Tarun Mohanbhai

Tarun Mohanbhai began his comedy career in 1996, and made his screen debut three years later on stand-up show Pulp Comedy. He toured his stage play D’Arranged Marriage in New Zealand and overseas for a number of years, starting in 2003. In 2005 he was a presenter on hidden camera show The Last Laugh, before joining the cast of The Millen Baird Show and A Thousand Apologies (which he also wrote for). Mohnanbhai has also written for Jono and Ben and 7 Days, and been a regular on sketch shows Radiradirah and Only In Aotearoa. In 2011 he acted in feature film Curry Munchers (aka Vindaloo Empire).

Tarun is South Asian like me, but he sounds like me because he's from New Zealand, he looks like me because he's my complexion of brown, and he's being funny. It was the first time I fully related to someone on a screen, and felt like this comedy is for me ... the jokes hit me on every level, you know what I mean? Comedian Pax Assadi on first seeing Tarun Mohanbhai on television as a teen, in an interview for 2019 TV series Funny As: The Story of New Zealand Comedy