The story that was 'too hot' to publish
The story that was 'too hot' to publish
Warning: The following story contains bad language and may cause offence for some readers. Mwahaha.
Late last year, two things happened to long-running local comedy show 7 Days. The first was that the bad taste Friday night staple turned 10, a minor miracle in the cut throat local television industry, where brilliant television shows often last just a single season and are never heard from again.
The second thing to happen to 7 Days wasn’t anywhere near as good as the first thing. In fact, it was kind of shit. The show was culled from its usual 32 episodes a year to just 12 as part of Mediaworks cutbacks that also saw New Zealand Today (boo!) and Married at First Sight NZ (yay!) piled onto the scrapheap.
We’d normally be well into a new season of Friday night laughs by now, and holy hell could we have used the 7 Days team to give us some light relief over the past six weeks. But not a single episode of 7 Days has been filmed in its permanent studio on Parnell’s Nicholls Lane this year.
For 7 Days, the cutbacks were even more obscene as it had just celebrated its 10th anniversary with a glitzy bonanza filmed live at Auckland’s Aotea Centre. I was there, as I’d spent the previous couple of weeks putting together this feature that spoke to the guys who invented the show, the trio of geniuses over at The Downlow Concept, as well as many of the cast and crew.
It was a fun story to work on. I got to see how the writer’s room worked, shared a meal with everyone backstage before a show, and then sat at the 7 Days desk and asked Jeremy Corbett, Dai Henwood and Paul Ego what the show had done for them, and for New Zealand comedy, since it had started airing. As it turned out, 7 Days is a vital cog in the local comedy scene.
You might have tuned in irregularly, but I watched several weeks worth of shows leading up to its anniversary, and it was still on form, still going strong, still giving New Zealand comics a regular platform to grow on, and giving many of its stars a chance to be turned into household names.
It also remained very popular: the wait list to get into a live taping contained more than 9000 names. That’s a two-year wait. Two years! Imagine queuing for something for that long. That’s insane. You’d need a good tent, and a comfy lilo.
While I was working on my feature, something kept coming up. I noticed that everyone was talking about a gag made by one of the show’s regular guests, Melanie Bracewell. It was only two words, but it was a particularly funny, and spectacularly filthy, gag. Everyone seemed in admiration of Mel and the fact she’d managed to make the gag on the night, then get it past editors and censors into the version of the show that aired on Three.
So, after I completed my initial story, I filed another one. I asked Mel how she’d come up with the joke and the impact it had on her career, and used a bunch of the quotes that I wasn’t able to include in the original feature.
Sadly, it proved to be too dirty to publish. No one would run it.
Until now.
Enjoy.
Is this 7 Days’ filthiest joke?
Her off-the-cuff joke consisted of just two words. Blink, and you might have missed it.
But Melanie Bracewell's show-stopping gag on the long-running Friday night comedy show 7 Days is still making waves months later.
Her mother has been stopped in cafes to talk about it and it’s earned Bracewell hundreds of new social media followers - along with unwanted attention from “weird old guys”.
It’s also earned her respect from the show’s comedy veterans Dai Henwood, Jeremy Corbett and Paul Ego, as well as those behind the scenes.
Three’s 7 Days, which recently celebrated its 10th anniversary, pits two teams of comedians against each other in a series of segments relating to gags about the week's news headlines.
Bracewell's joke came back in May during Buzzy As, a segment which included a news clip reporting on a change in the recipe used to make Milo.
Host Jeremy Corbett asked the show’s comics to press a buzzer and riff on the question: "What's the classic Kiwi flavour?"
Bracewell, an award-winning comedian from Auckland, immediately put both hands in the air, leaned back in her chair and declared: "My pussy.”
She later tweeted footage of the gag out and declared: “Is this my proudest television moment? Probably.”
The reaction was instant. Dai Henwood swivelled around in his chair and looked away, unable to conceal his delight. Fellow comic Cori Gonzales-Macuer put his head in his hands and clapped. Paul Ego gave Bracewell a standing ovation.
But the strongest reaction came from visiting Irish stand-up comedian Ed Byrne, who declared: "Shall we all just go home? Let's pack it up everybody."
"It was like Byrne kind of broke," says Jarrod Holt, one of the co-creators of 7 Days who first saw the gag while editing the episode for broadcast.
He loved it, but said: “I remember being shocked for a while in the edit suite."
Corbett said the panelists' shocked response soon gave way to respect and awe.
"I think we were all struggling with what Mel had said,” Corbett said. “It was a big call. But it worked."
While her gag wasn't pre-written, Bracewell, 24, had used the phrase before with family and friends.
"It's kind of a go-to joke I tend to have in conversation, almost along the lines of a, ‘That's what she said’ gag,” she said.
“It just happened to fit so perfectly with the question … I couldn't resist."
Most feedback had been positive, Bracewell said. It had earned her hundreds of new Instagram followers and a neighbour stopped her mother to discuss the gag in a cafe.
Even her parents were supportive of it - sort of.
“I don't think my dad is stoked I'm talking about myself like that on TV, but he goes along with it,” she said.
But not all of it had been good.
“It’s had this weird effect where now everyone feels like it's appropriate to talk about it,” she says. “I always get weird direct messages from old guys … and I'm like, ‘No. It's cool when I talk about my pussy, but when you do it, it's weird.’”
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