Pictured: Buffy and Bimbo with a very festive looking John Key at Big Gay Out.

Look out Taranaki, the bouffant Buffy and Bimbo are headed your way soon!

The programme for TAFT (The Taranaki Arts Festival Trust) reveals the city’s inaugural Right Royal Cabaret Fest, which will be hosted by the bawdy Buffy and Bimbo – the pair will have their own show and will MC the rest of the festival.

Their show, Up Front and Personal with Buffy and Bimbo will be an outrageous evening of song and dance, sequins, humour, boas, big hair and guest performers – all presented with flair and taste.

Buffy and Bimbo are well known to our community – they have been entertaining audiences for over 15 years – but they are also favourites with mainstream New Zealand, having made appearances at WOW, Te Papa’s tenth birthday part, Nelson’s arts festival. They’ve even taken to the air and planted themselves in Valencia, Spain, where they had their own show in 2005.

Up Front and Personal features the girl’s favourite songs (lip‐synced of course), dance routines, an interactive game show, guest performers and not forgetting the renowned ‘question time’, when the girls demonstrate their ad lib skills by answering probing questions. And life will never be the same for one local identity who will be interviewed on stage by the girls.

TAFT will take place at the TSB Showplace over Queen’s Birthday weekend (1 – 3 June) and will feature art rock, a burlesque show with a fetish for leather, surf n’ western music along with tales of love, death and despair, and daring feats of illusion and seduction.

Artistic director Drew James says he selected the shows because they are the pick of the cabaret acts that he has seen in Australia and New Zealand.

“It’s particularly good to have three international acts alongside the best of what New Zealand has to offer. The shows are coming to New Plymouth exclusively for the Right Royal Cabaret Fest and all of the acts are very different and high quality with an emphasis on fun, humour and the outrageous”.

Tickets for Right Royal Cabaret Fest are now on sale through Ticketmaster and the TSB Showplace. Prices range from $29 – $49 + booking fee. The full line-up and detailed information are available on the Taranaki International Arts Festival Trust’s website www.cabaretfest.co.nz.