Newlywed Chris Parker: 'THIS IS ALL I EVER WANTED!'

The comedian opens up about the wedding of his dreams, having a breakdown and his new book

- Hayley McLarin

In numerology, 31 is said to be a lucky "super prime" number - and 31 has definitely been a prime year for Chris Parker, with the comedian winning Celebrity Treasure Island, marrying the man of his dreams and writing his very first book... eventually.

But it almost didn't happen for the Christchurch-born funnyman, who reveals in his hilarious autobiography Here For A Good Time that he woke up with a deep fear and panic that he was never going to finish the book. It was only the goal of his wedding to designer Micheal McCabe that forced him to knuckle down to complete the raw, engaging account of his life.

"When we finally got our lives back after the pandemic, I couldn't wait to get back to work, but then I just felt like I wasn't living my life - I was only working," he tells Woman's Day from the sunroom of the couple's Auckland home, where he does most of his writing.

"At the end of last year, a sitcom that I'd been developing for five years finally got greenlit, a web documentary got greenlit, I got cast on Taskmaster and then my comedy special got greenlit, as well as the book- and it was all due within eight months of each other.

"Just one of those things would've been great, but everything had backed onto each other and it definitely caused a breakdown. I've tried to keep it a little bit buoyant in the book, but it was a real sign that I had reached my limit and I was not happy.

"The only thing I could do was keep working. The wedding was a destination for me to get to. I cleared 11 days in a row nothing on, just wedding time.

I was really excited about putting my relationship first." The pair had their stag do at an alpaca farm, a place where Chris went when he was having "a full workload breakdown" He and his friends spent time cooking as a group and playing board games.