Guy Williams does not want you to take advice from him. The New Zealand comedian and TV host, nominated for two NZ Screen Awards for his docu-comedy series NZ Tomorrow, has given a refreshingly unhelpful account of his morning routine — and for anyone who has ever lost an hour to their phone before breakfast, it will feel very familiar.
Williams wakes naturally around 8.30am, usually overheated and tangled in kicked-off sheets. First stop: the bathroom, then straight back to bed to scroll. He starts with the Guardian, which he jokes covers too many problems — he already knew about wars and climate change, and now apparently the world is running out of sand too. Then come the messages: friends, family, enemies, the odd group-chat argument. By 9.30 or 10am he realises he has to leave for work.
The commute is the one part of the morning he actually rates. He rides an e-bike seven to twelve minutes from Freemans Bay to Morningside in central Auckland, weaving through traffic. A driver recently yelled at him en route, then apologised at the lights once he recognised him from TV — before asking why he couldn't afford a car. Williams owns a car; he just finds biking faster and a better start to the day than anything he does before it.
Food barely features before midday. His breakfast, eaten when everyone else is having lunch, is Hubbards granola with oat milk, or Vogel's toast with peanut butter — Fix & Fogg when he's on a health kick, a sugar-loaded American brand when he's not. Clothes come from a spare room piled with them: slides (no socks, no laces), shorts, a T-shirt, a jersey in winter. Sleep averages five hours and 52 minutes a night, though he insists he's no well-rested savant — he just goes to bed late too. Weekends start earlier, at 8am, for social football on Saturdays and Sundays.
His girlfriend, a dancer with similarly odd hours, is the more organised of the two. As for non-negotiables? None. He has spent five or six years telling himself he should walk, run or ride first thing instead of checking his phone — and believes phones are quietly ruining plenty of lives, possibly his own. Meal prep, he admits, was only explained to him recently by his director.
There's no holiday planning angle here, but for travellers heading to Auckland, it's a small, funny slice of local life: the Freemans Bay to Morningside route, granola-and-Vogel's breakfasts, and the very Kiwi experience of being heckled from a car. Williams performs his Best Comedy Show On Earth at the Bruce Mason Centre on November 14, with tickets via comedyfestival.co.nz — a handy excuse to plan an Auckland trip around a night of laughs.
Story via NZ Herald Travel.
