Triple The Laughs

16 September 2014 | 1:08 pm | Dave Drayton

"You don’t just show up on stage and there’s a million people laughing at you and then you get off stage and everyone loves you…"

Ruven Govender got his start in comedy like most others: unwittingly signed up by an acquaintance eager only to see egg on the face of one who perhaps has a reputation for having a large mouth. Difference being Govender was only 16.

A teacher signed the then New Zealand student up for the Class Comedian competition and, far from shutting him up, the move – and his natural proclivity for comedy – provided Govender with his biggest audiences to date as he was selected to represent Horwick College and be mentored by the New Zealand International Comedy Festival.



"It’s not as glamorous and as cool, you don’t just show up on stage and there’s a million people laughing at you and then you get off stage and everyone loves you…"


“They get the 20 kids they’ve selected together and you get to meet all the other big name New Zealand comics at the time, they help you get your ideas down on paper, mic technique, a bit of coaching – they kind of train you up and get you ready for the stage,” explains Govender.
It also gave him a professional insight into the business of being a comedian off stage that has proven crucial in his development as a comedian and establishing himself on the circuit.

“It gives you an interesting sense of stand-up from the perspective of: it’s not as glamorous and as cool, you don’t just show up on stage and there’s a million people laughing at you and then you get off stage and everyone loves you… It gives you a very real sense of stand-up where it’s like basically you’re in a pub performing to a bunch of drunk people, if you’re lucky, if anyone is actually there,” Govender chuckles. “You know, it’s 90 per cent business, ten per cent show. How are you marketing the show? How are you presenting yourself? What kind of comedian are you?”

It’s through his duties off stage that he solidified his friendship with Kyle Legacy, with whom he runs Laughmob Entertainment, who book comedy at World Bar, the Newtown Hotel and the Hive Bar. “When Kyle first got here he was just a few months in Australia and had a very thick Liverpool (UK) accent, so he came on stage with this excellent material, but nobody could understand a word that he was saying!” Govender told him as much and struck up a friendship. “We’ve been working together since – that was just over a year ago.”
The hirsute stand-up Sam Kissaju, who books The Hump comedy night at Camelot Lounge lives and breathes laughter at a similar rate: “So when we’re not booking our own rooms we’re gigging in them now together.”

The Black, The White, The Beard (as a dark-skinned Indian South African raised in New Zealand and living in Australia, Govender fills the first of the three roles) sees them delivering their own distinct comedy on stage, but also partaking in more than a little friendly ribbing that puts the energy they have when writing and developing ideas together on stage in raw form.