LYN Of Tawa 'I'm Not A Celeb – More Yesterday's Fish & Chips'

A Kiwi Comedy Legend is Making a Mark on the Future

- Julie Jacobson

It’s a dreary Sunday afternoon. Rain is threatening. Ginette McDonald is hoping to get outside at some stage to walk Fifi, the adorable six-month-old Papillion-King Charles “handbag dog” she inadvertently picked up during a recent acting gig in Auckland.

But right now Ginette, best known as the vowelstrangling, chuddy-chewing Lyn of Tawa, is reflecting on a remarkable 50-year-plus career that has seen her go from treading the boards as a young, unpaid wannabe to an award-winning performer, producer and director.

It’s a career that started long before the #MeToo era, a career that in its longevity has allowed the trailblazing actress and comediennne to segue from young crack-up to heroine of the “older women”, with all the vicissitudes that entails.

One of dozens of comedians featured in the new TVNZ series Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy, Ginette explains how Lyn of Tawa’s first outing was a spur-of-the-moment creation for a late-night revue at Wellington’s Downstage Theatre, when she was just 16 years old.

The revues, cooked up by Bruce Mason and Roger Hall, were, Ginette says, “for people who wore black sweaters and medallions, had pottery, read Russian poetry and thought of themselves as liberal”.

While Tawa could have been any suburb, it was chosen as Lyn’s ‘hood because “at the time it was being portrayed as having this sort of vibrant, Westie culture, with people in skin-tight Amcos pashing each other on top of their Holdens. In fact, it’s a sleepy little dormitory place with about 18 churches!”