Chester Missing is the little puppet with a big pottymouth. But despite his many PG16 jokes he's as loved by South Africans as milktart, biltong and braai.
This is a guy who's continually making history. In 2014 he was the first puppet to be taken to court - and win. He regularly makes it onto those "influential people" lists that magazines love to publish.
Chester Missing and Conrad Koch - the puppet's handler - were the first recipients of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation's certificate of appreciation for their stance against racism.
The fast-talking puppet has the kind of access to political figures for which most journalists would sell their souls."I'm trying to get an upgrade on my suitcase, but this coloniser that I carry around hasn't sorted one out for me," the puppet says when we meet. "He gets me into trouble all the time, he uses me. Do you know where he puts his hand? It's hectic, it's not OK."
The man he refers to as his "coloniser" is Koch, comedian and ventriloquist.
Watching a conversation between a puppet and his master is intriguing and bewildering. It's difficult to separate the two.
Questioning Koch about the puppet gets tricky because he claims he cannot answer with Chester in the room.
"I can't answer with him here," Koch says as he places the puppet down to answer a question.
Chester doesn't let up on the humour.
"People often ask me how old I am and it's weird because I'm made out of latex. I wasn't born so I can't have an age.
"I didn't have a mother, I came out of a special-effects factory, me and Shaun Abrahams are the same."
He's 80cm tall, weighs 2.5kg and wears shoes that would fit a two-year-old. He's the mosquito of comedians, small, but once he stings you realise just how significant he is. A decade after his creation the latex political analyst just wants to have fun.
Koch explains how Chester started as a way for him to explore the "fundamental narratives of South Africa's political discourse post-apartheid". Others would argue that the puppet is his alter ego, a tool he uses to express his opinions.
"Chester is me. When I'm on stage I'm performing the diversity of my opinion. I don't have simplistic opinions about race, culture and class, so what I do is I act out the various points of view that make up my viewpoints," he says.
Koch, who has a master's degree in anthropology, says the puppet is also a way to tell jokes, and while he may have had a very specific message a decade ago, his message has changed.Here's another first for Chester Missing: he is the first coloured political commentator to turn white.
When South Africans were first introduced to the puppet, he was brown with a distinct Cape accent, but Koch got hammered for this. "This is blackface, this is white supremacy."
Over the years the puppet has become lighter. Now it is melanin-deprived with blue eyes.
Admitting that the change was also a result of needing to be "less politically extreme", Koch says it had become soul-destroying to be angry all the time.
But Chester interjects: "He was riding on race in order to get gigs, to be honest. He's basically like Helen Zille and Leon Schuster, they should work together and make a movie called Oh Schucks ... I'm Privileged."
For the duo every politician is fair game, but some are harder to criticise than others.
Malusi Gigaba, for example, holds a special place in the puppet's heart thanks to a gift that the suave minister of home affairs gave Chester for Christmas.
"Malusi Gigaba gave me ties for Christmas, very nice of him, so now I am also captured," the puppet says.
"When I do live shows I do casual wear, but other days I wear my Malusi Gigaba ties, I'm fully captured. I'm in this for the money, I'm waiting for the Guptas to call me, to be the Gupta puppet. Yes, call me Zuma."
These aren't the only political aspirations the puppet has.
He has a "foolproof" plan and it all starts with a union. Having been denied a green ID book by Gigaba, his hopes now rest on former Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
"I asked Gigaba for an ID book but he hasn't come through for me, then Zwelinzima Vavi said Cosatu would get me a union for puppets but he hasn't come through for me."Now the H&M mannequins also need a union, so I started a union for puppets, it's called Mannequins and Puppets Union of South Africa."
While Gigaba has captured the puppet's heart, it's Gwede Mantashe that captured his mind. Chester hails his TV interview with the then ANC secretary-general at Luthuli House in 2012 as a highlight, given that it was probably unprecedented for a member of the party's top six to hold an interview with an inanimate object.
"It was such a big moment for me for him to talk to a puppet. I asked him if Luthuli House was an old-age home for corrupt guys and I think he said 'yes', I can't remember. I said he's the only guy with clean hands and he said the reason his hands are clean is because he moisturises. That made no sense."
JOINED AT THE HIP
From being a prominent feature at political rallies and ANC conferences to performing at sold-out shows in theatres, Koch is under no illusion that Chester has become his "comedy identity". Koch needs the puppet as much as the puppet needs Koch.
Walking through the gaudy Roman-themed tunnels at Emperors Palace in the east of Johannesburg, where Koch appeared last month, he is stopped by fans requesting selfies with the puppet.
"Chester has existed on his own so much that people treat him like an actual person and that's what's delightful about it, we're all just in on the game," Koch says.
But sometimes not everyone knows about the game, like Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr. In 2014, Hofmeyr was instrumental in helping Chester to make history as the first puppet to win a court case.
The singer applied for an interim protection order interdicting Koch from making what Hofmeyr called defamatory remarks about him on social media. At the time Hofmeyr stirred controversy by singing Die Stem at his concerts. He also tweeted: "Sorry to offend but in my books blacks were the architects of apartheid. Go figure."Koch, through Chester's Twitter account, denounced and ridiculed the singer and questioned why brands such as Pick n Pay and Land Rover were still sponsoring him. In the end, the Randburg Magistrate's Court set aside the protection order.
Referring to Hofmeyr, the puppet says he does not like to dwell on the past. "I prefer to avoid it. The guy is just controversial and looking for attention. We should focus on building a South Africa that works for people who actually want South Africa to work. Let's ignore the crazy bastards.
"On the other hand, how do we maintain the economy and fix what apartheid did? I don't have the answers, all that's in my head is a lump of foam. I literally could change my name to Blade Nzimande right now. He's a communist who drives a million-rand car, he's like a vegetarian who eats chicken."
Having moved away from the heavily political narrative, Koch has been working hard to bring back the fun that he feels Chester Missing was originally about.
"Fun is the reason I'm doing this. It helps that there's been a political change. With Jacob Zuma you had to be so strong on what was going down that it was so hard to have any form of silliness, because how can you be silly when Life Esidimeni is happening?" Koch says.
Chester bounces around like a man on a party bus, playing spot-the-potholes. He's quick to say he's just a puppet with no real answers to real problems, being controlled by someone with a master's degree.
Chester is typical of many public figures in South Africa. They're fun to be around but only a temporary elixir for social ills.
He can't solve real problems like land reform, but he can make us laugh about less serious things such as Zille's tweets.
The jokes keep coming: "They offered us a job at ANN7. I said no. I felt like they didn't need another puppet."
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