MICF 2007 Articles

[unfrufru]

Hi Everyone,

Thought I'd set up a new thread for this.

For the newbies - there are some rules

*This is for a) generic Comfest Articles and b) articles about multiple comedians or c) articles about comedians that do not have their own thread.
*BEFORE you post please check the published articles section of Mosh. If you article is about a specific comedian then do a search for their name. Most comedians now have their own thread so just add your article to thread
* Might be stating the obvious but if you notice that there has been a recent post to a comedians thread, just check that someone hasn't beaten you to it and posted it already. Last clean-up I did I kept finding the identical articles 3-4 times.
* You must include the link to the publication with the actual article

If this is too hard for you then just PM me the link or article and I'll sort it out. Actually if that's too hard for you then you probably wouldn't know how to PM me in the first place.

LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLLLLEEEE

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/c...153250678.html

Everything is material to a comedian in pursuit of a laugh - including family secrets. John Elder asks some of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival line-up where they'd draw the line.
Sounding like a buzzer in a quiz show - aaaaarrrr!!! - Dave Hughes ponders the notion of betrayal and how to avoid it. But the word betrayal isn't something comedians are comfortable with and Hughes, the human crow of hilarity, is searching for a more palatable take on the concept.
"You mean like a duty of care?" he says finally. "It's a good question."
In short, we're talking about comedians crossing the line when it comes to telling jokes about their friends and lovers, past and present. "Personal material" is how it's known in the trade. Real people and their private lives turned into a laugh. Is there a line to be crossed or is everything usable?
"Weeeeell," says Hughes. "It's what I can get away with and that's all right as long as you're being honest and funny. If it's an honest story, I don't think you can go too far, as long as your partner can deal with it. I mean, now and then I can annoy current wife. You do need the people around you to be comfortable."
And how comfortable is Hughes' intimate circle?
"I've been accused of disregarding other people's feelings for my career. My rebuttal is that, in my comedy, I'm the biggest fool and no one comes out looking worse than I do. Most of it's about making fun of my own foibles. But, yeah over the years, I've had friends get pissed off with me. I've have had yelling matches. People yelling at me down the phone. But I know time heals all wounds. I've known in a few hours or weeks, they'd get over it."
While Hughes reckons he hasn't lost any friends "long term", he seems to have a lot of former girlfriends.
"Like I've always talked about my past relationships even when I know they haven't wanted me to," he admits. "Like there was a girl I used to go out with and, when it was all over, she said she was off limits. I mean she was happy she wasn't going to be exposed on stage anymore. But you know, I rely on true stories and I'd be sneaky. I'd try and get the stories in about her, and I'd be thinking there's no way she'll hear about it - but, somehow, they'd get back to her."
Hughes sounds almost satisfied when admitting that comedy makes for "great" vengeance.
"I hope I don't take vengeance through my personal comedy. Buuuuut, the things that hurt you in your day-to-day life are where you get your funniest comedy. You might come away from a situation emotionally hurt, but, generally, you can make comedy out of it. It's vengeance, but also a way of overcoming being hurt. I hope me doing a routine about a relationship that's not working out . . . I would like to think of it as therapy. Like an intervention. One girl I went out with: I did a routine where she'd order me out of the door and, as I'd go, she'd say, 'That'd be right'. Later, she came and saw the show and she was able to laugh at the situation."

The reason why the joke gets a big laugh in the first place - "That'd be right" - is because too many of us have lived through that scenario. There's a bit of Hughesy the drongo in most people. And what makes the Hughesy brand of "personal foible" so likeable is that it doesn't so obviously reek of the dark side. There's nothing too heavy or edgy or downright awful to weigh the shtick down. No matter how truly hurt and miserable he and everybody else were at the time, Hughesy makes it all seem a lark.
Not so easy and breezy for British comic Jeff Green, who also believes that honesty and hilarity make for great therapy, but he often deals in truths and hurts so raw - namely about his father who left home when Green was 10 - that they aren't always easy to sell as comedy.
Speaking by phone, Green says: "People sometimes stop me and say that I give my dad a hard time. But my dad features heavily in my shows because he's a great comedic character: he's stingy, he's miserable, he's a great comedy foil.
In his show Personal (coming to the Melbourne International Comedy Festival) Green tells how his father one day blamed his abandonment of the family home on the fact that he'd had a few "quibbles" with Green's mother. The conversation, as played out on stage, ends with Green's reply: "Quibbles, Dad? I don't know if I'd call it quibbles when you're chasing Mum with half a house brick and saying, 'You bitch. You ruined my life'."
Green has told the joke countless times, but there's clearly an anxiety in his voice as he relates it here - a sense of stunned disbelief that can only be stomached by latching on to the ludicrous hindsight that his father has brought to the story.
"But it doesn't get the biggest laugh of the night. There are probably a lot of people who have witnessed domestic violence - and it's always horrible and mad. This was a mad and horrible time for the family - but, from a comedy point of view, there's a cartoon element that I'm drawing on.
"My reason for being on stage in the first place is to deliver as many genuine truths as I can. And with a show called Personal I certainly think I'm obliged to delve into hard personal truths to give the show validity. This is when comedy can be liberating when you share an experience with the audience. The laugh comes because they recognise the truth in what you're saying - and the way in which you deliver it."
But putting your dad out there for a joke - no matter how awful he's been - is risky business. Sometimes Green says he's got it completely wrong and has essentially murdered the room he's playing in - namely when his own battered emotions are too openly displayed.

"Sometimes you have to play around with material and see how far you can push it. Basically, you're investigating an emotion in yourself on stage. And so I've been doing some stuff about my dad, but getting it slightly wrong and the audience isn't going with it. I'm getting nothing from them and then a heckler calls out, 'We like our dads'. And I said, 'Well good for you.' And there was a moment when I wanted to say, 'When you've had an experience of what I've gone through . . .'. But I didn't. From that point it's not comedy. There's no joke in it. I got it wrong. They didn't go for the dark stuff. People want to see the bruises, not the scars."
And what does Green's father have to say about it?
"Dad is probably not aware of it, if I'm honest. Generally, I call people ask their permission to use them in a show. It's just good manners. But I haven't done that with Dad. He came to a show years ago, but it really isn't his thing. I've had people ask me to write a book about my childhood, but I wouldn't do it while Dad was still alive. He couldn't handle it. And I do the (house brick) joke in front of him. I mean, I get on better with him now that I have a son on my own."
Like other comics interviewed for this story, Green believes no topic is taboo if it's true and funny. Even so, some routines out there make him uncomfortable.
"There's a trend where you find comedians doing a lot of frank stuff of a sexual nature. I talk a lot about relationships - be it my wife Fiona or my ex-girlfriends - but I have boundaries. I don't name names or reveal confidences. There's one guy that springs to mind, and I love his comedy, I find it very funny -. about him sticking his thumb in his wife's backside. In the back of my mind I'm thinking, 'This is his wife. Not someone from his past but his wife.' Still, if he can square it with himself, well, to be honest, it has to be all right."
I ran Green's joke - "you bitch, you ruined my life" - past Melbourne comic Charlie Pickering. He burst into laugher.
"It's the detail that makes it funny. Half a house brick. You can't make that stuff up," he chortled.
I mentioned how Green blanched at the, ah, thumb joke and he immediately blurted, "I know that comedian and he's won many awards. He's one of my favourites. And, at no point, do I think poorly of his wife when he does the material because he makes himself a fool at the same time. I'm watching and thinking, 'OK, I'd never say that about my wife.' I find it funny because he's a good comedian."

Last year, Pickering did a show called Auto, featuring stories from his childhood. Pickering generally never asks his intimates for their permission about using personal material - "because I'm confident I'm not being hurtful or vindictive" - but he realised his mother was anxious about the show and he walked her through it line for line.
His festival show this year, Impractical Jokes is based on Pickering's father - and a 10-year war of practical jokes he waged against his best friend. There won't be a private preview because his parents simply trust that he won't overstep the line. Is there a line for Pickering as far as personal comedy goes?
"I guess finesse has a lot to do with it. The way you present an idea is everything. I know one comic who did material about how he and his partner got along well - and then they had kids and it ruined his life. I like this comedian. He's a good friend and I like most of his material. But, every time he did that routine, it was so negative, such a brute force statement of negativity. What if someone taped this and it was played back to his kids at some point? It always made me uncomfortable."
Melbourne comic Terri Psiakis' last festival show was about being single and happy, and she was able to pay out affectionately on her housemates - one of whom was a comic who on occasion followed her act and would make it known that he was the fool aforementioned. Her new festival show, Unavailable, is about shacking up with the man of her dreams.
"I'm running every piece of material past my partner. I'm not naming him and he has the power of veto. He says as long as I make some money he's not concerned."
When we spoke, the writing of Unavailable was going slower than expected "because it's hard to find the edge in domestic bliss". Maybe she should raid her boyfriend's family?
"Well, that's interesting, because there was a conversation we had when I said, 'What about this?' - and it was about his family. And he said, 'Nuh'. The situation was sensitive and I said I'd change names, but absolutely 'nuh'."

[unfrufru]

http://www.thewest.com.au/aapstory.a...oryName=368980

Comedians recall their stand-up debuts

29th March 2007, 16:52 WST


ord=Math.random()*10000000000000000;document.write ('');if ((!document.images && navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Mozilla/2.') >= 0)|| navigator.userAgent.indexOf("WebTV") >= 0) {document.write('<a href="http://ad.au.doubleclick.net/jump/thewest_news/breaking_news;tile=9;sz=300x250;ord=123456789?" target="_blank">');}
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.

[unfrufru]

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.

Brought to you by AAP

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/wirele...366157972.html

Whither, oh, wi-fi

April 3, 2007
Next

Stand-up comedian Kent Valentine takes time out from his comedy festival preparations to ponder the frustrations of his wireless internet options.
Kent Valentine


THERE is a joy you feel when you first experience the freedom of a wireless internet connection. Perusing emails on the balcony, checking in for a flight before you get to the airport, even sitting in Starbucks and reading boingboing.net goes a long way to taking your mind off the taste of the six-litre frapp-latte-cino coffee Frankenstein that you just paid $50 for.

I also enjoy wireless for a more pragmatic reason. I have a pet rabbit, and anything that reduces the number of chewable cords around the flat keeps him off the dinner menu and in my heart.
But wireless isn't all just shits and giggles, as anyone who has travelled around the country and tried to stay online will know.
I have a new criterion for judging hotels: how much they lie about their wireless internet connection. Hotels quickly realised it was cheaper to throw a wireless router in the back corner of reception than to wire up every room - and ever since then they have taken full advantage of the fact.
"Is there anything else I can help you with Mister Valentine?"
"Does the room have a broadband connection?"
"Oh yes sir, all of the rooms have wireless. There's an instruction sheet in your room."
OK, so I found the instruction sheet, but I'm having trouble finding the wireless. I know signal strength can vary greatly over a short distance, so I walk around the hotel room with my laptop in hand, searching for that elusive signal. It's like when Grandpa used to pull the rabbit ears out of the TV and stalk around the living room, looking for reception. We'd draw straws for who would have to perch on the edge of the table, or press up next to the bookcase and hold the aerial in the perfect position so that everyone else could watch (you could rest in the ad breaks). Some things never change, it seems.
I've found the wireless signal in one of the small cupboards of the hotel room kitchenette, and spend the next half an hour sitting cross-legged on the floor with my laptop in the cupboard and my knee propping the door open.
But I've only just passed the first of three tests. The second involves registering for, logging onto and then paying for whatever extortionate wireless plan the hotel has conjured up in their shady dealings with the local web mafia. Five dollars for every 10 minutes? Oh, that sounds perfectly reasonable considering that I'm here for a week and will be online for five to six hours a day. A down-payment of one kidney, you say? Well, considering the four mortgages I will require to pay for the internet time, I can certainly understand your position.
The last step is actually trying to use the internet connection that you have hunted down and sold your first-born for. The 50 other renally challenged hotel patrons who just jumped through the first two hoops want to download their life through the same $4, Taiwanese, wireless router that the salesman told the hotel manager would "do the job".
On a recent trip to Adelaide, I found the internet connection (above the curtains) was so slow that I wondered if perhaps it was made in Victorian times and needed a wee upgrade. An urchin in hotel uniform pushing a barrow of coal past my door offered to sell me some coal to make the wi-fi faster.
I declined, because Visa were on the phone asking if I'd authorised a $6000 internet payment to a known Adelaide crime boss.
Ahh, the joys of wireless. Sure it may be a little problematic on the road, but in the safety of your own flat/house/hovel/warren, where everything is within chewing distance of a black rabbit, it's a wire-free, download heaven.
Kent Valentine is in What Would Batman Do?, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, April 5-29.

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...e#contentSwap1

Comedy of wrong

• Email
• Print
• Normal font
• Large font

April 6, 2007


Puppet Up! - Uncensored is a not-suitable-for-children show from Jim Henson's company.
Photo: Supplied



The laughs come from some unlikely sources at this year's Comedy Festival, says Fiona Scott Norman.
THE great thing about comedy is you can find it lurking in the most unexpected places. A poorly conceived TV commercial, a suggestively shaped gourd in the supermarket's fruit and veg department, famous ex-footballers getting run over by their ex-girlfriends.
Comedy works best when it's a surprise, which is why a) Nobody past the age of seven and three-quarters likes to hear a joke twice, and b) Why it's good to cast your net wide this Comedy Festival. There are a lot of performers delivering a style of comedy that you wouldn't presume, and many people you wouldn't bargain on performing in the first place.
Puppet Up! - Uncensored, is a not-suitable-for-children show from Jim Henson's company, which is an immediate inversion of audience expectations.
Many miles from teaching littlies the alphabet (except, maybe, the letter "f"), the puppets in this improvised show inhabit an adult world, talking relationships and politics, being dark and oddball, and in one memorable sketch viewable on YouTube, cheerily discussing what happens when George Michael is discovered locked inside the disabled stall in a public toilet.
Allan Trautman is one of the nine puppeteers in the international smash-hit show, and he says that the great advantage of puppets is that you can get away with more.
"You can come out and say some pretty outrageous things and it's forgiven because it's a puppet. The audience suspends their disbelief, which is just as well because we try and provoke each other all the time. The trick is to stop the sketch from steering into the iceberg. We do sometimes come close to being offensive; last night we had a sketch where it was suggested that what was keeping the lovers apart was the Israeli Army."
The key to Puppet Up! - Uncensored, like all impro-based shows, is the audience suggestions. Trautman says they go with what they're offered, with the only proviso being no repetition.
"We don't want to be accused of doing prepared sketches. It's an amazing show though. Because people are so used to presuming that puppets are for children they get blown away by seeing them placed in adult situations."
One performer who will be going further than most this festival is Sydney musical stand-up Jackie Loeb, in her show Things I Can't Talk About. Loeb was inspired by a spate of corporate gigs where she was taken aside and told not to swear, not to strip, not to talk about race, gay marriage or anything contentious.

"We're living in more conservative times now. I've turned it into a routine, doing a set after I've been told not to use the 'c' or 'f' words, so I talk about the 'urniture'. I did a uni gig a year ago and I had my gut out, shaking it round, pretending to be Shakira, and a girl threw a banana at me. A few years ago they were all into that fake feminist stuff and would have found it hilarious."
Loeb is letting loose in her show, determined to be controversial and not have anyone telling her what she can't do.
"I'm trying to break out of the mould I've created for myself as the nice, likeable comedian. I'm a woman now, I have opinions. And how can you be funny without being a little bit edgy, confronting or bawdy? I'd never upset minority groups before, but now I'm trying to upset the majority groups."
Another feisty chick trying to offer another perspective is Tammy Anderson, a Tasmanian Aboriginal comic with a show called Tammy Anderson's Itchy Clacker.
For Anderson it's about weaving comedy from her difficult and poor upbringing. The show title comes from having to use phone books and magazines as toilet paper as a kid.
"Yeah, it's the ink. Look, you've got to eat, feed the kids, pay the rent, sometimes toilet paper's at the bottom of the list. Where I grew up, there'd never be a phone book at the public phone but you'd go to someone's house and there'd be the A-K with half the pages ripped out."
Anderson sees herself as a storyteller. "I just like talking about life, painting a world that most people haven't experienced. I'm not lashing anyone over the head - it's a joy-ride."
Someone else who's coming from a place some would see as an unlikely comedy place is Bryan Roberts, a Samoan former Seventh Day Adventist preacher from New Zealand turned stand-up.
"I've never sworn on stage but I do have sexual references and that. I don't think I'm rude, but people who knew me as a preacher find it difficult to make the leap. I've never invited my mum to any of my gigs; I know there'd be a shoe flying towards me through the crowd."
Roberts left the church because of internal politics, and one of the reasons he moved to Melbourne was to avoid bumping into anyone. "In Samoan tradition a preacher is held in very high esteem, a god with a small 'g'. If you leave you're an outcast."
Roberts, whose show is called Life of Bryan II - Lessons in Life, sees comedy as a way of helping people. "I do sort of break out into preaching, I do preach principles. I think it's good for people to see you have the same problems they have. Being a comedian allows me to show my vulnerabilities."

Another comic from an unlikely background is former premiership footballer Glenn Manton. Manton played more than 200 games for Carlton and Essendon, works as a motivational speaker, has written a book and is plunging into the Comedy Festival with a group impro show - The Infamous Spraygeltent - about, OK, football.
Manton has some chops as an improviser, having twice played Celebrity Theatresports. Similarly to Roberts, Manton sees his show, based around motivating a team called Kaaalton struggling at the bottom of the ladder, as a way of educating people, particularly exploding a few myths about the AFL.
"People accept everything they hear in the media as fact, and there's saturation coverage of the AFL to the detriment of the overall cultural landscape. The papers ran a page 5 story about Nathan Buckley's dog dying. That's nonsensical."
Manton's trying comedy because "life's for living, not observing", but he admits that a festival show will be different to AFL. "On a bad day, 50,000 people would come out to see what I was doing."
On the surface the least likely basis for a comedy show should be Dolly Goes Down on the Farm, where a right-wing shock-jockette interviews animal activist Peter Singer. But Dolly Putin is the creation of Tasmanian Naomi Edwards, and last year the outrageous Putin interviewed Greens leader Bob Brown.
"The basic tension is that of a far-right character wearing a cowhide corset trying to persuade Peter Singer to eat a Big Mac by the end of the show. It's very politically incorrect," says Edwards.
She stalked Singer over four months to get him to do the improvised show with her. "Dolly represents everyone who wants to kick against the tight controls we have over what can and can't be said. And Peter's great. There's not an anti-vegetarian argument he hasn't heard. He's got an answer to everything. For people like him who have to keep their sense of humour in a box, this is a great opportunity."

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971225776.html


Daniel Ziffer, Reviewer
April 12, 2007


The sketch comedy of this British group is shocking, gut-ripping and unstoppably funny.
We Are Klang: unstoppably funny.


Genre

ComedyLocationThe Victoria HotelAddress215 Little Collins St, MelbourneDate5 April 2007 to 29 April 2007Tickets$25/$22 ($26.50 Sat)Phone Bookings1300 660 013Online Bookingswww.comedyfestival.com.auDetailsTue - Sat 9.45pm, Sun 8.45pm
COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW
****
A brilliant accumulation of filth, the sketch comedy of British group We Are Klang is shocking, gut-ripping and unstoppably funny.
The warning "adults only" cannot be made clear enough for this show. From the odd-ball opening making the most of their physicality - one is gigantic, another looks like a shaved, neglected puppy - the troupe get shamelessly nude and performs highly offensive jokes, mocking those who have no chance to fight back.
If you like that, this could be the highlight of your festival. They were nominated for a prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival and are an early gem for Melbourne's event.

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...e#contentSwap1

Hall the stage for the wackier wackos

• Email
• Print
• Normal font
• Large font

Greg Burchall
April 5, 2007


Comedians in Melbourne benefit from strong foundations - including those of the Trades Hall.
Prime Minister John Howard (left); the man behind the PM, Shan Jayaweera; Lawrence Leung, who is not cool; and Comedy @ Trades producer Catherine Woodfield.
Photo: Rebecca Hallas



It's a funny thing, these two buildings that throw wide their doors and corridors, their obscure rooms and tucked-away chambers and invite inside the weird and the funny, the silly and the subversive when Melbourne Comedy Festival time rolls around.
The Melbourne Town Hall is grand and ornate, with portraits of bearded mayors on its walls and insignia woven into the carpets. Up the road, Trades Hall stands squat and solid, on slightly higher ground, with honour rolls, murals, bullet holes in its walls and floorboards worn down by workers' boots.
There has always been a connection - perhaps uneasy - between the two: the establishment with visions of grandeur and the tradespeople whose skill can make it real.
While the Town Hall has been Comedy Festival headquarters for many years now, Trades Hall leapt onto the stage last year with a program of mainly emerging and hard-to-classify acts that nevertheless pulled laugh-seekers in with a program of cabaret and theatrical fare.
About 20,000 tramped into Trades Hall last year, the first official Comedy @ Trades, produced by Catherine Woodfield. She says "nerves of steel" were needed to hire all the venue's spaces and program a four-week season.
This year, she has added rooms and acts, brought in some headliners, shifted the focus and arranged an even bigger headache for herself.
"The programming intention has not changed," she says. "We still want a broad cross-section, we still want to mix things up.
"But while we had a more theatrical content last year, this year there is more stand-up. More alternative forms of comedy. We even have magic."
Woodfield is particularly pleased that some established acts - among them British comic Daniel Kitson and local musical trio Tripod - approached her for a spot.
"There were a few who spent a lot of time here last festival - after-hours - and enjoyed the atmosphere. Now they are coming back to work."
At the showcase launch last Thursday, many acts made reference to the serious, labour-driven edifice.
Energetic comic Dave Thornton took delight in getting the crowd to chant the Snoop Dogg refrain "Make money money make" but wild-eyed evangelist Pastor Michael's attempt to get the crowd to yell "Bless John Howard!" tested the very bounds of audience participation.
Perhaps the silence was the punchline.
Cath Jamison's wicked routine that involves illusion and dating, Jim Lawson's feral footy coach and the deliberate awfulness of Burlesque Idol left nobody in any doubt that the stand-and-deliver style of comedy has alternative manifestations.

"There are people who talk about who they are, there are people who talk about what they think," says comic Lawrence Leung. "And there are those who don't know about either of those things.
"I'm just testing new things all the time."
Leung's new show is about the fact that he has never been hip and desperately wants to be seen to be as cool as his older brother, who has moved to Sydney and plays in a rock band.
"It's a personal story and it's narrative-driven - I think audiences prefer that rather than a whole lot of jokes: they want to know more about you and where the story is going."
Disturbingly, the "nerd" factor appears rampant. Do we blame Seinfeld? Or these conservative times?
Apart from Leung, who admits to having slept in a bunk bed until he was 24, there is an unsettling theme of nerdishness infecting other acts.
The cardigan-clad librarian Josh Earl celebrates music and the Dewey Decimal System; lab-coat attired Ben McKenzie argues that science rocks; Tripod has put out its "nerd-feelers" to shoot willing citizens for video accompaniments to its backlist.
The only theme Woodfield can see is the need to encourage emerging talent.
"I love to see the arc of someone's development," she says.
"There are failures, there are surprises, but the important thing is to see things that aren't conventional, things that are unexpected. The performer gets something out of it and so does the audience."
As with the Town Hall, Woodfield continues to find new, intimate spaces in the labyrinthine hallways of Trades Hall, which she hires for the festival.
This year it includes her previous office, which is now a performance space for 30.
"There aren't that many people who can fill a 100 or 200-seater, or even - when they are starting out - a 50 to 60 seater," she says. "It's a common problem to find a space where a new act can feel comfortable and build (his or her) confidence."
Woodfield insists Comedy @ Trades is not in competition with the main game down at the Town Hall. She says the two precincts complement each other and that the Comedy Festival has provided great support, in terms of programming - and even financially.
"Ideally, we can help to strengthen each other and build a wonderful hub between us," she says.
"Although we will always remain a little bit odd - I hope."
The Age is a Festival sponsor






http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...e#contentSwap1


As Melbourne comedy fans engage in the annual "What's funny?" dialogue, Michael Dwyer has a harder question: "Why?"
Dom Romeo insists no animals will suffer as a result of his comedy appreciation course, Dissecting the Frog, part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. But that doesn't mean every animal will be leaping for joy after five weeks.
In session one, the second-funniest moment was when one of the participants accidentally walked into a wall looking for the toilet. Believe me, I know funny and that was gold.
Sure, there were theoretically amusing recordings by Jerry Lewis, Filthy Rich and Catflap, Maria Bamford, Bev Killick and other dead funny people plucked from Mr Romeo's heaving suitcase of CDs and DVDs.
But from this corner, an evening scrutinising what makes other people laugh was a solid affirmation of the course's titular disclaimer, attributed to American writer E.B. White: "Analysing humour is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it."
"Admittedly, comedy nerds can be boring for people who only want to be amused," concedes Romeo, a radio humorist and "hanging judge" for the annual Raw Comedy stand-up competition. "But for people who like comedy enough that they can hear a joke a second time and still appreciate it, some of them want to work out why the second time had that effect."
Said effect is, of course, largely subjective.
And subject to change. One aspect of comedy that interests Romeo is the way in which social trends influence whether a gag can draw a laugh. "The Morecambe and Wise Christmas Show of 1977 rated 28 million, the biggest historical viewing audience in England," he says. "(But) try and watch their stuff now and at times you're wondering 'What is it that was funny?' "
Those were more innocent times, when two heterosexual men sitting in the same bed smoking pipes was a recipe for instant hysteria - once you added a can of laughter, naturally. But Romeo is far more interested in "wrong" comedy, the stuff that makes us laugh that really, truly shouldn't.
"The thing I find most interesting is why racial humour exists, and who gets to be the butt of the jokes," Romeo says. "There was a time in our history when it was actually OK to laugh at things that you're just not allowed to now."
Some of these gags even seem to oscillate, he says, between acceptable and unacceptable. He cites Benny Hill's dodgy buck-toothed and bespectacled Asian stereotype of the '70s,and wonders how it differs from the character of Ricky Wong in Chris Lilley's award-winning TV series of 2006, We Can Be Heroes.

"How does he get away with it? Why does it not offend the Asian students who watch that show and see themselves in it?" he inquires.
Melbourne comedian Nelly Thomas isn't in the business of adjudicating on jokes, "wrong" or otherwise. As co-presenter of the Jeez Louise Funny Women's Forum, her approach to what's funny is less philosophical and more practical.
"I keep getting asked whether you can teach comedy," she says. "Some people will never be funny on stage. They might be funny in life, but they can't perform it."
Thomas has a pretty good claim to being naturally funny. She enrolled in Jeez Louise in 2003 thinking it was a writers' workshop. When it turned out to be a dedicated training ground for comediennes, she went from stand-up virgin to winner of Raw Comedy, and Edinburgh Festival debutante, within six months.
In terms of deciding what's funny, "it's not my job to be prescriptive", she says.
"To me, there's no subject that is taboo, but whether it's funny depends on who the butt of the joke is. I've done a lot of work for the Royal Women's Hospital, so I've had to tackle issues like obesity, domestic violence, sexual assault, really full-on things that you don't wanna make people laugh about. But if you're making a joke out of the person doing it, or the system that lets that happen, it's a very different thing."
One joke that doesn't raise a smile with Nelly Thomas is "Why Aren't Women Funny?" The perennial provocation cropped up again in January, as a headline in Vanity Fair magazine. Thomas said she received the link from a dozen friends, but has so far declined to read it.
If the author of that piece had made it to Dissecting the Frog last week, he may have been surprised at the funniest moment of the evening, when Bev Killick excused herself after a long day of rehearsing for the mammary manipulation spectacular, D-Cuppetry. "I've had my tits out all day learning tricks and I've got a teenager and a toddler waiting for me at home," she said on the way out.
How I laughed. Is that wrong?
Dissecting the Frog: Comedy Appreciation Course continues April 16 and 23. Jeez Louise Funny Women's Forum takes place at the Melbourne Town Hall on April 14 and 15. D-Cuppetry is at Umbrella Revolution, Federation Square, until April 29.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...970943723.html

COMEDIANS may laugh a lot, but the majority don't earn a lot.
So they have day jobs, working on their routines while they serve your coffee, fix your car and scan your purchases.
Take Josh Earl, whose reality-based show Josh Earl is a Librarian covers his three years working at Hoddle Street's Collingwood College.
"I moved to Melbourne (from Tasmania) to do comedy, so it's a way I can make cash to put on shows in festivals," he said.
The 25-year-old teaching graduate points to Hobart's Comedy Festival — an emerging event in January used by some comics to strengthen material and test shows — as a way his work accommodates his passion for comedy.
"I get 12 weeks, paid, off a year," he said, happily. "I'm only getting paid $40 a spot some nights, but I can afford to go and do it."
Comedians in the festival work as receptionists, cashiers, couriers, drama teachers, farmers, salespeople, in call centres, as mascots and in cover bands.
Other shifts are more dramatic. By day Justin Gregory is a civilian, working alongside military personnel, in the payroll division of the Department of Defence in Melbourne.
At night he's Jillette Jones in The Sound of Music Drag Show.
"(The department) pays for life," he said. "Whereas performing is an outlet, something fun and exciting to do."
For former mechanic and brick-stacker Ben Chisholm, finding a job to work around his comedy schedule is torturous.
"It's nearly impossible," he said, "unless you take on a part-time job during the day."
Chisholm's Voicebox show in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is filled with impersonations.
But when former audience members have identified him during interviews, their impression generally ends with ringing words, he said: "You're not what we're looking for."

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971225788.html


COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW
***½
The blues had a baby and they called it rock'n'roll. Bob Downe and The Whitlam's Tim Freedman had a baby and they called him Sammy J.
Part cabaret, part Gilligan's Island, part breaking news story, Cyclone is a wonderfully inventive, epic tale of a man who chases a twister out of love for Helen Hunt.
Sam McMillan, J's altar ego, is 58 kilograms of musical entertainment with a mysterious talent for bringing the storm chaser out in all of us.
Cyclone is where the Wizard of Oz cross-pollinates with the nightly news to produce bawdy songs about year 9 students finding sexual healing with rigid digits in the dark.
It's a show with the lot: Prima juice, prank calls, emergency updates from newsreader Peter Mitchell, a faux-cyclone Mexican-wave sound and light spectacular, a solo duet and a kung fu fighting polar bear.
One or two of J's songs don't quite hit the comical heights hoped for but the young comic is thoroughly original and brilliant fun to shelter from the storm with.
Cyclone is never heavy weather. Older teenagers will adore this show.


http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971225760.html
Josh Earl is a Librarian
COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW
***
JOSH Earl may be a librarian, but he's also a charmer. From the moment he comes on stage, guitar in hand, he disarms the audience with his tales of a Brunswick Street Emo Man (the indie-grunge version of Metrosexual), the geek-chic librarian who's almost too cool for school.
Trouble is, once he's established who he is, he doesn't really take it anywhere. There are a couple of funny songs that demonstrate sharp skills of social observation: one about a phone conversation with his parents, and one about a serious-minded indie girl who doesn't understand his irony, but there comes a point when his charm and grungy gloss wear off, and he just becomes cocky. At 25 years of age, it seems that's all he's got to say


http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...971141009.html

Mickey D

COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW
**½
AT THE other end of the intellectual spectrum to Science-ology are fart jokes, and this is how Mickey D starts Shame 101. He then moves on to masturbation and porn, but there's more than meets the eye here. Mickey D is no foul-mouthed shock stand-up of the old school but a rather likeable guy whose self-appointed mission is to stop people feeling ashamed of their desires and experiences.
With mike in hand, roaming about the room, he tells us about his sex life and an encounter with colonic irrigation; and it's all so frank and engaging that you find yourself laughing. There's easy humour in Mickey's self-deprecating approach and in the bizarre imagery he deftly creates in the audience's minds.

[unfrufru]

http://blogs.smh.com.au/radar/archiv...hour_come.html

The 24-Hour Comedy Show - You Had To Be Here


Thanks to the magic of wireless internet technology, I am writing this in the middle of the strangest live event I've ever attended. I'm at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, in a circus tent right down besides the Yarra at Federation Square, where a comedian called Mark Watson is making an attempt to put on a 24 hour comedy show. And it has proven bizarrely addictive. I've clocked up six hours so far, and there are nine to go. So if you know anyone in Melbourne who is either a comedian, in possession of a borderline personality disorder or extremely easily entertained, you owe it to them to get them down to Federation Square some time before midnight.
It kicked off at midnight last night, obviously and ultimately proved so fascinatingly weird that I ended up staying until 5am. I had expected a progressive series of comedians coming up and doing a bit of their standup routine, punctuated by a bit of chatter from the MC. Not at all. What it has devolved into is an incredible series of pointless, yet wonderful, challenges, where the audience gets behind virtually any idea, no matter how illogical and excellent.
For example, at 3am last night, a fake salmonella scandal was created to gt revenge on restaurant at which someone had apparently had a dodgy pizza. Acclaimed comedian Will Adamsdale was dispatched to this restaurant as an undercover health inspector by the name of Adam Willsdale. His task was to conduct a random pizza-topping health test using a thermometer borrowed from an espresso machine, and potentially to try to get the place shut down. His story was that his sister had been killed by a Salmonella Supreme a decade earlier – a story backed up by a hastily-constructed Wikipedia page, now sadly deleted due to the irritatingly killjoy character of the Wikipedia editors.
Unfortunately despite an extraordinary amount of individual bravado on Adamsdale's part, the wily proprietors of said pizzeria refused to let him conduct the inspection without suitable identification. And since the ID card someone had made him was printed on the back on a popcorn box, the ruse was pretty well up.
Another mission involved a huge poster advertising the show, which a strange pigtailed character from Adelaide by the name of Rug, who was dressed as a member of the trenchcoat mafia, was sent to post iton the front door of Parliament. Sadly, since he was from Adelaide, he had no idea where that was. This happened at about 2am last night. But at 2pm this afternoon, the valiant Rug finally triumphed, scaling a ferris wheel just outside in an incredibly dangerous operation.
But my favourite moment involved a woman by the name of Amanda, who has the most absurdly loud and long laugh of anyone I've ever heard. To the point that whenever she laughed, the entire show stopped. Ultimately she was pulled up onstage into a kind of Perfect Match arrangement, and was paired with a heroic university student 12 years her junior who volunteered to squire her on a wine tour that she had signed up for today. He had two problems – no money, and classes today. We passed a hat around to raise the $80 required, and sent a proxy to her classes to take notes.
Excitingly, news has just come through from the Yarra Valley that Amanda and John have apparently kissed at a winery. So we aren't just wasting time here in the tent. We're actually spreading love. And that's a truly beautiful thing.
Well, perhaps in theory. In actual fact, watching the romance unfold was scarily reminiscent of watching a train wreck through a super-slo mo camera. And, since both of them presumably now have shocking hangovers and are doing wine tasting, and have now spent 6 hours in each others' companies, we can rest assured it's quite a bit uglier than before. We'll find out tonight, when they report back from the hot date.
As you may have gathered, there's a fairly motley crew in here. There's one guy who's been to Watson's three previous all-night shows, and has flown in from the UK specifically for this. I really hate to think about how much he's paying per minutes. Still, I guess he's saving on accommodation.
So, reading this, you can imagine that the standards for what is accepted as a valid way to fill the time are fairly low. When I walked in, they were playing online Boggle, and currently Watson is reading jokes out of Christmas crackers.
Still, it's a mammoth effort to do a comedy show for 24 straight hours. And it still seems impressive even after the news that Mark's most recent Edinburgh version of this show went for a ridiculous 36 hours. Darn it, does everything comedic have to be better in the UK?
I realise that all this may not seem funny to read about. It's probably one of those things where you had to be here. And have had no sleep. And a few alcoholic refreshments. And even then, frankly, it's not for the easily bored. But from my perspective, there's only one question to ask. When's the world record attempt, and can we arrange for Amanda and John to give birth bang smack in the middle of it?
I'll update this blog if anything of earth-shattering significance occurs that might amuse those whose brains haven't been utterly addled by spending hours and hours in a darkened tent. So I probably won't update this blog.

[unfrufru]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/entert...e#contentSwap1

EVERYONE thinks they're a comedian, but if you're planning to make your own contribution to the next comedy show you attend, be warned that heckling, like smoking, is increasingly on the nose.
Melbourne comedy doyen Anthony Morgan says he is a reformed heckler. "I don't encourage it; hecklers tend to have a lot of enthusiasm but not much wit," he says. It's the bitter voice of experience of a man who has faced the slings and arrows, not to mention curses and insults, of audience participation throughout the world.
"I've got the sort of face that people feel they can talk to me when I'm working," he says, with a quiet air of resignation. At one gig at the Edinburgh Festival in the 1980s, a drunken student shifted the heckling from verbal to physical, throwing a glass at Morgan during his routine. ""Without thinking I picked up the glass and said 'Where I come from we do this properly', and smashed the glass on my forehead. There was blood everywhere. Then I introduced the next act, and they said it looked fantastic, but it really shut the kid up." Still, Morgan hasn't made it part of his routine.
Melbourne comic Sammy J, winner of the comedy festival's best newcomer award last year, got his heckling baptism of fire at his third gig, when a bottle flew out of the crowd, narrowly missing him.
"I'd only been performing for a month at that stage, so it took me by surprise," he says. "But I was even more surprised when I was in the toilet and the guy who'd thrown the bottle stood next to me at the urinal and said, 'Great gig!' I guess he really thought he'd been helping me out by chucking that bottle."
Managing thoroughly sozzled crowds, though, is an essential part of the stand-up's trade. "I had a gig at the Adelaide Fringe recently with an audience that included a group of men celebrating a 50th birthday, some really drunk teenage girls, and the remnants of a bikie gang. Sometimes gigs can be as much about crowd control as comedy."
In the old days of the Last Laugh comedy club in Collingwood, Anthony Morgan got so sick of hecklers, he put a dummy on the stage and
did an entire routine from the audience, heckling the dummy.
Adelaide comic Mickey D reckons his worst heckler is his father. "He's seen me a few times, and when he's had a few too many he tells me I'm doing it all wrong." Sadly for Mickey D, his dad also steals his beer while he's performing.
D has tackled the fierce Edinburgh Festival audiences. "I was there during the Tampa controversy, and the day after the story broke in Scotland, when I came on stage a guy started yelling 'Let the Afghans in, you Aussie c---!' "It was no good trying to explain to him that I had no influence over Australian immigration policy. British audiences are pretty tough. Their attitude is 'Make me laugh, you f---er", whereas in Australia, it's more like 'Be funny, or we'll have to stare at you'."

While Mickey D has a night-time show at the Victoria Hotel, he's doubling up with a children's show in Federation Square, and says kids can be more brutally frank than adults. "This week we had some circus street performers doing their act, building up to their finale, and a kid in the audience yells out 'Hurry up!' It got the best laugh of the whole show. "The thing about kids is when they heckle, there's no malice there."
Today's Comedy Festival picks

■Mark Watson — I'm Worried that I'm Starting to Hate Almost Everyone in the World, 7pm, Hi-Fi Bar & Ballroom ■Alison Bice in The Wizard of Bice, 7.15pm, Melbourne Town HallYoung Melburnian Bice finds in The Wizard of Oz hilarious parallels with her life
■Fiona O'Loughlin, 7.30pm, Melbourne Town HallAustralia's Most Evil Mum (right) makes wicked sport of her unfortunate family.
■Lawrence Leung … Breakdance, 8.15pm, Trades HallLeung's quest to be cool makes for some of the festival's biggest belly laughs.
■Josie Long — Kindness and Exuberance, 8.45pm,British wunderkind Long finds joy in the details of everyday life.
Melbourne Town Hall
■Geraldine Quinn — SEXDEATHBOWIE, 9pm, CookieAnother swag of songs to trash your delicate senses.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...180528778.html

Sam Simmons
Daniel Ziffer, Reviewer
April 23, 2007


Simmons is a star in the making and if you want it weird - he's your man.
Genre
ComedyLocationFederation SquareAddressCnr Swanston St and Flinders St, MelbourneDate5 April 2007 to 29 April 2007Tickets$20/$18Phone Bookings1300 660 013Online Bookingswww.comedyfestival.com.auDetailsTue - Sat 9.45pm, Sun 8.45pm. At the Bosco Theatre tent.
COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW
***½
Oddball Sam Simmons gives the crowd fair warning at the beginning of his absurdist comedy show.
"This is going to be weird," he notes plainly, speaking through underwear hanging on a clothes-line.
The sometime zookeeper and Triple J DJ wears a drab grey tracksuit and leaps from nonsensical songs about moths to videos about lint. There are no mother-in-law gags or jokes about G-strings, footballers or Naomi Robson. Other shows have a surplus of those, meaning the loopy stylings here resonate clearly and hilariously.
With his intimate circus tent catching some of the overflow from the consistently sold-out Chopper show, there are inevitably a few walk-outs who can't handle the zany flicks of Simmon's smarts.
It's their loss. Simmons is a star in the making and if you want it weird - he's your man.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts-r...180528372.html

Josh Thomas: Please Like Me

• Email
• Print
• Normal font
• Large font

Helen Razer, Reviewer
April 23, 2007


The Comedy Festival's most junior player is also one of its best.
Genre
ComedyLocationMelbourne Town HallAddress90-130 Swanston Street, MelbourneDate5 April 2007 to 29 April 2007Tickets$17.70/$15.50Phone Bookings1300 660 013Online Bookingswww.comedyfestival.com.auDetailsTue - Sat 9.30pm, Sun 8.30pm
COMEDY FESTIVAL REVIEW
****
As it turns out, the Comedy Festival's most junior player is also one of its best. Direct from adolescent hell and schoolies' setbacks, this Brisbane lad reports back with all the quaint fury of a chilled Holden Caulfield.
If you're inured to mid-level smut, you'll probably love this gig. Thomas views his hormonal lot with wry detachment. In enumerating his sagging sexual misadventures, he shows the disconnect between manhood as it is understood and manhood as it is experienced. He doesn't hesitate to paint himself a wilting failure teeming, we are told, with an oversupply of oestrogen.
His stories are populated by real, warm people. His eye for bathos and tat is extraordinary. This 19-year-old delivers a fat-free and fiercely funny slice of suburban life.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/comedy...e#contentSwap1

Naked peacenik on a mission
Stephanie Bunbury
April 18, 2007


Full-frontal Phil Nichol.
Photo: Erin Slattery



'Full frontal nudity," says Phil Nichol with absolutely no irony whatsoever, "is something you stop doing as you grow up. And I've just rediscovered it! I've rediscovered my passion for it, you know." I'm not sure, myself, that it's so sudden. The last time I saw Nichol doing stand-up, he pulled his jeans below his stomach and pretended to pull out pubic hairs as gifts for the audience. In his new show he takes off all his clothes and dances around the stage. I do wonder, rather, where he's going with the skin thing.
Nichol comes from Vancouver. He has lived in London for years, but still has the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed friendliness instantly recognisable as Canadian. I tell him I was half-expecting him to bring out a tray of muffins during the show. "I love muffins!" he says immediately. In fact, he confides, he's been making a lot of blueberry pancakes lately; he got his mum to send the mix from home.
"That is me. The thing is, you see me on stage and think 'wild man! crazy man! takes drugs and does crazy things!'," he says. "When, in fact, I'm a homebody who lives with his girlfriend. I like cooking; I am fond of animals and I would never wish any hurt to anyone."
Anyway, Phil Nichol's award-winning new show is called The Naked Racist, which reviewed in yesterday's Age received a four star rating. It is, roughly, an account of a trip he made to Amsterdam "to think", although it also takes in reflections on fetish clubs, Russian dissidents and how to ruin foreplay with a bad joke. "Daniel Kitson said, in print, that he hated comedians who started a show with 'last year I went to Amsterdam'," says Nichol. "And I thought 'that's it, I'm going to start my show with that line'. But I really did. People go to all sorts of places to do some thinking. And it is a good story."
Because he went on his own, the retreat turned into a series of encounters, mostly with other wackos in bars. One was with the racist of the title, a mercenary running a so-called security company in Iraq. "You know these people exist," he says. "But you rarely meet them and they don't open up to you the way he opened up to me that night. And the reason he did that was that I lied: I said that I was American and for the war in Iraq."
Whereas, of course, Nichol is a post-Woodstock peace