Michèle A'Court

Stand-up comedian Michèle A'Court is no stranger to the screen. The daughter of an actor, A'Court worked as a TVNZ publicist in the mid 1980s. Her journalism training and degree in English Literature and Drama proved useful when she moved in front of the camera: she was a writer/presenter on What Now?, and presented youth news show The Video Dispatch. Since then A'Court has acted (Shortland Street, Go Girls), narrated documentaries, and written books and columns. Her many awards include the NZ Comedy Guild Female Comedian of the Decade in 2010. A'Court has also appeared on 7 Days and The Project.

Journalism and stand-up are similar in some ways, because you have to learn to say the thing with the least number of words .... also, I often think that the way you construct a news story is really similar to the way that you construct a comedy set. Michèle A'Court, in her extended interview for 2019 TV series Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy