Pulp Comedy Presents: Ewen Gilmour

The late Ewen Gilmour leans entirely into his Westie persona to deliver straight-faced bogan observations. The set is self-styled as his “not-so-special,” working as a pure distillation of his specific flavor of New Zealand cultural pride. Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey even stops by the Pulp Comedy stage to present the comic with a literal coathanger to the city.

Filmed in 2001, Gilmour covers hyper-local and broadly absurd territory. He outlines the logistical benefits of having a goatee, delivers an ode to hitchhiking, and argues that George Mallory beat Sir Edmund Hillary to the summit of Everest. Other tangents cover stoned semen, westie Halloween, and treating the SPCA as a cattery.

The broadcast captures the comedian at an odd point in his career. The same year this aired, he gave a newspaper interview threatening to quit stand-up entirely due to the financial grind, going so far as to raffle off a wood-paneled 1970 Singer Vogue car during a festival run. He ultimately stuck around, continuing to perform in denim for another decade.