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Courtney Dawson (Image: FIRST)
Courtney Dawson (Image: FIRST)

Pop CultureJuly 6, 2022

Courtney Dawson’s dial-up dating history

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Courtney Dawson (Image: FIRST)
Courtney Dawson (Image: FIRST)

The comedian tells FIRST how she dealt with a bad gig, meeting her first boyfriend on MSN Messenger and more.

First boyfriend

“My first real boyfriend I met when I was 14… I met him on MSN Messenger on the old dial-up. And then, what are we… 16 years later? He was my baby daddy. Oh my God, that’s so embarrassing! But I mean, it’s just like Tinder if 14-year-olds were allowed on Tinder. And that’s why they’re not allowed on Tinder.”

First idol

“When I was maybe 14 or 15, I went to a garage sale and in the book bin I found the autobiography of Malcolm X. I read it so many times and overnight became a militant separatist, and my mum was like, “Oh, that’s weird. You are definitely part white.” Still love Malcolm X, still my favourite book.”

First stand-up gig

“It was at the Manurewa Football Club. I didn’t want to do it, my dad forced me to. I left it until the day before to write my set and because I was just panicking. I was like, ‘I don’t know what the hell do you talk about?’ And he was like, ‘Just tell funny stories about stuff that happened when you were a kid or stuff that me and your mum did or stuff about your family.’ So I did it and I’ve never seen my dad happier. It was like he was looking at a different person. Ever since then we’ve been doing comedy together – we had a show in the comedy festival in 2021. Our relationship survived, we didn’t need too much therapy. Now we just take over the dinner table with our comedy conversations. Our family absolutely hates it.”

First time you bombed on stage

“I went up north and did this show in Matakana pretty early in my career. I felt like it went terrible so I went and got absolutely smashed with the locals. Met this lovely couple, the husband gave me 40 bucks, I chucked it in the pokies, won them a hundred bucks, gave it back to them, went out to the courtyard and this older lady gave me a joint, I smoked that in the courtyard and completely greened out, went back to the hotel and felt like shit about the gig and shit physically. So I try to do that as little as possible now.”

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Dame Lynley Dodd (Photo: Hex Work Productions)
Dame Lynley Dodd (Photo: Hex Work Productions)

Pop CultureJuly 6, 2022

Watch: Inside the wonderful world of Hairy Maclary creator Lynley Dodd

Staff writers
Dame Lynley Dodd (Photo: Hex Work Productions)
Dame Lynley Dodd (Photo: Hex Work Productions)

Get to know the mind behind some of Aotearoa’s most beloved children’s characters in this brand new documentary special. 

When Lynley Dodd sketched a scrappy black dog and a few lines of rhyme onto the back of a shopping list in 1979, she had no idea she had just created one of Aotearoa’s most beloved children’s characters. “I put that into my ideas book and thought, you know, maybe there’s possibility for him one day.” 

In 1983, Hairy Maclary from Donaldson’s dairy finally got out of the gate and off for a walk in the first book of a series that would go on to sell over five million copies globally. But he is far from the only memorable character in Dodd’s scrapbook of ideas, which is also home to a photograph she snapped as a child of a dachshund that had chased a cat up a tree, and a newspaper clipping of a fox pushing a goose in a pram. 

“Animals have always been a big part of my life, it’s not a surprise that I started writing books about them,” says Dodd, revealing her creative process in documentary Lynley Dodd: Writing the Pictures, Painting the Words. Exploring her upbringing as an only child in ​​Kaingaroa Forest, she says was always surrounded by wild deer, rabbits and pigs, as well as her trusty pet cats and dogs. 

One of those cats, Wooskit, would go on to inspire the 1973 book My Cat Likes to Hide in Boxes, which Dodd illustrated in collaboration with Eve Sutton. From there came her solo books – The Nickle Nackle Tree, Titimus Trim, The Apple Tree and The Smallest Turtle – all before Hairy Maclary snuck down the road and caused havoc with the likes of Hercules Morse and Muffin McLay. 

Over the next 40 years the little scrappy dog would go on to inspire stage shows, cartoon series and even a collaboration with the London Symphony Orchestra. And, at the age of 81, Dame Lynley isn’t finished crafting stories and drawing pictures just yet. In this one-off documentary special, she reveals her new secret project, a departure from the Hairy Maclary universe that has been over 10 years in the making. 

Lynley Dodd: Writing the Pictures, Painting the Words is made with the support of NZ On Air.

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