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Comedian and two-time Gold Logie winner Hamish Blake found himself in a spot of bother after being stopped at customs during a recent trip.
The star, known as one half of the comedy duo Hamish and Andy, alongside Andy Lee, was in New Zealand when his luggage was scanned at the airport.
Sharing the story of what happened on the duo’s podcast, Hamish revealed his bag was pulled aside by an officer, after the discovery of something inside.
“My backpack has a lot of compartments – it’s actually the world’s best backpack,” Hamish explained. “I’m like, ‘listen, you might not be familiar with this particular backpack, where is it? How can I help you? Can I find this thing for you?’
“He goes, ‘no, I’ll need to do it’, and I said ‘What is it? Is it like a battery or…’”
Hamish said the officer in question replied: “No, it’s round”.
The star went on to say the officer got him to confirm what he’d written on his paper declaration form before telling him to “please step back while I open the bag”.
Hamish, who admitted on air that he was a bit worried “for reasons I won’t go into”, was left wondering what on earth was in his bag.
“What could be in here? Have I made a big mistake here? Have I bought something that you just shouldn’t bring across borders,” he wondered, before clarifying that he meant something “like a knife”.
“Anyway [he] digs down in the front pouch of my bag, which I very rarely go into, pulls out an apple,” Hamish revealed. “He says, ‘is this yours?’
“I said, ‘this is gonna sound like a line, but I’ve never seen that apple before in my life’,” the star recounted.
After some back and forth, the officer asked Hamish, who is married to author and entrepreneur Zoe Foster Blake, if he admitted that the apple was his.
“I said, ‘well I admit it’s in my bag and it’s a small red apple, and I don’t think you put it in there like a magician’,” Hamish responded.
“Putting an apple in my bag is not something I’ve consciously ever done,” the comedian explained to podcast listeners, saying the apple in question was “kind of waxy” and “spongey” and hidden under his “emergency rain jacket”.
“I think it got in my bag when we were in South Africa months ago,” he mused. “Last time I would have packed that bag for an expedition, I took the kids for a dawn hike and I reckon it was a hotel apple that I’ve thrown in there as a backup and that’s why it’s been so well preserved.
“I’ve taken that through many airports. I’ve taken that across the seas, literally from the other side of the world. I’ve flown it across the ocean, across Australia. I’ve nested it, I’ve sat on it, I’ve incubated it and now I’ve brought it to New Zealand as a gift for the New Zealand people from South Africa.”
Hamish went on to say he was told by the officer that the incident was now “on his record”. It’s understood that Biosecurity New Zealand keeps an internal record of passengers who receive infringement notices.
But that wasn’t the worst of it for the popular comedian.
He was given a whopping $400 fine, despite the fact that it was, in his words, an “accidental apple mishap”.
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