speak of massive weight off your shoulders as well and can I say like you you I don't know if I think this is a
00:30:06
good thing but I don't know you were a very good mask I I listened to some uh
00:30:11
podcasts you did yesterday including one you did with Kylie Flynn and she asked some some questions that she asked all
00:30:16
her guests like what your bucket list item is yeah she's probably and she shouldn't be but she's probably
00:30:22
mortified about that now and she asks what's one thing you've never told
00:30:25
another person and in the back of your mind you must have been thinking [ __ ] yeah well the thing is Carly knew oh did
00:30:32
she yeah because I I had just come out of hospital I was maybe three days out of hospital from lung surgery when I did
00:30:40
that interview um I think that the thing is also I have pretty much I've been very blessed to look very
00:30:50
healthy through this whole thing yeah you look great today so I did I was doing seven days while I was doing chemo
00:30:58
I had chemo attached to me and I was doing seven days um uh so I think because I just I get some I love
00:31:09
doing comedy and I was at my job was it like a nice distraction yeah it was because there is a day in there when
00:31:16
you're doing Chemo when you actually feel okay well I felt okay I could never
00:31:21
talk for anyone who's going through anything like that um but it worked for me it was a coping thing
00:31:28
for me and um I I just didn't feel at those times I didn't feel um that I wanted to talk about it it felt
00:31:40
too personal for me it also is something that a diagnosis like this is just as heavy I believe on a partner as it is on
00:31:48
me so any going public affects my wife we're sort of quite we've got a quite a
00:31:55
private little family yeah you are you are um and and then it just suddenly felt right in about December last year I
00:32:04
was actually I think it's time to to go public and then it was sort of working out the timing of it and all
00:32:11
that sort of carry on because I mean I I have been the amount of messages I've got I've just been blown away by so
00:32:21
many positive ones just an outpouring of Love yeah the odd one that is this just
00:32:25
proves you're a shell for Jacinda which I don't quite I don't quite know how you draw that bow
00:32:33
from watching that but some people are some people um but like 99 of um of but I'm not you can't be surprised
00:32:44
I'm not surprised you can't be surprised I mean no one ever has a bad word to say
00:32:47
about die Henwood and this is a product of um I don't know what you've done yeah
00:32:52
I think you've bought only nothing but positivity into the world I think my my
00:32:57
thing has always been since the beginning My slogan was sort of I'm just a kiwi trying to have a good time and
00:33:04
that's what a lot of kiwis are and um I've always been in my work quite picky about things and right from
00:33:15
the the get-go um I've been more concerned about the saying no rather than saying yes and
00:33:23
then um then that sort of that got crystallized for me um bow guy I forget what his name is Jesse
00:33:33
someone he started uh CD baby he's like he's a famous entrepreneur guy and his
00:33:41
thing was if something's not [ __ ] yes then it's no so then I was like that actually crystallized with me
00:33:50
and I know I either really want to do something or it's not do it and so uh I I was doing I was in the pissed comic
00:34:00
role on C4 just making some crazy shows I don't remember insert videos a lot of people won't even remember this
00:34:11
and a lot of it won't even be on YouTube but it this was a crazy time in New
00:34:15
Zealand when you could buy these um like synthetic cannabis like chronic and those bees bzp party pills that you I
00:34:22
don't know if you were on them or pretending to be on them but you played this like crazy tweaked out guy yeah so
00:34:29
I this is a time this is where I cannot believe that the Cannabis referendum fell over when we're a country where you
00:34:38
could buy bzp party pills from the dairy like Euphoria and red hearts that's
00:34:45
right oh the worst hangovers they just you they were quite good at the time but then you just have this grinding dry
00:34:54
headache migraine for days migraine for days and so I was in that role and then that got so much I'd go out and we'd
00:35:02
just get mobbed by people cause we were talking to people on the street we're in
00:35:07
random places um and I just get mobbed in the street I remember going down to the buskers
00:35:14
Festival in Christchurch showing up to my venue and there was a queue around the block and I was like [ __ ] this is
00:35:19
taken off and I just had a ball that then played into me drinking too much then seven days came along which was
00:35:29
amazing I just loved that and then as I sort of mature these other options came up Family Feud which was just such a joy
00:35:38
to do I'm dancing with the stars and Lego where I've sort of calmed down and
00:35:43
changed my audience but at the same time it's people that grew up with me and
00:35:48
then might have kids or their people who are in their early teens that have got older and it's been really nice watching
00:35:54
that um actually I've sort of watched it from a a position of Pride but also
00:36:00
almost like a position of Envy in a way because I just I had the same job that entire time and um so I was doing
00:36:06
breakfast Radio On The Edge which is a like a youth like an inverted commas top 40 station so I was sort of growing up
00:36:13
and evolving as a person but you had to do a lot of the same [ __ ] and here you
00:36:16
were you were no longer the the crazy bzp party full guy you were going into these more sophisticated roles and you
00:36:23
were comedies that have changed and it was lovely watching that Evolution it was really it was really good yeah it's
00:36:29
so funny when you say um Envy because then from the other side of the fence the amount of times I've
00:36:34
been at home I'd quite like just a breakfast radio Joe where I can focus on one thing and
00:36:40
so it's that it's it's a human you know it's human it's always you go actually I
00:36:45
wouldn't mind that because sure I'd do this gig but then I have a bit of down
00:36:49
time here and then I'm taking on some jobs I don't really want to do it so
00:36:54
that it's just it's just life no no no I'm not a not a bad sort of Envy like
00:36:59
[ __ ] die um like a good sort of interview it's like I'm sitting here talking about the
00:37:02
Kardashians again and he's getting tagged aside the depressing the depressing thing is um going over too so
00:37:10
we we go over to um Aussie like for something like Family Feud to get a Vibe of how the
00:37:16
Australians do it what what a day looks like filming shows and all that and so I'll go over for that and then went over
00:37:24
and was hang out with Hamish Blake uh a little bit and then and then just sussing out now oh you Aussies get paid
00:37:32
quite differently to us kiwis yeah it just just because the the niche over there if you're in a niche you know
00:37:41
I'm sure you've got a top radio show over there that's printing oh yeah my
00:37:46
name is Andy two hours a day or so I think it's just one show a week never seen people whose pay goes up in their
00:37:53
work their work rate seems to go down they win I got to a podcast you're getting paid the same amount numb and so
00:38:02
then uh that sort of built the thing up of just okay I've got to love what I do
00:38:08
because the ma like the money ironically I'm in the one industry where the money
00:38:12
seems to get less over time because TV and radio are the things that are now now because advertising is everywhere on
00:38:22
the internet those spots you know a spot and I remember promoting a show right and I got
00:38:29
sponsorship from um I think one one time from The Edge one time from war FM and one time from The Rock and um they gave
00:38:37
me some breakfast spot ads and you could see how much they impacted ticket sales
00:38:44
because that right actually worked oh amazingly because advertising was so sought after because it wasn't like you
00:38:52
go online and you know how now your brain's almost trying to avoid ads because I'll visit a site even a site
00:39:00
like the herald or stuff how that have a splash ad and by the time I'm reading an
00:39:05
article I couldn't tell you what that ad was for you know how you made it it's
00:39:09
like with me with YouTube it's like I'm hovering on the remote waiting for their
00:39:12
fights yes and so now ads are everywhere you could tune them out a little bit more but I think I think they're still
00:39:19
very they still uh have that Effectiveness on um on in media but no they were just gold yeah gold getting
00:39:28
those ads well since we've um taken a like a break from the cancer chat and we're back onto your career
00:39:35
um maybe we should just sit here for a little bit um can we go can we go right back what were you what so your mum
00:39:40
Caroline District Court Judge dad Ray I'm five years older than you so I remember remember your dad on a TV show
00:39:47
called gliding on uh we used to watch it was an iconic New Zealand show what were
00:39:51
you like as a kid well um gliding on ironically was New Zealand's longest running comedy show before and then
00:39:58
seven days took that over so you're gliding on gliding on when for six years
00:40:03
I think I grew up on the set of gliding on out at um at an um Avalon and lower Hutt I was I
00:40:11
was a gregarious kid as I mentioned before I was an only child I am was always a performer I remember when I was five
00:40:21
um I remember making a group of people laugh and I wish I knew what I said or did but I remember the feeling I got the
00:40:31
swell the dolphin bars of just making these people laugh that I knew I wanted to be in comedy and every time I started
00:40:43
doing drama I always ended up as the funny guy um and it just started taking off and
00:40:50
then I discovered um a friend of mine at Primary School had an Eddie Murphy a Delirious that his
00:40:59
famous first um outing um in his lettuce has not aged well no it was great that was yeah incredible there's um
00:41:11
horrifically problematic jokes on there when he's when he's yeah I can't even
00:41:16
sit with the homophobic slur in the front yeah there's there's a lot of the
00:41:22
f word and not the swearing if we're the bad if would um and but if you take those out of it and there
00:41:33
were his just timing and he had these amazing routines about his family and that just and also as a kid there was so
00:41:42
much swearing in it and it was just absolutely it was it was the world's best comedian at the peak of his yeah it
00:41:49
was electric and he was so he was 18 when he did that was it which blew me away yeah so he was
00:41:56
18. he was 20 when he did Beverly Hills Cop and he was 21 when he did raw um and the best thing about Beverly
00:42:05
Hills Cop um is Sylvester Stallone was originally cast as his role and they started
00:42:11
shooting with it really is excellent yeah and um then they win a completely different direction and he was at so
00:42:19
that got me into it then I was traveling and um mum wanted me to get a present for a friend and I got him a VHS of
00:42:28
Robin Williams live at the Met Robin Williams just then took it to another level for me and Rob Williams became my
00:42:37
favorite comic um his specials were just out of this world and you know a good comic when I would watch he would be
00:42:47
referencing these American politicians I'd never heard of but I'd still be
00:42:51
laughing just because his delivery is so funny so I became obsessed with stand-up
00:42:57
then when I don't know how to get into stand up in New Zealand there wasn't
00:43:02
really standing well yeah that's the thing I mean like you and a bunch of others have sort of paved the way where
00:43:07
it's a viable thing now but I I don't know where you'd start back no because
00:43:10
we had Comics like Billy T but he wasn't doing stand-up clubs like the classic he was doing variety nights you
00:43:21
know we're here to do a bit of singing and people would come on and then you
00:43:25
had John Clark as well but he was TV personality and then when I came through there were people ahead of me like um
00:43:32
Mike King um sugar and spice teda Andrew Clay Andrew Clay Brendan lovegrove they were
00:43:40
they were doing stuff and then we came up from Wellington to Auckland for a comedy competition and uh human Gilmore
00:43:49
was em sing rest in peace and he we did I did a double act with a girl called Anna Kennedy and it it went well and
00:43:59
Ewan was you've got to keep at this man and then we started Giga this was before
00:44:04
the classic opened and so how old were you then like 17 17 and we're just down
00:44:09
the road from where we were recording this at kitty O'Brien's which was sort
00:44:14
of behind um Victoria Park Market and did that then the classic opened this was in April of 97 in the classic comedy
00:44:24
bar opened um at the end of 97 and I started performing there and then it just took off I moved up to Auckland I
00:44:33
put all my eggs in the comedy basket I um Reece Darby and I got a flat together and
00:44:41
um sort of came just came came through I was lucky enough to come through with Legends of like when I was working and
00:44:49
performing in Wellington it was there was Tiger and Jermaine um Clement had a double act you don't even need to say
00:44:57
the last yeah I know everybody any New Zealand knows who I'm talking tiger and
00:45:02
Jermaine had a double act um Britt McKenzie and then moved up here and was with race Darby and Justine
00:45:10
Smith and and just amazing Comics have all gone on and various ways and then I suppose the
00:45:19
hardest part in my career where I almost gave up was traveling um I was doing Melbourne and Edinburgh in 2003. oh was
00:45:28
this the Edinburgh Fringe Festival yeah it's 2000 so that was 20 years ago so
00:45:31
you were 25. yeah so you've been doing it a long time yeah I've been doing it
00:45:35
and I'd won the Billy T award in in 2002 uh sort of that had given me a bit of
00:45:42
money and a bit of courage and um the the Concords had been done one year I think over in Edinburgh and that
00:45:49
come over man and we shared it man Brit and Jermaine and myself and my um Tech who was a really good mate had a flat
00:45:57
together right you and Brit were you grew up together right you didn't play crickets Cricket together when yeah
00:46:03
we're five or six right and um then we went to the same college and we did sort
00:46:10
of drama Productions together then after after college finished I was in a couple
00:46:16
of Fringe Productions um with him and I've and he was actually in one of my Festival shows and
00:46:25
um I've always had so much love and respect for him just as a as a person let alone let alone and he was in the
00:46:32
black seeds who I used to travel around with because my best mate um Barney is their singer so during
00:46:39
summer I'd just travel around with the black seeds and um so then go to Edinburgh living with the Flight of the
00:46:46
Conchords there at the bottom of their hockey stick rise to fame where because they went tvnz wanted they were prepared
00:46:54
to a show with them but they wanted to change everything about it yeah and they would know and look what happened
00:47:01
um so they were they were at the point where they were selling out but to comedians the room was just full of
00:47:09
comics because the word of got around that these guys were hot then they just got their BBC Radio Show and they were
00:47:17
just ramping up so we come after after our shows or whatever would have a beer or somewhere or we'd meet
00:47:25
back at our flat I would be canceling shows because no one was showing up or everyone was walking out of my shows and
00:47:35
they were like they were just flying so I'm remembering it's not a career for the faint is it no
00:47:43
I remember sitting on corner of bed just in breakdown of um too many hangovers and hard times
00:47:51
and Brett just sitting sort of chatting me through it and um just that juxtaposition of wow these
00:48:00
guys have found the magic and I'm so far away from that was that sort of like um
00:48:07
was that sort of like a breakdown would you say yeah it was it was because I lost Not only was it emotional I would
00:48:15
have lost around ten thousand pound um because Edinburgh works on a situation where you need to be about 40
00:48:25
full to pay the venue let alone your producers for your all that so even if you're successful
00:48:35
you lose money pretty much so why would you do their job and then I came back and I don't know why I keep
00:48:45
going but I just keep going and I reinvented myself what were you doing were you doing like P Funk chains or
00:48:52
John D Bank yeah I was doing character late 90s character comedy yes do you think part of that in Heisler was um
00:49:00
kind of fear in a way so it's easy to hide behind a character than actually being yourself on stage no it wasn't
00:49:07
fear so much as I came through from an acting background so I so you did characters on stage also a
00:49:16
name you mentioned before John Clark who was Fred Dad yeah yeah I suppose if you
00:49:20
grow up on that and um weirdly when I was in Melbourne having a similar failing experience halfway through I
00:49:27
went out for lunch with John Clark and um he was sort of giving me a few tips and that and it still just it was like
00:49:35
well the great tips but how do I just get anyone to come and see my shows and I remember he I think he came along and
00:49:43
Alan bro who was a great New Zealander who sort of got adopted by Australia and um it was a struggle it was a real
00:49:52
struggle and I came back and went actually I'm gonna ditch the characters I'm just gonna be myself
00:49:58
and then I went back to Edinburgh and I didn't do a solo show I did line-up shows
00:50:05
um nothing came out of it but I was getting great response then I went back through Melbourne and I met um met the
00:50:14
woman Joe who became my wife and then everything started to pick up then I did a Monday night at the classic
00:50:21
hosting a rookie night and um Andrew Schusterman from C4 was there and he said doing a TV show and I said
00:50:29
yeah and he said sweet you start next week this is a girl film it I'll email
00:50:33
you what it's about and go make it so that was the beginning of C4 so there was like insert video here yeah so this
00:50:40
is this is C4 would have been on around maybe for a year or so before that but but was just music
00:50:47
it just sort of had you know severe and Nick being that doing the music sort of shows yeah it's right yeah and even
00:50:54
Clark Gafford was doing a show yeah Clark had a show Sevilla was doing major flavors yeah was doing a rock show yeah
00:51:01
John John yeah and then I came on and did comedy between into the video here was comedy
00:51:11
random comedy throw throw to a song but it was under a broad theme and so I do uh best songs for House
00:51:22
Parties we'd go to a house party in ranui almost get stabbed stop someone from being sexually assaulted oh
00:51:31
thinking back on it it was just I remember one thing like we're going around the house
00:51:39
party just opened the store and it's just three dude smoking pee and the one guy seriously about to
00:51:49
sexually assault this woman we bust in very quickly my camera person quickly gauges as soon okay just saying
00:51:59
so I just run straight up to her just hey guys having a good night straight up to her chopped her over my shoulder we
00:52:07
walked straight out of the house party called a cab and to get just get gave her some cash and went just getting this
00:52:13
cab and go home um this party they didn't make it to here no no no no no this party's not
00:52:19
going in the right direction and I think those dudes are not gonna do it's not
00:52:25
gonna end well um but it was those moments and that particular moment was this is going too far man we're at this
00:52:33
Huawei and run we're at a house party but like people smoking pay this is just
00:52:41
like this is the this is you know you if you were scoping at a location that's not
00:52:49
what you would be yeah yeah but it was um I it's amazing so do you think had
00:52:55
you not um made that transition to go from character to being yourself that you would have ended up just giving it
00:53:01
giving it away at some point yeah I I suppose if you're like eight years deep
00:53:06
and it wasn't working there's got to be some point where you go I need to get a
00:53:09
job yeah I that was always there so I worked I'd always been someone who um I wanted to work and I wanted to earn
00:53:19
money I mean um along the way when times have got tough I was very blessed that my parents sort of helped me out here
00:53:27
and there but they were very strict in terms of the fact of give yourself five years this shit's not working out you're
00:53:34
gonna have to figure out how to support yourself because so I've worked and I'd
00:53:39
worked double shifts and bars I worked in um one red dog I managed at one red dog
00:53:45
in ponsonby for ages um had the joy of um meeting the wonderful Sumo Stevenson Scotty Stevenson who he was the king of
00:53:54
lime bar at the time um and I always worked hard I played hard and then I did comedy and then
00:54:06
luckily comedy comedy became the job and I was a hustler as well I was doing I was convincing Microsoft to hire me
00:54:14
for corporate gigs before I had any skills I um there was a wonderful um Ad Agency called Republic that also is
00:54:24
just around the corner from here they um they really helped me out by believing in me and hiring me for a few corporate
00:54:31
gigs I was doing I sort of got intertwined with Xbox early on um so I I did Hustle to I was very
00:54:41
determined to go and whenever I got booked for something I'd make damn sure I'd do it good job good job and
00:54:48
um and sometimes sometimes it didn't go according to planners you mentioned the character John the bank
00:54:57
teller it was this bank teller from rural taranaki that I do I hired to do this corporate gig I go on I did 20
00:55:05
minutes I didn't get one laugh and it was beyond not getting a laugh it was like this
00:55:11
room is full of ice and it's quite hostile and I don't know why I walk off stage and the organizer like
00:55:19
runs out what the [ __ ] are you doing what are you doing man I mean what do you mean you mean this gigs for ASB and
00:55:27
one of their bank tellers was killed in an armed robbery like two days ago and I'm doing this bank teller who one
00:55:37
big bit of mine is about a robbery and so it's like then I look back on it and go oh my God it's like I've gone out
00:55:47
and done the most distasteful 20 minutes wow that um that really explains the hostility and then thinking back on it
00:56:03
it's uh uh very because Comics love more than more in than anything a good death story
00:56:13
when Comics sit around you just talk about your worst gigs basically I suppose yeah good death stories as long
00:56:19
as you've got enough um successful stories oh yeah as long as you're in a
00:56:23
good place now everybody and they're all lad stories is just desperately tragic
00:56:29
so um so you mentioned your wife Joe before so you meet her in Australia yeah she's a Kiwi from West Auckland um she
00:56:36
was living in Melbourne I am I had had an amazing time over in Britain with um a guy who's a great friend Jesse Griffin
00:56:45
who um he does the amazing um uh Wilson Dixon character he he lived in Melbourne
00:56:52
for ages so um we really hit it off over in the UK I flew back stayed with him um for a month and um then met my wife
00:57:05
and then we started really how old were you guys then the I don't know 2005 so late 20s right
00:57:12
late 20s and um it was just a really glorious time my great mates over in Melbourne
00:57:21
um my friend Justine Smith who's a comic over here she was my best man at my
00:57:26
wedding and she was living in Melbourne at the time had good mates there so I started going back and forth to
00:57:31
Melbourne for a bit and then um Joe moved over here and she started working as an Arts publicist and we just headed
00:57:40
off I knew the second I met her that I wanted to marry her which I was gonna he was gonna ask if it was like love at
00:57:46
first sight or a slow burn it was love at first sight both ways potential potentially we I mean we we love each
00:57:57
other so much and um and so we've been together since um we started dating in
00:58:04
2006 and then we just um got married and she's been an absolute rock for me through
00:58:13
um me being a Bose Hound to um she gave up booze as well it just wasn't looking for either of us and um
00:58:22
then she's just been a rock through through this and the hurt and the pain my diagnosis is um had on her as well as
00:58:32
me as just pretty insane [Music] yeah how is she she's she's really good
00:58:40
I mean everything it's waves man that this whole cancer thing it's waves
00:58:46
you'll be great it's it's this I actually liken it a bit to to grief
00:58:52
where grief when you initially have grief around a death or something that grief hits you all the time and it
00:59:03
just knocks you for sex and then as time passes the grief hits you less but it's
00:59:09
just as strong so you get the same [ __ ] feelings but just less of the time and
00:59:16
it comes in waves I mean we're in a great spot now where I'm I I did treatment all to the end of it right up
00:59:24
to Christmas last year I finished chemo two days before Christmas doing sort of another five rounds of that I did Heavy
00:59:32
radiation and now I'm at a point where I'm sort of I can work I'm feeling great I
00:59:41
spend a lot of January starting sort of scientific papers and drawing up a protocol for myself to use health-wise
00:59:48
for the next three months to see if I can slow the progression of of tumors or stop the progression of tumors
00:59:58
and so when I scan and mail I'll see whether this protocol of sort of has worked put together has worked
01:00:07
um so I really enjoy that but then the the what I'm doing is just um is making
01:00:14
me feel really healthy as well so so the the treatment you had just prior to Christmas what does that do does that
01:00:20
like shrink the yeah the aim was basically to shrink the tumors as much as possible to
01:00:27
buy me I I liken this to trying to keep a classic car on the road um like we don't have the exact parts we
01:00:36
need at the moment so we just need to keep the rust out keep everything ticking along because there is great
01:00:44
advances being made in the cancer space um and you never know what's going to
01:00:51
happen you never know my body might click in and discover what's because tumors sort of hide themselves that's
01:00:57
the hard thing like everyone knows oh you're just not everyone but people think oh sure you
01:01:03
just strengthen your immune system that works itself out but they're they're
01:01:07
nasty little bastards to hide themselves from the immune system so I mean in an Ideal World my body would figure this
01:01:14
out but um yeah I'm sort of using all the tools at my disposal to keep the tumor loaders
01:01:20
as low as possible and just be as healthy as possible yeah yeah like we were talking about before just con you
01:01:26
know control the controllables um yeah yeah wow um so did Joe come with you when you went for that first
01:01:35
hospital visit or yes so she she'd been so this was the other absolute mind [ __ ]
01:01:42
around um the initial diagnosis and covert I couldn't go anywhere with another person
01:01:52
because we were in yeah bear in mind we were in washing here bread bags from the
01:02:01
supermarket buzz you remember that like oh yeah it was intense it was like you come back from you're wearing gloves at
01:02:07
the supermarket Master you come home you're washing everything you've got
01:02:11
quarantine areas in your house no one knew what was going on yeah it was terrifying so it was you couldn't have
01:02:18
support people at chemo scans or anything um I could for my specialist appointments which was an absolute Joy
01:02:29
um but I mean she was there every step of the way sitting in the car I've got two
01:02:36
young kids so trying to keep things as um sane for the kids as possible while no
01:02:43
one's being able to leave the house so it was intense it was really intense and
01:02:49
the main thing is I'm blessed for my family and my friends who just circled the wagons and looked after everything
01:02:58
everything well I mean I think this is the a case of your report you so so like what you're getting now is
01:03:06
um like a combination accumulation I guess of the the work that you've done and the love that you've given out your
01:03:12
entire life yeah and that's what I've always been about is love and um it's
01:03:17
something that I sort of got across in the the interview which I'm very about
01:03:21
is I'm not a fat cancer I'm fighting cancer guy I actually am it's just a part of me that's gone
01:03:30
Haywire it's themselves and me that have gone haywire and um I'm just trying to
01:03:35
send love to it and um just the the the process of love and giving out love does create
01:03:45
um a bit of space it's almost like the idea of um I love the idea of doing good deeds for
01:03:51
people and not telling them about the Good Deeds just doing it then they think the world's a better place because good
01:04:00
things are happening to them so then they in turn think the world's a better
01:04:04
place so they act like the world's a better place so it's just giving just sending some goodness out into the
01:04:11
world because should it needs it at the moment like I mean it it's if no matter what side of things
01:04:18
you sit on Covert just created an even more divisive time let alone the way politics everything seems to have gone
01:04:29
into very tribalism our camping engineer camps and so forth and and so if you can put a bit more love out there
01:04:38
I'm into that absolutely and you're you so you've got two kids Charlie and Lucy
01:04:42
how old are they they are ten and seven right and what are that what are they like good kids yeah they're similar or
01:04:49
they're quite different very different yeah um I I sort of have so much in common
01:04:54
with my son he's a little Legend he's just started playing um so he's the
01:04:59
Elder yeah he's 10 he's just started playing rugby last year and um he's so
01:05:03
into it and we just share a lot of um interests and then Lucy's so cheeky and
01:05:11
funny and they just with being a parent is something that I'd sort of always wanted to do but I had no
01:05:20
idea how to do so I don't think anyone does no so it is just figuring it out and it
01:05:28
was hard man it was really hard um and then it's just sort of working itself out and I think it's becoming
01:05:38
easier mainly because I'm figuring out who I am and I'm figuring out what triggers me and how to avoid
01:05:48
triggers and and those sort of things so I think I think not enough people spend time learning who they are
01:05:58
and for me that can only happen when I turn off TV put down my phone step away from computer or iPad or whatever and
01:06:07
just sit not meditate just sit and sort of figure out who I am and what do you mean just on your own just on your own
01:06:15
yeah I like I I recommend people just sit down and because people are scared of their own thoughts yeah but
01:06:24
there's nothing to be scared of of your own thoughts it just they're just
01:06:28
electrical firings that come and go memories are just electrical firings that come and go they may or may not be
01:06:36
right you know like I remember I have memories sometimes I'll I'll talk to a
01:06:42
mate about say filming insert or something and then they have a slight different memory of how it went down and
01:06:49
it's still broadly the same thing but it's amazing our wrong eyewitness accounts
01:06:56
you know like so it's like it's like wow I might remember things wrong or
01:07:02
whatever so they're just they're just mental firings in your in your mind so
01:07:07
um so so um when you get the diagnosis how long after that do you tell the kids or what
01:07:12
like what are you and your wife straight away yeah pretty much what do you say though how do you
01:07:17
well it's it's all about short-term stuff because that's all this is like so
01:07:24
it's about I'm in treatment to this then I'll have a break I've got the summer off I might
01:07:29
have to have a bit more treatment this is what I'm dealing with I might need some surgery
01:07:37
um bite size of it for me basically given what they can process yeah not adults like to over talk too much is
01:07:45
sort of I like to broadly lay out what's going on and then I'll answer any questions that they have
01:07:53
and you've got to be very careful I think talking to other people's children that
01:08:00
that's the worry I had about going public is I don't want people coming up
01:08:04
and talking to my children about it because people often come in with the best of intentions with things and then
01:08:15
who the [ __ ] would do that but there are people there yeah there are there are
01:08:19
and they might think they're they're helping but but they're not it's like um
01:08:24
it's like if someone tells you they have cancer don't don't tell your story of
01:08:29
how your auntie had cancer because that's what people do they they you someone's talking about something you go
01:08:35
I know something I have a related question and I think it comes from a genuine place but yeah it does come from
01:08:43
a good place 90 of the time but everyone's cancer story is different so I don't need to hear about your Auntie's
01:08:53
story I'll talk I'll talk to your auntie about that because like I I feel I suddenly do
01:09:01
have a bond with if I bump into someone who's going through a similar journey to
01:09:06
me you do sort of have it yeah well it's a bit like the war you know how like
01:09:12
people have been fought in the War come back and they relate to other people have been there because you can't
01:09:20
explain it I mean unless you've been the partner of someone who who you've sort
01:09:25
of been there or you've been like a support person who's been through this
01:09:29
you've taken on some of that trauma but there's so much trauma yeah there and I
01:09:35
feel like I've addressed the trauma as it was happening which is good and I feel like I've come out
01:09:44
without too many too much PTSD but I'll talk to you after a massive mushrooms
01:09:49
trip and then I'll see whether that's the next step for me well that's the um
01:09:54
is it actually yeah I definitely want to do a therapeutic mushroom journey in a controlled environment yeah controller
01:10:01
I've done plenty of psychedelics in my life and um I feel like yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't freak out you even
01:10:07
though you've been clean and sober for many years now you're better yeah I
01:10:11
think there's right I don't I don't look at um therapeutic mushrooms as like breaking a
01:10:18
sobriety thing um but then I'm also aware of time and place and there's so many factors that
01:10:27
need to be right in there and I just noticed Australia's actually just suddenly made MDMA and mushrooms legal
01:10:33
have they what states yeah oh no I I I think I saw that as a post yesterday then I did a bit of a dive mode oh no
01:10:42
there's a lot of caviers so I can't just fly to Canberra it's not party pills of
01:10:47
the dairy this is um I think they've just legalized it for use in therapy right okay oh that makes
01:10:55
sense oh that's a good step in the right way and then then of course there's
01:10:59
then I started looking into it then I listened to this horrific podcast series about how bad how wrong it can go of
01:11:09
therapists abusing their patients and preying on vulnerable people Jesus whenever there's anything good yeah
01:11:18
humans will find the bad side to it have um do you think you've changed I mean
01:11:22
you as we've discussed a few times through this podcast like you've been a
01:11:26
great guy all along but do you think you've changed as a like a husband and father yeah I um
01:11:32
oh so I love change I've always love change and the only thing in this life that's guaranteed has changed things are
01:11:41
going to change and we're just energy we're made of energy and that energy
01:11:45
changes constantly I have really really worked on being a better husband and in what way not coming from
01:11:56
a point of view of I'm a bad yeah yeah a husband or father just be better ten
01:12:02
percent better yeah just try and be a better person realize that my temper I got short and then I dealt
01:12:12
with that interaction badly or um they're a bit shitty at me instead of it's their problem what
01:12:21
happened trying to unbiasedly look at things and you know relationships are hard yeah um friendships are hard to but
01:12:31
you know like it takes effort also yeah as we've as we've said no one no one has
01:12:36
a bad word to say about you and no one has a bad interaction with you but human nature you tend to save your worst
01:12:42
behavior for the people you love the most you because they see you at the hardest times yeah you snap at people
01:12:49
um you misread things I mean my wife and I both work at a relationship which is why I believe
01:12:58
it's in the strongest point it has been even though we're in the hardest point
01:13:04
maybe that it has been and um because not only did we have that cancer diagnosis we were dealing with
01:13:11
what so many parents were dealing with of homeschooling being around people too much you know
01:13:22
both my wife and I Thrive by ourselves we need alone alone time I love being alone you know I'd
01:13:33
rather travel internationally by myself than with someone else not not like I'd love
01:13:39
to do it with my wife but when I was younger yeah I wouldn't want to go on an
01:13:43
OE with a mate I'd rather do it by myself I'm that kind of guy she's very
01:13:47
similar so being alone makes us better people so I would during chemo and that I would go out to Piha for two days at
01:14:00
the end of a chemo session because often after chemo I found for my my journey the two days after chemo were harder
01:14:08
than when your body was purging everything yeah so I'd go out to pee hard chill out be in nature as much as I
01:14:16
can yeah you love that place get in the water I love the place I love the bush I
01:14:21
love the ocean um if anything this journey away from booze and towards health has towards a sort of full final healing
01:14:33
nature is the answer to me and finding intuition and listening to an intuition like um the whole way
01:14:44
through I've always been interested in fasting and fasting keep popping popping
01:14:49
up in my mind and then I was you've got to listen to this I was like [ __ ] fasting might actually
01:14:55
be a massive tool for me in this and now I've sort of embraced it what I'm doing
01:15:00
through the next three months is doing longer fasts of sort of doing a three day and a
01:15:09
five-day fast once a month and I because it helped me so much in chemotherapy and
01:15:16
so I've sort of been investigating that and studying the science behind that and
01:15:22
I'm blessed to have a dad who wasn't only an actor he was a scientist at the
01:15:27
DSi area was a forensic toxicologist that's right didn't he breathalyzer is one of the people
01:15:33
introducing the breathalyzer so so I always had this massive respect for Science and
01:15:41
studying so I enjoy finding the science behind things it also gives you a skeptical mind of
01:15:48
trying to prove things so I'm not I I like finding things trying to listen to my intuition listening to
01:15:59
your gut you have all the knowledge you need to live inside you don't need to
01:16:04
keep looking things up on the internet I think this goes back to that just sit and listen to yourself you know looking
01:16:10
at the Geniuses in history they just come up with these genius ideas you know they have this knowledge inside of them
01:16:19
and I think humans now because we have the joy of the internet which has so many Goods we Outsource a bit of our
01:16:27
knowledge when when in terms of living you have an internal knowledge yeah so um so stage four when people hear that
01:16:37
they they you must see it when people people see you they give you eyes off Petty
01:16:43
yeah it freaks people out because also I am I another reason why I wanted to be public was I sort of told Amaze who I
01:16:54
dumped into who I hadn't seen for five years and you know they almost fell over
01:17:01
whereas I was quite blase about it because I've been living you've told the
01:17:05
story so many times yeah and be living within so it's sort of I passed on there
01:17:08
information stage four just means it is moved from one place to another it's not a death sentence no stage four
01:17:18
is just it's moved from one place to another so it's treated I think also the fact is
01:17:26
now people live a lot longer with Advanced cancer um so I'm not I'm I'm not one and who's into
01:17:36
timelines yeah I don't Google things and this percentage of people did this because everyone's cancer journey is so
01:17:45
different everyone's Health journey is so different what works for you might
01:17:50
not work for somebody else this tip worked amazingly for someone it might not work for me so
01:17:57
this is just something I'm going through I've built up a toolbox of things that
01:18:02
help me um you know I this is we're over over time and I'm sort of putting together a
01:18:09
a talk that has the tools in there and sort of I'm trying to figure out at the
01:18:15
moment what tools worked for me that that were little the the personalized or whatever and and
01:18:24
uh not a protocol but but a toolbox I could give other people that help either in a work environment or a health
01:18:33
environment or just making a day easier yeah well I feel like the things that you're you're doing like the meditation
01:18:39
and uh yeah the mindfulness and just watching what you eat and oh and and sobriety I think they could help anyone
01:18:46
whether you're whether you've got a disease or not yeah and and um just it's getting into that state would you
01:18:55
know with when you're doing long distance running where you're never trying to
01:19:01
focus on one thing like in terms of the fact that you know your 3ks and to 40 odd K race
01:19:11
and you've got a little niggle on your toe or whatever and then you just start going okay three
01:19:18
thirty seven more K's on this toe and this is giving me a bit of jet now you can't just focus on that getting
01:19:26
into a mental state where you can move past that you can um you can focus on the broader picture and
01:19:35
this is where I I love I I get a bit fascinated with ultra's sort of athletes like Rich Roll who has
01:19:43
a oh he's an amazing podcast amazing podcast he just has amazing people on it
01:19:48
um these sort of ultra athletes that go a lead Hamilton but the big wave surfer these people who just take put their
01:19:59
bodies under horrendous um horrendous sort of stress and how they they deal with it and um Rich Roll
01:20:10
actually had a guest on called Tony riddle I think his name is and he um he ran he ran all these Peaks and and the UK
01:20:22
then Barefoot he's all about re-wilding and oh yeah grounding with the Earth
01:20:28
taking things Back To Nature and I read his book and it actually it gave me a lot of
01:20:34
things so I'm someone I love learning and but then I also love trusting trusting myself absolutely and what's
01:20:45
next with work wise it seems like you're not slowing down no I'm I'm um I'm doing
01:20:49
a TV show that will um that will all become apparent I can't really do without do with the diagnosis no no oh I
01:20:57
I'm I've got something like that in the works which is I'm working on it's a
01:21:02
hard thing to frame um so I've got I'm sort of working on that I'm doing a couple of other
01:21:08
projects I'm doing a lot of live gigs it was a trip actually last week I did the
01:21:13
interview on a Friday then I had the next Friday I had a stand-up Giga New Plymouth Public stand-up good and I was
01:21:22
like this is going to be a massive mind [ __ ] for me going on stage having this double for people have seen
01:21:30
me seen the interview the what's the vibe going to be like so rang up Scotty
01:21:35
at the classic and went can I just go on stage for a few minutes on Wednesday I need to get onto a stage and figure out
01:21:43
oh so like rehearse in a way yeah just figure out just figure out what the vibe is
01:21:49
and what my vibe is and on Wednesday I went out I stupidly then decided to do all new material as well as just figure
01:21:56
out so I wasn't like going in the vibe then had a few jokes I know were so winner that was okay A bit of a
01:22:06
shambles and it freaked me out but then why did it freak you out because I didn't know how to frame the
01:22:13
cancer thing because it's like going into something heavy then see going out
01:22:18
into jokes is quite hard especially when it's so personal and I've got so much to say but it needs
01:22:27
to be condensed so I Wednesday was a bit weird then just went out in front of this crowd a new
01:22:34
Plymouth who was so beautiful and had the most of my probably one of the top five gigs of my life really like it was
01:22:44
you know you know as a stand-up you know it's been a good gig when I went five
01:22:50
minutes over my time came off and went oh [ __ ] there was all three jokes I didn't do so that's when I know
01:22:58
it's just been fun where I've been riffing I had a bit of cancer chat I um it just was amazing so then that when
01:23:08
oh I'm just back massively back in love with stand up so I've got a few shows
01:23:14
um coming up got a few corporate gigs I've got a nice little balance you love being
01:23:20
busy though right yeah I love being busy with things I love doing um I'm playing Cricket I've always
01:23:25
played crooked I play cricket every Monday night back doing that um and then in May well scan we'll see
01:23:33
what the situation is might need some more treatment might not but I'm just gonna
01:23:39
um keep taking every day as it comes yeah you seem so um optimistic about staying healthy or even recovering so
01:23:47
the um these these last few questions might might not might work might not but um I thought about you the other day
01:23:54
that the the book um by Mark Manson settle out of giving a [ __ ] have you read that book yeah I have yeah yeah so
01:24:00
there's a there's a quote in there and um I was reading this up after um
01:24:03
watching the interview you did with Jackie Brown and I am I actually I started welling up like thinking about
01:24:08
you when I read this the more I think about my own death the brighter life gets the quieter the world becomes the
01:24:15
easier decisions become yeah I um I recommend everyone meditate on their own death every day
01:24:25
because did you do this pre-diagnosis or no not really I was aware of it but it massively puts things into
01:24:33
perspective yes and massively if you've got a decision of something you'd want to do or don't want to do
01:24:44
have it taking a bit of time to just sort of think when I'm when I'm on that day speed or whatever
01:24:51
will I be glad I did this or um I I just think it's it is a great way of crystallizing life and not in a negative
01:25:02
not in a negative way but I think it's a thing of being aware of the clock can make you
01:25:09
appreciate the moments more I think just be aware of the the clock the clock well
01:25:15
for any one of us you never know when their clock's gonna work but that's the
01:25:19
thing what I've got you know I don't know whether that's going to be the thing that gets me you
01:25:26
know you know like that's the thing there's plenty of stories of people living way past their diagnosis there's
01:25:33
you know you see so many tragedies from even the recent flooding people passed away you know they weren't expecting
01:25:41
that Peter Blake didn't think he'd be killed by pirates in the Amazon you know
01:25:47
like the crazy [ __ ] happens just live every moment you can and it's so cliche
01:25:56
the word mindfulness now it's it's been so adopted by the sort of inspo um fitzbo
01:26:08
um Instagram influencer bars you know Mindful and a beautiful font and [ __ ] just but actually being a bit more
01:26:16
mindful about the food you eat the exercise you do how many times you pick up your phone or all that [ __ ] your
01:26:27
interactions with people are words you say to people yeah just take a bit more into I suppose mindfulness I think
01:26:35
intentions a bit of better word for me I'm just trying to do things with intention like when I pick up a phone
01:26:43
what's my intention here because you know so many times I'll go oh [ __ ] I've
01:26:49
got to reply to that email then all of a sudden um yeah and then I'm like I'm an Instagram
01:26:55
and then I've just looked at Twitter and then someone mentioned oh you should to
01:27:01
check out turkey towel mushrooms now I'm Googling them and I'm like what is that
01:27:05
oh they're amazing um but then I'm like I haven't even replied to that email so like
01:27:11
intentionally going right I'll reply this email I'll put my phone back down
01:27:14
it's hard I'm not good at it but I'm I'm just trying to but if you're aware of it
01:27:20
suddenly you become better at it yeah so intention is something and that's something I
01:27:26
struggled a lot around food I just love I'm a real foodie so I just I have a
01:27:32
sweet tooth I have a pizza tooth I've ever I don't even know I've got all the
01:27:39
teeth so so actually really focusing um for me dialing in on nutrition and vitamins and minerals and really dialing
01:27:52
in on that has been an interesting Journey are you sure you want to do these fasts I I love faster yeah and but
01:28:00
the thing is doing it properly like because the idea is still having um making sure all your nutrients
01:28:10
are right yeah and everything so so for me it's a massive project and it's
01:28:16
something that I I want to do properly because I wanted to do figure out something I'll see if this
01:28:22
can help me I'll do it for three months and then I'll scan and then oh no it
01:28:27
might not work for everyone but oh no if it works for you then I'll go okay cool
01:28:31
this is a way I can live that can slow yeah yeah this thing down and what are you what are you scared of
01:28:39
I'm scared I mean outside of roller coasters well we're all scared of them apart from the
01:28:47
corkscrew rainbows yeah that's nothing no although I did punch my cousin on that once because I was too scared when
01:28:54
I get scared I start punching people it's a bad trade um um I suppose I'm scared of of going
01:29:02
without giving all I have to give like I have I feel there's so much I have to give as
01:29:11
a parent I feel I've got a young boy and I think navigating the world as a male
01:29:21
with compassion and love and sharing your feelings and that is very important so trying to and trying to to help my
01:29:32
son on a journey of masculinity is something that I really want to do so I have a fear of not being able to do
01:29:44
that um and and not being there for my kids I suppose is a fear but then I think
01:29:52
that's a fear of a lot of a lot of adults but mine might be a bit more crystallized
01:29:58
um it's so unselfish yeah but that's what is because the thing is when I'm
01:30:02
gone it doesn't affect me I you know I don't I don't have any fear of death
01:30:06
because let's say this out of the whole of Life death's easy part like that's just comes
01:30:15
and it happens but it's the it's the B it's I suppose it's being
01:30:21
there because for me I get so much joy out of people and helping people or um just being with people so not being I
01:30:33
suppose not being there but then if you think about not being there for people that actually comes back to your
01:30:40
own there you go yeah yeah because you're just really writing yourself but you but you you know that you and you
01:30:46
you probably should because you do brighten up every room you walk into yeah and I like every room that much
01:30:52
better I love there's nothing better than just coming and this is what I love
01:30:57
my job of whenever I go into radio station when I go into the commentary work that I do
01:31:07
um just going and talking rubbish with people and having a laugh is so much fun and
01:31:13
and bringing some happiness to people is awesome so as long as I can keep doing that
01:31:19
um of one and and I I grew up with a lot of fear I think I was scared I was pretty scared of things
01:31:28
of um things in the night I'm scared of robbers I was just quite scared of things which all roller coasters yeah
01:31:36
roller coasters I think everyone's scared of things and um I I don't have much fear now this
01:31:46
diagnosis has taken a lot of fear away from me because uh as the the one thing I was more
01:31:54
scared of in my life than anything was cancer I'd fast forward through cancer
01:31:59
and shows I I knew I've never watched the first season of Breaking Bad um one because it's [ __ ] rubbish
01:32:06
compared to the rest of the season just thought I'd get one controversial thing in there but
01:32:14
um no because because of the cancer plot and um now I I've not only faced it
01:32:21
um I'll face the hardest parts of it and I've chosen not to suffer um because you can you can go through
01:32:30
the hardness like physically it's hard physically it hurts I've been cut open everywhere I've done
01:32:39
this chemo and that hurts but I chose not to suffer through any of it um because you can choose whether to
01:32:46
suffer or not and I'm not someone else suffering's a different thing to pain
01:32:50
yeah suffering's the mental right thing of it's very easy I find it could be
01:32:56
easy to get into the woe as me also suffering isn't an attitude no I've got
01:33:01
this um reflection you know it's like okay this [ __ ] hurts how am I going to
01:33:08
deal with this pain and move on from this but and for me dealing with it is looking at straight in the eyes dealing
01:33:17
with every dark thought and acknowledging every bit of Darkness are you are you um are you braver and less
01:33:25
of a worse than what you maybe thought you were yeah hard out I I I you're a
01:33:30
badass I would faint and I fainted at a lab test getting a normal blood test that's how scared of needles I was
01:33:38
uh the first time I had to have inject dude you'd be of the same age and stage
01:33:44
of when you're like 11 getting those oh tetanus or whatever it was yeah like at
01:33:49
school they came round and injected you and um girls got a different one you the MMR
01:33:55
and tetanus yeah I don't remember that and so we for some reason were given them in front of assembly
01:34:02
you'd walk up on the stage and get injected I'd love to see the Andy boxers
01:34:08
talk about that back in the day you'd walk on stage at school and get injected
01:34:14
and and I fainted and fell over in front of the whole school I um ending now I don't even think about it
01:34:24
so as [ __ ] It's Made Me Stronger and it's also made me realize um what fear is and how to overcome fear
01:34:35
and um yeah I feel much the same as you've lived most of my life In Fear And it's
01:34:41
held me back from doing things that I I look back now from the perspective of being a 50 year old man it's like why
01:34:46
didn't I just do that do that anyway it's amazing however how age gives you
01:34:51
that sort of one you'd give less of a [ __ ] until you're less scared and you
01:34:57
look back and go those opportunities wouldn't I just go I should just tell it
01:35:01
what was the worst that could have happened yeah and that thing also you know with opportunities why don't I just
01:35:05
ask them yeah why didn't I just put myself out there because you're scared
01:35:10
and then you realize they could just said no that's so true my fears are different now and my fears are like if
01:35:15
there's child steps are wet yeah I'm fearful of walking down them in my all
01:35:20
birds um do you have any regrets um it's weird these things you know you know cringe drunk moments that you think
01:35:33
back on I I was actually thinking the other day whether I um regretted my drinking whether I regreted
01:35:42
you know those moments you think back and go I thought that was funny joke but I was just that could have been a bit
01:35:48
mean um I'm pleased you do that too yeah and we but then I went then I sort of keep
01:35:56
coming back to this um uh point of going actually no all those moments got me to this moment and I'm
01:36:07
really happy where I am here I regret um my flatmate being asleep and me being really hammered and putting um full
01:36:15
noise fireworks under his duvet and lighting them and then in hindsight I could have killed him and burned down
01:36:22
the flat that is the amount of things like young dudes do like then you think that could have been
01:36:33
you know I think back on that actually and like now at the time it was like [ __ ] that went too far but you think we
01:36:42
can go that is like killing someone and burning a house down situation and so that's the thing I definitely
01:36:49
regret you're still friends with that person yeah best friend is that right apologize to them now yeah I've
01:36:58
apologized many many times don't worry it has not been forgotten um when did you start to regret that
01:37:05
like was it immediately afterwards just as I let the fuse but there's no going back with fireworks
01:37:19
oh that is outrageous oh that is so lucky that's yeah it's dodging a bullet
01:37:24
[ __ ] there for her man for you yeah absolutely change the trajectory of so many lives absolutely
01:37:30
um and and last one I know you're into um uh like Eastern's sort of spirituality and Buddhism
01:37:38
um what are your thoughts about um an afterlife or anything what happens that's actually something I think about
01:37:44
I don't think I don't think there's an afterlife in terms of of you functioning in any way
01:37:53
like you do on this Earth um in terms of how your brain works how thoughts work I think there's definitely
01:38:00
something that's beyond space and time that creates energy everything in the
01:38:05
universe is energy We're Just Energy that then turn into a different type of
01:38:11
energy I'm definitely believe in more of a global Consciousness and I sort of
01:38:17
believe that when you die your conscious goes into the Consciousness but I don't
01:38:22
know what happens I don't think you communicate with people and who you used
01:38:26
to know and that sort of thing I think you just go into space I I'm really intrigued to
01:38:34
see what happened but um now I just think you go back into the energy of the universe and I love space I love the
01:38:42
Universe I think we are just blessed to be here and I think people need to look at
01:38:50
the miracle of Earth and life and just step back day-to-day conflicts and all that and go
01:38:58
in fact this is pretty amazing yeah and we're only here for a very short time
01:39:02
even if you live the longest life it's a DOT absolutely hey well man it's been um wonderful
01:39:10
having you over here today oh such a pleasure Dom I'm really sorry that you of all people are going through this at
01:39:15
the moment but thanks for sharing your stories and your lessons and um hopefully you'll be around for a long
01:39:23
time yet yeah hopefully I'll come back and have another chat on how to cure cancer well if anyone can man I I mean
01:39:30
you're sitting in front of me at the moment you look as good and as well and
01:39:33
as healthy as what I've ever seen you before that's all I'm trying to do so
01:39:36
plump red cheeks yep right better Ruddy sunshine just preparing for the next Cyclone yeah no but congratulations on
01:39:45
everything you've done you've been like an absolute treat for New Zealand for
01:39:48
the last 20 years and it's been so much fun like watching your progression um over those years and long may I
01:39:55
continue oh thanks Don love you dog cheers foreign [Music]