Comedian David Correos takes us through his life in television, including the genius of Spongebob Squarepants and the pitfalls of being ‘the Burger King guy’.
If you’ve glanced at a television some point in the last few years, you’ve likely encountered David Correos. The Billy T award-winning comedian delivered a hall of fame performance on Taskmaster NZ season two and has starred in Creamerie, Guy Mont Spelling Bee, 7 Days and Have You Been Paying Attention. And even if you managed to miss all of those, you’ve probably seen him pop up during the ad break as the face and voice of Burger King.
“It is the main thing people know me for now, but I’m stoked with that,” he tells The Spinoff. “Oi, that’s legacy – Leigh Hart had ‘That Guy’, so I love being ‘the BK guy’.” That said, fast food fame has its pitfalls. “I genuinely can’t go into a Burger King because I don’t want people to see me and be like, ‘look, we caught him out’.” Instead, Correos opts for a passive drive-thru approach. “I’ll get my mates to order it, but they’re still always like, ‘go on, say something and see if you get free burgers’.”
Beyond cowering in the passenger side of his best friend’s ride, Correos has been enjoying a year of touring and performing internationally, thanks to his appearance in Taskmaster NZ season two. “It came out during Covid so I didn’t really get to go overseas after doing the show,” he says. “It feels like now I’m just catching up and realising that there’s a lot of people who watch Taskmaster overseas, which has been sick.” He’s even had someone recognise him from the series in Thailand.
“It’s been so helpful because I don’t think any other panel shows lean into my style,” Correos explains, alluding to his more confronting, experimental style of standup that has seen him do everything from sellotape a knife to his head to covering himself in honey onstage. And although he did eat sunblock and slurp an unfathomable amount of canned tomatoes on Taskmaster NZ, he still finds that “some people are turning up to my comedy shows and going ‘oh, we didn’t know he went this hard’.”
So what kind of televisual diet has nourished one of our most thrilling and unhinged comedy minds? Correos us took us through his life in television, including the intellect of Spongebob and a blood-soaked round of charades with Paula Bennett.
My earliest TV memory is… One of my first memories was coming home at 4pm ready to watch the next episode of Yu-Gi-Oh or Dragon Ball Z, but TV3 had just gone “nah, fuck that” and put on the horse racing. That was when I learned that channels have the power to change a TV show whenever they wanted.
The show that I would rush home from school to watch… Dragon Ball Z, Yu-Gi-Oh, Spongebob Squarepants. It was the closest thing a boy could have to soap operas. I couldn’t relate to what was happening on Shortland Street, but I could relate to a guy trying to figure out his power level. I reckon those cartoons nailed the cliffhanger, and I only realised that as an adult. They really keep you coming back.
A TV moment that haunts me is… This seems really random, and I don’t want to have a go at anyone, but when I was a kid I hated the song ‘Crawl’ by Atlas. Every time that video came on, I was like, “fuck, three minutes of this shit”. It was just the saddest song, and then I grew up and realised they filmed it in front of Britomart where all the emos used to hang out.
The NZ TV ad I can’t stop thinking about is… Togs, togs, undies. What a great premise, what a great observation. The other is the cursed Mentos one. He eats the Mentos and it makes his nipples really erect and then he starts banging his nipples on all of the fences.
My earliest television crush is… Caroline Taylor from What Now. Eight-year-old David had a huge crush on her.
My TV guilty pleasure is… I still love Jackass. You can probably tell from my comedy, but I think pain humour is very funny. I think it’s a guilty pleasure, because whenever you reveal that you like pain humour, people look at you kind of weird. It’s the same in real life – when something painful happens to someone, and you start laughing, you get judged for it. So my guilty pleasure is definitely Jackass.
My favourite TV moment of all time is… I used to love the the Red Nose Day comedy specials. I remember when I was first starting on comedy, they had comedians doing sports, and I remember seeing Ben Hurley doing a lot of weightlifting, and I remember going like, “yooo, I like both of those things! I like weightlifting and I like comedy!” That was a real highlight.
My favourite TV character of all time is… Carl from Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Adult Swim cartoons really shaped my sense of humour, and I remember Carl was just really funny. The premise of Aqua Teen Hunger Force is that it is based around a sentient milkshake, fries and a meatball, but one of their close friends is just this Philadelphia dude just trying to live his life. Him being constantly pissed off at all of their antics was just so funny.
The most stylish person on television is… Abby Howells has sick style. You can really tell its an Abby Howells fit when she’s wearing something. It’s so unique, when I am out and about sometimes I see clothes and in my head I’m like “Abby would fuck with that.”
The funniest TV show of all time is… This Japanese game show on Amazon Prime called Documental. Season Five is crazy. They put 10 comics in a room. They have five hours. They all put 10,000 yen of their own money in, and the last one to laugh wins all the money. It’s got this brutality that only Japan can really get away with, because they’re all really trying to push each other’s buttons as much as possible. There’s a lot of things that they do to make each other laugh that is so, so borderline. It’s funniest thing, and it really leans into that sort of physical, violent comedy really hard.
My favourite TV project I’ve ever been involved in is… I love projects where everyone else builds the world, and then just kind of lets me loose to have fun and explore whatever they’ve made. That’s what I really like about the new style of comedy that is coming out of New Zealand. Guy Mont Spelling Bee was so great because it was so Guy, but also so New Zealand. To have a New Zealand show where you just can just fuck around and feel safe because your friends are all around you, and your friends are also making you laugh, is just the best feeling.
The other best moment was on Give Us a Clue with Paula Bennett, that shit was so fucking fun. I sliced my finger open the night before, and so I had blood all over my finger, and the safety guy wrapped it up, but then we re-wrapped it, but the they didn’t wrap it tight as tightly my finger was bleeding. So while I was doing all the act-outs for charades in front of Paula Bennett, my whole T-shirt was covered in blood by the end of it. We had to redo the whole shot because I just had too much blood on me.
The TV project I wish I could be involved in is… I’d love to do a travel show where you just eat food and hang out and have fun, like an Anthony Bourdain type show. Or anything with Matty Matheson in it. I’d love to just hang out with Matty Matheson all day, that would be sick.
My most controversial TV opinion is… I think Spongebob Squarepants is better than The Simpsons, and I think you’re smarter if you like Spongebob more than the Simpsons. Spongebob is way deeper and way more intellectual than the Simpsons. The gag rate is crazy, Spongebob jokes are evergreen whereas The Simpson is all pop culture references of its time. Spongebob still hits, man, every episode is a fucking banger.
A show I will never watch, no matter how many people say I should is… I have given Bojack Horseman so many tries, and I just can’t get into it. I just find it boring, I’ve watched the first four episodes and it just hasn’t hooked me. Every time I just think: “am I not smart enough to find the joy in this? Why am I not frothing this?”
The last thing I watched on television was… I’ve been watching Bluey, that show is too good. ‘Sleepy Time’ is a crazy good episode, it’s just nuts how they manage to make people cry with only seven minute episodes. Really reminds me of the Thai life insurance ads that were meant to pull on your heartstrings and make you cry.