In this week’s episode, we’re joined by comedian, champion quizzer and Chaser  - "the world's only gay Anglo-Bengali GP turned stand up comedian" Mr Paul Sinha aka ‘The Sinnerman’. Paul talks about his experience suffering from Covid-19 and how lockdown has changed him, his debut at the New Zealand Comedy festival last year, his Parkinson’s diagnosis, The Chase and the new show Beat The Chasers (coming to TVNZ in June). He gives specific shout outs to Scott Blanks and The Classic, James Nokise, Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Rhys Mathewson, Eli Matthewson and Havana Bar in Wellington.

If you’d like to find out more about Parkinson’s disease or make a donation visit https://www.parkinsons.org.nz/.

The KUWNZ Podcast is a creativesidekicking.com production for keepingupwithnz.com presented and produced by Ingrid Grenar.

Ingrid is joined by Alex Lee, co-founder and co-director of  The Documentary New Zealand Trust - a not for profit organization set up to promote and create opportunities for documentary film making in NZ. They run the Documentary Edge Festival, the only competitive documentary genre festival in Australasia - and next month, in its 15th year,  the festival will go online for the first time from 12th June - 5th July. Plus, keepingupwithnz.com film reviewer Stewart Sowman-Lund gives us his thoughts on three films from the upcoming Dog Edge programme.

Recorded at the end of February at The Classic Comedy Club in Auckland, Ingrid chats to Deborah Frances-White from the hugely successful The Guilty Feminist podcast. Following her sold-out NZ tour, Deborah shares her love for Kiwi audiences and for the guests that shared the stage with her - including Rants in the Dark writer Emily Writes and Jackie Clark from The Aunties. She offers many laughs and gems of insight, as well as a great recommended reading list. And, of course, there’s a few ‘I’m a feminist but..’ thrown into the mix for the fans.

As we're missing the comedy festival this year we've got a podcast from our archives to help fill the void.  This was recorded at the 2013 NZ International Comedy Festival and features festival favs James Acaster, Jamaine Ross & Pax Assadi (before they were Frickin Dangerous Bro)  🎧 .

NZ's home of live comedy, The Classic Comedy Club in Auckland, can come back after the Covid Crisis with a little help from our friends. Support and read all about it! http://www.comedy.co.nz/comedy…/the-classic-comedy-comeback/

You can donate to the NZ Intl. Comedy Festival Artist Relief Fund to help artists recover some of the money they'd invested in their 2020 Comedy Fest shows - donations close midnight Monday 11th May.

Head to https://bit.ly/NZICFFund for more information on our fundraising objectives and how to contribute.

Rosie Carnahan-Darby is a comedy writer and producer. She's currently working alongside her husband, comedian and actor Rhys Darby, and others in her bubble to produce the weekly rural chat show The Alone Rangers staring Rhys' popular character - ranger Bill Napier.  Behind the scenes, Rosie has produced sold out tours and comedy TV specials for Rhys as well as writing for various TV projects, and most recently producing his new podcast Aliens Like Us for Spotify.  We chat to Rosie about her career in comedy that's taken her from Nelson to LA. FYI her chosen Kiwi track by Chris Knox is called Not Given Lightly.

Our first #kuwnzmeets of this series is out now with Luke Bird - presenter of Sidewalk Karaoke on Maori Television. In this episode, we chat to the TV personality, presenter, MC, actor, opera singer and entertainer Luke Bird to hear how he overcame bullying to build a career as a well known Kiwi personality. FYI the group he mentions as his favourite Kiwi band is Otium. (Warning that there are a few swears during our chat.)