While heartbreakingly Margaret Cho cancelled, there are some rib-tickling gay and lesbian comedians at this year’s New Zealand international Comedy Festival. We have a run-down on who to see here. Stephen K Amos in The Spokesman Gay Brit Stephen K Amos has charmed and entertained audiences all over the world with his relaxed delivery and ability to find the funny in some of the most unexpected places. He has performed stand-up at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe every year since 2003, after making his début in 2001. During the 2006 Fringe, he performed the revealing solo show All of Me, in which he publicly acknowledged being gay to his audience for the first time. He later told the Guardian he came out for two reasons: “I'd proved to myself over the years that I could make a room laugh by not saying anything in particular and I'd been thinking for a while, what's the next step? Because standup comedy is the one job where you can get up in front of strangers and say anything you like, so you've got room to change perceptions or make people think about something. “And then I heard on the telly they'd found a body on Clapham Common, someone who'd been killed in a homophobic attack, and saw the picture and it was a friend of mine. To think there are people willing to kill someone they don't even know, based on their perceived sex life, I thought, how can I respond to this?” Amos has also made a documentary, Batty Man, about homophobia in the black community. Urzila Carlson in The Long Flight To Freedom If you haven’t heard of Urzila Carlson yet then get out from under your rock, and go buy some tickets to see her live. This lesbian comedian is welcome refreshment on the New Zealand scene, and we thank South Africa for donating her. As her bio reads, after unsuccessfully trying to convince several African nations for three decades that she is in fact African royalty, Urzila decided to move to New Zealand where the people are easy going and more inclined to believe her lies. “Urzila was raised eating dried meat and watching rugby. In her adopted homeland she now eats fush and chups and watches rugby. The change has been quite dramatic.” Eli Matthewson in Proposition: Great! 2013 Billy T Award nominee, Eli Matthewson, is one to watch! Proposition: Great! is the gay comedian’s whimsical journey of stand-up and songs through the mind of a young man experiencing a quarter-life crisis; musing on being an adult when he still enjoys playing Pokémon and drawing with felts. Hailing from Christchurch, he’s wrapped up the final year of an acting degree at Unitec and was part of last year’s Comedy Festival in a show three-person Minority Report, for which he was nominated as Best Newcomer. He also travelled to the Edinburgh Fringe to perform Square Eye Pair with Hamish Parkinson, a show that had won them Best Comedy at the Auckland Fringe in 2011. Matthewson’s only relatively recently starting bringing his sexuality into his comedy. “As soon as I come out on stage, which I usually do in my first line if I'm doing a gig at the Classic, it opens you up to them a bit more I think,” he's told GayNZ.com. Matthewson has made it into the final five seeking the Yellow Towel from 15 finalists. He is up against Joseph Moore, Pax, Rose Matafeo and Tom Furniss. Becky Crouch in the Raw Comedy Quest Queer Aucklander Becky Crouch is in the semi-finals of the Raw Comedy Quest in Auckland on Monday 29 April at the Classic, head along and check her out! “I would love to have some of my gay community at the show and give me some support,” she says. While she has been in comedy for just a few months, she loves making people love and says the comedy community is great. Crouch has a song “it’s cool to be gay now” as part of her set, which she says is pretty dumb, funny and very catchy. “It’s a bit of a satirical look at how straight people see gay people, and suggests the possibility of the listener being gay themselves and just never admitting it. “I've played it three times in two locations (one in Ponsonby at Snatch Bar) and it's been a big hit. I think the timing for it is good.” GayNZ.com staff - 29th April 2013