Bridget Jones meets kids comedian and magician Jarred Fell who is coming Auckland for the International Comedy Festival.
It is a documented fact kids laugh around 30 times a day more than adults. And sure, kids are amusing in an America's-Funniest-Home-Videos kind of way, but what do they think is funny? Is it all fart jokes and falling over?
Jarred Fell is something of an expert in these matters - at least he had better be. The comedian and magician is hosting Stand Up for Kids at the International Comedy Festival, kicking off next week.
The show is put on especially for the younger audience, featuring family-friendly laughs, magic and, yes, some physical comedy.
Fell says the key to making kids laugh is remembering not to short-change the short people.
"Kids humour is completely different because with adult humour you need to think outside the box and be creative, but with kids you can fart and they will giggle their little bums off. It's quite fun and I enjoy doing comedy for kids, because it can be the toughest crowd ever.
"They are the best judges of jokes and they are way smarter than you think - you do have to be funny. I've seen people go out there and just bomb and the kids have gone 'who's that guy? Get him away, he's like a dodgy uncle'. So you've got to be clever about it."
Fell discovered magic when he was 11, travelling the world with his family and started learning tricks for the purely noble reasons only a teenage boy can have - to impress girls in high school. But it didn't quite have the desired effect back then.
"Magic's quite geeky... Harry Potter much?"
It didn't deter him though, only encouraging him into studying, reading books and even practising in libraries with "annoying people trying to read" in the same room.
The dedication soon paid off when he discovered the suspiciously-named International Brotherhood of Magicians. But Fell insists there is nothing sinister behind the magic club, who named him Top Junior Magician in Australasia in 2001 and the senior gong in 2009.
And he hopes he can combine this talent with his God-given natural skills and turn a whole new generation onto the magic he loves during the three-week comedy festival.
"Because I'm younger, and a lot of magicians are quite old and wrinkly... It's kind of like a free pass, like I'm on their level and I can kind of do anything and they get on with it."
But he says no matter how much he gets on with an audience, nothing will change that old magician's code.
"[Magicians] are still very secretive... Some kids come up and ask 'how do you do that? I want to know how to do that' and I say 'go and get a book and learn from scratch'."
Stand Up For Kids at the International Comedy Festival
May 5, 12 and 19 at Loft at Q, Auckland
May 5, 12, and 19 at McKenzie Theatre, Capital E, Wellington
- © Fairfax NZ News
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