http://batemansbay.yourguide.com.au/...tegory=general 'Chickens' at Comedy festival launch
By Michael Gadd
What began as a serious debate on the age-old question of why the chicken crossed the road, exploded into a photo opportunity with not the rubber variety, but a group of young girls dressed as chickens invading the stage.
It was, of course, the launch of the 2007 Melbourne International Comedy Festival which kicks off Wednesday night with the annual gala performance at the Melbourne Town Hall, hosted by Peter Helliar.
The 21st version of the festival will feature a record 282 acts from Australia and around the globe, who will attempt to break last year's 340,000 tickets sales.
If Tuesday's stunt was to get Melburnians and the comedians in the mood, it was a success, but not everyone was impressed.
After comedians debated the unanswerable chicken query, the Irish-Australian adjudicator Jimeoin McKeown declared comedy was the winner on the day, much to the dismay of British funnyman Stephen K Amos.
"I told him in the interest of equality, as the main minority on the stage, I should be the winner," he said ahead of his third show at the festival, More of Me, in which he takes a chuckle-worthy look at being black, gay and one of eight children.
Another debater, Australian Tom Gleeson, would have preferred an easier subject on which the comedians could riff such as: "John Howard and Kevin Rudd, what do you reckon?"
"That'd be so much less work than chickens," said Gleeson, who wasn't entirely pleased with his theory about steroid abuse among chickens.
Gleeson, a star of Network Ten's rested sketch show Skithouse, will perform his show Tom On at his eighth festival. It will be his seventh as a headline act after he made his debut in 1999 supporting American Arj Barker.
Also debating was Australian comedian Greg Fleet, who has joined musician Mick Moriarty (The Gadflys) for the show Fleetwood Mick, Mark Watson, whose show is called I Worried That I'm Starting To Hate Almost Everyone In The World, and Shappi Khorsandi, who turns the spotlight on her Iranian heritage with her Australian stand-up debut.
The festival has become a fixture in the city's cultural landscape but also done wonders for the rest of the country as many comedians choose to include national tours either side of their festival schedule.
Some of the 2007 festival's most anticipated shows come from international stars Ross Noble, Dylan Moran, Sean Hughes, Rich Hall and Ardal O'Hanlon, while local drawcards include Tim Minchin, The Umbilical Brothers and Merrick and Rosso.
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