http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.a...oryName=368980 Comedians recall their stand-up debuts 29th March 2007, 16:52 WST
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For Peter Helliar, it was the speech he gave at a mate's 21st birthday that gave him the courage to take up stand-up comedy.
For Adam Hills, it was his crowd of rent-a-laugh friends in the audience that bolstered his first cocky saunter onto the stage.
A journey back to a comedian's first gig can be a painful one, such as for comedian Dave Hughes, whose virgin comedy experience was like death due to lack of preparation.
And there are others that can only describe it as bliss and the birth of a pure natural talent. Such is the case for British comic Ross Noble, whose first triumph came at the age of 15.
It's inevitable that at some stage a comedian will flop, but that's what separates the men from the boys, says Irish funnyman Sean Hughes.
"But if someone is going to go to the trouble of getting up on stage and subject themselves to that kind of treatment, they're not going to leave without a fight," he says.
With the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival around the corner some of the world's top comedians remember vividly where they came from and look back at their first timid steps onto the stage where laughter is the currency and not the cure.
SEAN HUGHES
Only the most creepy fan would recall The Short and Curlys, Hughes' short-lived double act with which he performed his first stand-up gig.
"We did a couple of shows and they went very well," the London-born Irishman says. "But one show died on its arse and my mate made up some story about his sister being ill, went home and I never saw him again."
Since the duo had an extensive series of unpaid gigs booked, Hughes plucked up the courage to perform them solo, but with the same material.
"I would have been quite woeful for a while," he says.
ADAM HILLS
He remembers the exact date of the open mike night at Sydney's Comedy Store, July 13, 1989.
He was only 19 and he took his friends along with express instructions to laugh at his routine.
It was an open mike night and the subject matter was standard young male fodder: having sex and drinking alcohol.
"I believe the compere came out and said, 'Isn't it amazing that the guys who do it the least talk about it the most'. He got a big round of applause and that was my first comedy lesson," the Spicks and Specks host says.
PETER HELLIAR
It was The Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda and he has no doubt about the date, October 26, 1996. He was 21.
"I didn't tell anyone I was going to do it but then I did a speech at my mate's 21st and it went really well," Helliar recalls.
Helliar says the gig featuring gags about public and mobile rates for phone sex and Star Wars went like a dream once he overcame his first obstacle ... the microphone.
"I tried to pull the mike out of the stand and it wouldn't budge. In my mind I was pulling it really hard, but looking back at the tape I gave it the most timid little tug."
The second gig went even better, he says, but his third went like a debut should.
"Stupidly, I got a bit cocky and did a bit of audience gear, you know, 'Where are you from?' But when I got an answer I had no comeback."
DAVE HUGHES
The laconic wit of Dave Hughes came naturally, but it took hard work to make what he now does on TV, radio and stage look easy, as he found on his first outing at a Perth pub.
He says his stand-up debut at age 22, the same age he says he lost his virginity, was a shocker.
"I talked about the nicknames I had as a kid and how people used to hang shit on me," he says.
"Then, basically, when I walked off I heard someone say, 'well, you deserved it'. [That is as] bad as I have ever felt after a gig."
Hughes went back the next week and got a few laughs for a routine about how he'd bombed the week before and look who's laughing now.
ROSS NOBLE
If there was ever a born stand-up comedian it was Noble.
He spent some time as a teenager as a street juggler and sold balloons on stilts, but it was his first foray as a stand-up comedian at a local comedy club in Cramlington, near Newcastle in northern England, one month before his 16th birthday which would be the turning point.
"I wasn't allowed to be there so I had to leave through the kitchen," he says.
After the first five-minute spot at an open mike the audience was asked if they wanted the teenager to return the following week and they answered a resounding 'yes'.
JIMEOIN
Among Australia's favourite Irishmen, Jimeoin needed a little help from his friends to get on stage while in Sydney on a working holiday which is yet to end almost 20 years later.
It was their tight pockets which led him into an open mike night at the Harold Park Hotel where he was a hit as he delivered some surreal lines about seagulls not having eyebrows and something about a tin opener.
"I was playing pool with a few mates and there was an open mike night in the next room. This girl said, 'I put your name down. If you get up we all get in free and then we can stay on for the rest of the night'."
At age 23, he says the spontaneous performance was among his life's most uplifting moments.
"All of a sudden there was this room full of people who understood me," he says.