A comedian who made an insensitive joke about the March 15 Christchurch terrorist attack is facing an advertiser boycott.
A short video from Australian Isaac Butterfield’s stand-up routine has been circulating on Twitter since Sunday.
In the clip, which now has more than 180,000 views, Mr Butterfield makes comments about the tragedy, which saw 51 people killed last year.
He then goes on to make a racial generalisation about Muslim people.
1 NEWS has chosen not to share the video.
Now, at least one advertiser has told 1 NEWS it plans to pull its commercial support for the comic.
Surfshark VPN, an online tool people use to keep their internet connection secure, sponsored a recent YouTube video of Mr Butterfield.
In a statement, the company says "we condemn such comments and believe that such topics should not be used as content for comedy stand-ups."
"Realising the sensitivity of this topic, we seek to understand why Isaac said what he said.
"Our partnerships team is trying to get in touch with Isaac to get his comment on this, and we will act accordingly."
A second advertiser, Plarium, says "we are currently reviewing our relationship with Mr Butterfield internally in light of his recent comments".
While Mr Butterfield hasn’t responded to questions by 1 NEWS, he’s addressed the controversy in a YouTube video.
In the more than 11 minute upload, Mr Butterfield claims he’s "being cancelled".
Addressing the controversial stand-up routine, Mr Butterfield says "it is a joke, it is not real, it is make believe".
He says the act was meant to be controversial, and he "won’t apologise for it".
When asked yesterday at her post Cabinet press conferences, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said was not aware of what was said, but added "no-one in New Zealand would ever want to see anyone taking lightly something that had such an extraordinary impact on our Muslim community and the entire country".
She said the March 15 was "burned deeply into our history".
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