Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Wendy Harmer ‘On Being Australia’s Ricky Gervais'

Transcript

Wendy Harmer ‘On Being Australia’s Ricky Gervais' · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

• 0:00
  Get a humans, welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas, how do you achieve success
• 0:07
  as a woman in a fairly sexist and misogynistic industry such as stand-up comedy in the 1980s?
• 0:14
  Today's guest Wendy Harmer did it.
• 0:16
  She's arguably the most successful Australian female comedian of all time.
• 0:21
  At her peak she was hosting the Logis, which is Australia's kind of Emmys and Oscars
• 0:26
  rolled into one.
• 0:28
  She's hosted radio shows, she's hosted television shows, she's basically entertainment
• 0:32
  royalty in Australia.
• 0:34
  I chat to her about how she got there and what it was like to be there and some of her
• 0:38
  missteps.
• 0:39
  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, the one and only, Wendy Harmer.
• 0:45
  Are you pleased that I brought chocolates?
• 0:49
  I'm very pleased.
• 0:50
  I mean, you know, of all her hosts, who you spoke into on this book tour, how many
• 0:59
  bring chocolates?
• 1:00
  Not many, but the thing is, I was quite disappointed to see where we're really down on the Turkish
• 1:07
  delight question.
• 1:08
  Right.
• 1:09
  A lot of people think, a lot of people think that your Turkish delight is just perfume.
• 1:17
  This is, yes, I have.
• 1:19
  There is another individual in my household who thinks that, who thinks that it's just
• 1:23
  rose water disguised as, as lolly.
• 1:27
  But I love that.
• 1:28
  It's good.
• 1:29
  I care for it.
• 1:30
  I do too.
• 1:31
  Is there, and that's why, so I looked at the selection and then we were really down
• 1:37
  on the Turkish delight, so do you know that is the Turkish delight of his sonado?
• 1:45
  So maybe, until there's a light of his sonado.
• 1:49
  This is the point at which the listeners just have to listen to me, master cater.
• 1:55
  On some rose-water jelly.
• 1:57
  Very good.
• 1:58
  Sugar.
• 1:59
  I thought your body was your temple, Josh.
• 2:01
  Why would you have thought my body is my temple?
• 2:03
  Hang on, there is.
• 2:04
  There is.
• 2:05
  Now, come on here.
• 2:06
  There is a story or two about you and your renovation from being, you know, a bit
• 2:13
  of a chubby.
• 2:14
  I was.
• 2:15
  I was his crew.
• 2:16
  And a drinker.
• 2:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:18
  And a partyer.
• 2:19
  The crew.
• 2:20
  And what happened?
• 2:21
  What was the epiphany?
• 2:22
  The pandemic happened, and I spent 12 months sitting on my bum eating ice cream, watching
• 2:29
  TV, as we all did, and I put on about 10 kilos.
• 2:34
  I thought, oh, I'm just going to be a fat guy.
• 2:38
  It's like, if this just keeps happening, if this keeps going on, you know, I mean,
• 2:44
  my 40s now, I've got kids, I have to survive.
• 2:49
  And if I do this, then I'm just going to be a fat guy, and I'll be huffing and puffing
• 2:54
  when I get up and go up the stairs every time I go up the stairs, and I'll never be
• 2:56
  able to play sport with my children or chase them at the park.
• 3:00
  So in the second year of the pandemic, I got a trainer, I started eating well, and I lost
• 3:06
  20 kilos.
• 3:07
  20 kilos?
• 3:08
  Yes.
• 3:09
  That was 10 that I put on, and then 10 that I had been carrying around with me.
• 3:13
  I basically kept them off, but that just means that I met a normal, healthy weight.
• 3:16
  Not the Lama.
• 3:17
  Body is a temple, then freak.
• 3:20
  Well, you are eating Turkish Delimat even as we speak.
• 3:25
  Thank you for being here.
• 3:26
  I want to talk to you initially about the Logis in 2002, which I've been scarred.
• 3:30
  I've been furiously searching the interwebs to try to find a video of your train wreck
• 3:34
  in the performance, which you claim as a train wreck, but all I can only say is there's
• 3:41
  There's one piece in the age, which is the big Borochik newspaper in Melbourne, like the
• 3:47
  following day, claiming that talkback listeners to 3AW have hated your loguise performance,
• 3:55
  which is just something that journalists do when they don't have a, when they want to
• 3:59
  attack somebody, they just say lots of people on talkback radio or now they'll say lots
• 4:04
  of people on Twitter are saying that such and such was bad.
• 4:09
  2002, I was the first ever woman to host the loguise, right? So think of it, if you're listening
• 4:17
  from overseas, think of it as our Emmys. As I was once quoted as saying, look, it's shit television,
• 4:23
  but it's our shit television, okay? So I was the first woman to host this and of course,
• 4:30
  when I was asked, I said yes because I didn't want Kerry and Kennelly to be the first of the
• 4:35
  loguise. And what had happened, he's kind of the nub of it, and the same thing happened to David
• 4:44
  Letterman when he was hosting, when he hosted the Oscars, not that I would compare myself with David,
• 4:53
  you know what I mean? It's about to say. No, no, no, no, no, it's not. Of course not. But what
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  happened was he went from TV in New York to the movies in Hollywood and bombed big time, worst,
• 5:08
  you know, professional embarrassment of his life. And I, in a very small way, I went from Sydney
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  radio to Melbourne television to host the loguise. And even before I got there, there was a whole
• 5:24
  lot of chatter about why is she hosting the loguise. I mean, she's not even on TV. She lives in Sydney,
• 5:31
  blah, blah, blah, blah. But you had been on TV a lot. Yeah, I know, but I'd moved. See, the one thing
• 5:36
  that Melbourne people don't like and they don't like it a lot is when you move to Sydney. Right,
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  and a lot of one thing Aussies don't like is when you leave Australia as well. Yeah. It's a
• 5:46
  microcosm of that. That's right. So what had happened was I'd come up with a much more sort of
• 5:52
  cuddly opening routine for this hosting gig. And the producer said, they said get stuck in them
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  because the year before had been a, you know, I train rag as far as TV went, lots and lots of shows
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  cancelled. And they said, no, get out there and give them a bit of ginger. You know, I get stuck in
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  the one. Yeah. And so with the rises and that was Phil Scott and Patrick Cook and Andrew George
• 6:18
  Dodd, rather, we came up with a bit of a, you know, bit of a routine. Many, many years before
• 6:26
  Ricky Gervais, as it happens, the Ricky Gervais Golden Globes roasting. Yeah. Okay. So this was one of
• 6:34
  my opening gigs. I think it's pretty fun. All right. Um, this is out of my book. When the curtains
• 6:42
  open, I performed an impromptu twirl to settle my nerves and opened with everyone who's looking
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  really fabulous tonight. It's not easy for the stars to get ready for a big night like this.
• 6:54
  It takes a punishing six months of being starved, shaved, soaked, slathered, perfume, powdered
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  plucked, waxed, exfoliated, germabrated, injected and implanted. And that's just Jamie jury.
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  Imagine what the women have been through. And pretty much tumbleweed. And people who don't know
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  Jamie Dury, he was a very handsome reality television. Yeah, gardening, gardening, yeah, he was the
• 7:22
  kind of all, all American, all these crazy, pretty nails. Was he? Jamie Pury. Well, okay. So all
• 7:27
  the boy likes to work, primped and plipped pretty. I mean, when that guy completely tanked,
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  I thought, what the hell on it? Do you think? Well, um, because perhaps I had underestimated
• 7:40
  how bruised people were feeling after a, you know, a really rough year in television where
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  as I say, so many shows have been axed. I think there was a resistance from me coming from Sydney.
• 7:51
  I think they didn't want to hear this stuff from a woman. And, you know, on it went. I mean,
• 7:56
  nothing now. I mean, I mean, there was some, there were some stupid gags in that routine.
• 8:02
  Talk to me. Always. Talk to me. I mean, really, how about this one? This one, being never to be seen
• 8:09
  on TV again. And tonight, I really want to wish happy birthday to the ABC, which is 70 years
• 8:16
  old this year. Things are often tense between the ABC and communications minister Richard Austin.
• 8:22
  But then it must be hard dealing seriously with someone who played one of the thunderbirds.
• 8:31
  And I also, this is so ridiculous. This was a politician who looked very wouldn't.
• 8:35
  Yeah. But also ridiculous. I was making jokes about how, um, there were cameras in big brother,
• 8:43
  but they weren't allowed into the woman, you know, detention centre. Right.
• 8:48
  Kind of. This is an edgy refugee commentary, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so, yeah, this is
• 8:55
  a tenor of the time. In the end, this article in the newspaper saying that people on,
• 8:59
  on talk back radio didn't like you, they quote the veteran showbeer's commentator Peter Ford,
• 9:06
  saying, I thought she was an aging, unfunny shrew who looked like her dress was made from the
• 9:12
  curtains of the regent theatre. Hmm. I have caught up with him since he'll be pleased tonight.
• 9:18
  What did you say to it? Well, tell them he's an asshole, really. But yeah, I mean, I was 48
• 9:23
  years old at the time. I looked gorgeous, by the way. First ever woman doing it. So, I mean,
• 9:28
  this absolutely beautiful bespoke outfit. Was it made from the curtains of the regent theatre?
• 9:34
  Well, it was burgundy. And it had sat in ribbons on us. But no, it wasn't. So, you know, there was,
• 9:41
  there was a whole lot of misogyny and crap going on. But it was really actually funny because
• 9:47
  the talk back in Melbourne was relentless. It went on Ford, you know, days,
• 9:53
  a Steve Price and Neil Mitchell on their shows. And there was one, my brother was a painter and
• 9:59
  decorator in Melbourne. And he'd been listening. And it was when Steve Price said that I was a nasty
• 10:08
  woman as unfunny, as funny as a box full of spiders, that my brother, Neil, who'd been, you know,
• 10:18
  as I say, painting picked up the phone and rang in to the program. I mean, uh, can I make?
• 10:25
  That would be my sister that you're talking about there. It gave me a bit of an earphone.
• 10:30
  Oh, isn't that a door of brother? How did you deal with that? I mean, I've had tiny experiences
• 10:35
  in my life with being at the centre of mostly social media shit storms and pylons. Did you feel?
• 10:41
  How did you feel? Oh, it's really tough. It was incredibly tough. I didn't get over it for
• 10:45
  quite a while. There's a funny story, actually, where I mean, I did it ill and really,
• 10:50
  ill advised, um, interview with the Australian newspaper on the morning, where they said,
• 10:57
  what morning after or the morning after? Morning after. What did it feel like? And I said,
• 11:01
  it was like soaring off my arm with a blunt chainsaw.
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  And then Bert Newton had been out the back, you know, and he, when I came off and he said,
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  he said, everyone forgets that I did it for 14 years, and there was a couple of years,
• 11:19
  they were very unwanted to kill me. But no, it was, it was really tough, you know, I came back
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  and decided me the next morning, because I was still on breakfast radio at the time.
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  So I was just coming back to work from Sydney to Melbourne. And a parrots, so jumped out of a,
• 11:35
  out of a fucking, you know, pot plant at the airport and snapped me with its absurd.
• 11:41
  Yeah. And I went to, I went to a post-logy's lunch in Sydney, which is full of all, you know,
• 11:55
  TV types and whatever. And I walked in the room and everyone, every head swiveled,
• 12:00
  and it all went quiet. And I actually legitimately just thought, oh my God, I wonder who died.
• 12:08
  And I realised it was me. So yeah, it was really tough, you know, it was, well, there were a few
• 12:14
  people who, who really stuck up for me and I, and I had been where a whole other people who
• 12:19
  didn't. And did you, did you feel resentful that you were being piled on, or did you feel guilty
• 12:25
  that you'd broken a national icon? No, no, not at those. Now just for your reference here, of course,
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  2002, no social media. I've spoken to people since who have hosted, you know, that awards night
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  and been pilloried. And social media has made it, you know, a hundred times worse. I didn't think
• 12:47
  I'd broken it. No, not at all. And in fact, there's been a sort of revisionist, you know,
• 12:56
  moving about that performance. Channel 9, just a few years back, they did a TV program about,
• 13:07
  you know, highlights, lowlights of the load, these lowlights are always interviewed on it.
• 13:12
  And the producers said, we look at your routine. It was really funny. It was great. It's just
• 13:19
  everyone in the room hated it. Yeah. You know, I think like there was these programs that were acts
• 13:24
  like Burjo's catchphrase, you know, baby John Burges. And one of the jokes was they knew the
• 13:32
  gig was up when the catchphrase was clear out your desk. Security will be here in 10 minutes.
• 13:40
  I found that later on. He was heartbroken. He said, I thought, I always, I thought I really
• 13:44
  didn't think that you liked me. I'm playing man. It's a joke. It's a joke. Yeah. It wasn't really
• 13:50
  funny gangs there. I wrote the, some years ago when I was doing my online magazine The Hooplar,
• 13:58
  I did a deconstruction of the whole routine. I got the routine out and I went through it line by line.
• 14:07
  You know, with little annotations like, this could be argued was my waterloo, you know.
• 14:15
  So take us back to before that night and I want to talk about your rise in celebrity and in
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  creative output in Australia originally. As a, as a breakthrough, you know, as a breakthrough
• 14:28
  of a figure for women in comedy, what was the, what was the trajectory? Where was the moment
• 14:34
  of which after going into stand up, you started thinking this is actually getting traction,
• 14:37
  this is really happening for me? Well, I guess it was, it was sort of buying
• 14:42
  comments really. I do like to say that I came along in the 80s and just at that time,
• 14:51
  well, I think if I hadn't arrived, someone would have had to invent me. Now, you've got to think
• 14:56
  about the milieu, you know, in England, we've got not the nine o'clock news and we've got the
• 15:02
  young ones and we've got French and Saunders and in the US, we've got Wubby Goldberg and, you know,
• 15:09
  communist women, comedy stars, you know, the New York comedians, you know, and probably rose in.
• 15:16
  Well, I think there was a bit later, but certainly read a rudder. Yep, people coming like through
• 15:20
  like that. And then in Australia, I just lob, you know, and I do, I often say if I hadn't arrived,
• 15:28
  someone would have had to invent me. So I was the first, by all accounts, I often wondered if I
• 15:34
  was the first, but I, I, yeah, I think at least the first woman do actually do stand up, not
• 15:40
  character work, there were a whole lot of girls doing character work and cross-stressing and doing
• 15:44
  music and circus and all kinds of thing. Accapella, music blah, blah. But yeah, I came out, I've
• 15:51
  been watching the boys do stand up and I feel, oh, I reckon I can do this. Stand up thing. And so I
• 15:58
  was pretty much the first girl who came out as Wendy, you know, myself outside of a character.
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  And so I garnered a lot of attention really, as I say, probably more than I deserved.
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  And the, the really interesting thing is Josh that everyone says, oh, it must have been
• 16:18
  driven with misogyny and it must have been really, it was the opposite. It must have been, it was
• 16:23
  the opposite. See, all the boys knew that half the audience were women and there were no women
• 16:30
  doing stand up. And I've been watching this. I've been watching people like, you know,
• 16:35
  Peter Rose, Thorne and Glenn Robbins and Richard Stubbs and Shane Bourne doing stand up and
• 16:42
  talking about their pets and their holidays and their parents and their cars and their 40 teams.
• 16:47
  And half the audience was female in these comedy clubs. And I thought, well, where's the kick,
• 16:54
  you know, because I thought it was a real injustice. I mean, our lives were just as funny.
• 17:01
  And so, and because I'd been a journalist, I thought, oh, I'm going to go, I can write these
• 17:07
  routines. I know how jokes work. I can see how it all works. And so I sort of went around with a
• 17:12
  bit of a page of stuff and said, but anyway, I like to do this. And when we said, no, so I thought,
• 17:17
  no, that'd be me event. And so I stood up and I started, you know, doing these routines.
• 17:25
  And one of the best compliments that I ever had was from one of my colleagues at Leg Joke,
• 17:31
  this comedy club in Collingwood. He said, when you're on, we hear something that we've never heard
• 17:40
  before. Instead of a whole, whole, whole, we're here at, he, he, he, I mean, the pitch of the
• 17:46
  laughter changes. So that was, that was very cool. You know, that was really great. And I really was,
• 17:55
  I mean, I mean, people have sort of asked me, why did you do that? What, what, what was pushing you?
• 18:00
  A great deal of what was pushing me was actually the injustice of it that there were no women there.
• 18:08
  The one thing I've always hated, your friend Mr. Hitchens, women aren't funny.
• 18:15
  If you say women aren't funny, but the bungee can make you laugh, your pet dog can make you laugh,
• 18:21
  you say women aren't funny, it denies as a fundamental part of our humanity. And I really, really
• 18:28
  rail against that. So that's one of the reasons. And did you want to be a stand-up,
• 18:34
  choir stand-up? Or did you want to use stand-up as a way of getting into the rest of the media?
• 18:39
  Oh no, I'd left the media. Well, you'd left the, you'd left print.
• 18:43
  I'd left newspapers. Yes, you left newspapers. Oh my gosh.
• 18:46
  When it's a stand-up, four was stand-up. Did you want to have a TV show or radio show or something?
• 18:50
  There was no such thing as a TV or radio show for comedy then, Josh. How old is he?
• 18:57
  There was no such thing as comedy on the radio in the 1980s.
• 19:02
  But there wasn't. Why, you still listen to Doug Mulray? Nothing. Well,
• 19:09
  not in Melbourne in that way, that wasn't. Why don't know about Melbourne. What year are we
• 19:12
  talking about. We're talking about the late 80s.
• 19:15
  No, well, when I came to Sydney and came to radio, that was 1992.
• 19:22
  Yeah. So Doug Moray was the highest paid, most listened to breakfast radio present.
• 19:27
  And he was in a ridiculous comedy.
• 19:29
  We're sleeping in Melbourne. And, of course, the idea of comedy for women on radio,
• 19:35
  are you from the moon? No, no, no, that's what I'm saying. You wanted to break
• 19:38
  some glass ceilings with a glass ceilings exclusively in stand-up, or was it also the glass
• 19:43
  ceilings in television and radio? Because people were doing comedy on TV and maybe not women,
• 19:47
  but people were doing comedy shows on television radio. Why did they maybe not women?
• 19:50
  Are you just excluded my entire life there? The whole point is that you were trying to
• 19:55
  break a glass ceiling, isn't it? No, well, I was trying. No one was doing stand-up.
• 19:59
  No, but you weren't consciously, you know, trying to, you didn't know where it was going.
• 20:03
  Right. What I'm saying is, all you did was stand up there and do it because you had to do it,
• 20:08
  no one had been doing it, but with no idea where it was going to go.
• 20:12
  You didn't have heroes who you wanted to replicate or emulate on radio TV? No.
• 20:18
  How did you grow up laughing at it? Oh, gosh. I'd always loved, you know,
• 20:27
  Monty Python and the Goons. Oh, you're all out of raft of British comedy, really.
• 20:33
  Loved all that. And then when I was sort of got a bit older, and I was into any prior,
• 20:39
  and Jane Rivers, and all that kind of gear. Yeah, so there was a lot to be able to laugh at, but
• 20:45
  it really didn't, I mean, I've never sort of been asked that question before, but did I go,
• 20:53
  you know, I stand up on stage with the last laugh with the idea that my lead,
• 20:58
  some went, no, it might lead to again the next night, but that was it. I promise you that was it.
• 21:04
  So how did TV come to be? Was it the big gig? Yeah, well, what happened was, I had written a show,
• 21:11
  a sketch show that we were doing at the last laugh, and there was a, Jane Turner was in it,
• 21:19
  and Richard Stubbs, another great comic called Mark Neal, and it was a show called Sundan.
• 21:26
  Well, one was Sundan, bloody Sundan, and the next one was Sundan the day after, and the idea was
• 21:32
  really fabulous. The idea was the whole of Melbourne kind of the empties out in summer, and they all
• 21:41
  go down the coast. So this was going to be a scuzzy show in a comedy venue where you could have a
• 21:47
  cheap and nasty holiday, a cheap and nasty drink. And so we had all these sketches about,
• 21:56
  I was a police woman, singing Detective Sergeant Paula Duncan.
• 22:01
  Paula Duncan always hated me for that, but unless you come out and go, good evening,
• 22:05
  male and female Caucasians, and she'd be giving you a health of safety advice in the water
• 22:11
  and then Mark Neal and Jane Turner, they were on the W.A. and K fun bus, and they, you know,
• 22:19
  going out giving out icy cold cans of cold down the beach. And there Richard Stubbs was sort of
• 22:24
  in the sound, you know, with these increasingly gruesome warnings about cyclones and people
• 22:31
  getting eaten by sharks and well, so anyway, it was my hem, it was really fun, and it was huge,
• 22:37
  the show went sort of mega. And one night I was coming off stage, and there was a bloke
• 22:45
  who I'd never seen before, who came to the last laugh, and he said, who wrote this show,
• 22:51
  who wrote these sketches? He and I went, well, I wrote most of them, and he said, oh, I know,
• 22:56
  he went. I didn't know, but that was John Clark. Right. So about, oh gosh, about six months later
• 23:05
  or something, I auditioned for a kid show at the ABC, trap, winkle and box, you know, and I was,
• 23:12
  oh, honestly, I mean, I was a ninja winkle, luckily I wasn't a ninja box, but let's not go there.
• 23:18
  Anyway, and so, and I'm in this kid show, and I, and I bumped into Ted Robinson in the hallway,
• 23:26
  the legendary comedy producer, and well, producer, I didn't know that he was doing comedy,
• 23:33
  your plan to do it anyway, stage producer, kind of mostly, I guess. And he said, are we doing
• 23:40
  this workshop for a political comedy, and John Clark says you can write, and would you like,
• 23:49
  it's going to be at a church hall in Elwood, if you'd like to come along. So I rock up to this thing,
• 23:55
  there's Max Kelly, there's Patrick Cook, there's Phil Scott, there's Ted, you know, Don Watson,
• 24:03
  all these amazing satirists. I've got this little bit of a shit script for something that I've,
• 24:10
  you know, put together for the last lap. And um, but I, but I, but I, but I scored a gig as a writer
• 24:18
  on the show, you know, on the show, which was pretty cool. And then Ted, apparently, a bit later,
• 24:24
  said, well, we need more women on the show, because it was just Tracy Harvey and Blokes. And John
• 24:29
  said, well, when it can perform, and she can sing two. So within two, three weeks, I was on
• 24:37
  the Gillies report on ABC TV with my head absolutely spinning. So it was John Clark. Yeah,
• 24:44
  probably the greatest satirist. Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. No, he absolutely plucked me
• 24:50
  out of the line up. Yeah, I owe him so much. I miss him so much. He was a great mentor. If people
• 24:56
  don't know John Clark and Brian Doors sketches, they should listen to the one about the boat
• 25:04
  whose front fell off. Do you remember that sketch? Yes, yes, I do. In fact, I should probably play a
• 25:09
  bit of it into the, the audio right now. This ship that was involved in the incident off
• 25:14
  Western Australia this week. Yeah, the one the front fell off. Yeah, that's not very typical.
• 25:17
  I'd like to make that point. Well, how is it untypical? Well, there are a lot of these ships going
• 25:21
  around the world all the time and very seldom does anything like this happen. I just don't want
• 25:24
  people thinking that tankers aren't safe. Was this tanker safe? Well, I was thinking more about the
• 25:28
  other ones. The ones are to safe. Yeah, the ones the front doesn't fall off. It's in a column's
• 25:32
  why did the front book fall off? Well, a wave hit it. A wave hit it? A wave hit the ship. Is that
• 25:37
  unusual? Oh, yeah. Let's see. Chance in a million. So what do you do to protect the environment?
• 25:42
  The ship was towed outside the environment. Into another environment. No, no, no, it's been towed
• 25:47
  beyond the environment. It's not in the environment. No, but from one environment to another environment.
• 25:51
  No, it's beyond the environment. It's not in an environment. It's been towed beyond the environment.
• 25:55
  Well, what's out there? Nothing's out there. There must be something out there. There is nothing
• 25:58
  out there. All there is is sea and birds and fish and and 20,000 tons of crude oil and what else?
• 26:04
  And a fire and anything else and the part of the ship that the front fell off. I want to tell you
• 26:08
  something that John Clark said because I think this is really interesting for folks to think about.
• 26:13
  John Clark once said to me, he said the difference between comedy and tragedy. It's a really
• 26:20
  interesting. He said, if you promise to make people cry and you don't, no, I'm really mine.
• 26:29
  But if you promise to make people laugh and you don't, people get really angry.
• 26:37
  Like, I mean, if you say if you're watching the death scene from Camille or whatever and you don't
• 26:41
  cry, you don't go, I'll be ripped off. But if you go to a comedy, you know, you watch
• 26:45
  your scene in comedy, which has been billed as, this is the most, you feel really angry.
• 26:51
  And the interesting thing about comedy I think is that most people can name a comedian that they
• 26:58
  really dislike. Often they don't know why. I'm sure you can think of one now. I can think of one
• 27:04
  now. Most people can. And it's almost visceral. I mean, and I think it feels to me like,
• 27:14
  well, of course, comedy is informed by culture and, you know, upbringing and, you know, all that.
• 27:22
  So it's not universal in any way, universal. So it's a really tricky business. I remember
• 27:33
  interviewing Robin Williams once when I was on radio and, uh, and he seemed that a bit down
• 27:40
  was a phone. Now, you know, from L. Hairweather. And I said, uh, you know, you're, you're okay.
• 27:47
  And you know, this is around, you know, good morning Vietnam. So he's huge, absolutely
• 27:52
  huge. And he said, oh, yeah, he said, I did a gig last night and they weren't my crowd. And you're
• 28:00
  like, who the fuck is it, Robert Williams? I mean, everyone loves Robert Williams. But I guess
• 28:05
  with comedy, it's the point. You're kind of, you're always sort of playing the angles, you know,
• 28:10
  you're not, you know, it's different to being a tragedy and being a comedian. It's a very
• 28:16
  different, um, a tightrope that you walk. And I know, I know, and I would, I don't know. I mean,
• 28:24
  I think the only universal joke there is is someone slipping on a banana skin and falling down
• 28:32
  a manhole. You know what I mean? You know, that's the only joke that everyone, otherwise,
• 28:37
  it's about culture, it's about upbringing. That's the only joke that works. And it's a visual.
• 28:43
  It is also amazing how quickly comedy ages as well, even just watching friends or a
• 28:50
  sign fall. Oh, well, what about, um, little Britain? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I don't
• 28:56
  mean that distinction between tragedy and comedy. Do you feel that there's an analogue there
• 29:02
  between scripted comedy and unscripted comedy? Because when I asked, because when I was doing improv
• 29:07
  in New York, I always felt that, oh, do you tell her how my team probably did you do? Where did you
• 29:12
  do? I did, you see, I did at UCB and upright citizens brigade, which was founded by Amy Polo,
• 29:18
  Lauren, you know, those guys, those are the lives of people. And, uh, I always found crowds to be
• 29:25
  so much more enthusiastic and supportive that in stand up where I feel like there's a bit of a
• 29:33
  thing where you can get a stand up crowd that's sitting there going, all right, funny person,
• 29:37
  make me laugh. And I notice she just crush your arms. Yes. Because that's the body. Yes.
• 29:42
  Do you know what I think it is? I'm not going to keep going. Finish that thought because I'm
• 29:46
  going to, I'm going to, no, you jump in. All right. So, so when you're up there and you're
• 29:53
  looking at a crowd, I think what you have to do is almost, you have to, you have to, as the
• 30:02
  performer, almost cradle that crowd. What you have to say is, I'm not going to drop you. It will
• 30:10
  be fine. You have to understand that that crowd is more embarrassed for you. Then, then, you know,
• 30:18
  then you are for them. They don't want to be put in the position of watching you bomb because
• 30:23
  it's incredibly awkward and it's not nice and it's deeply unpleasant. So, what you've got to do
• 30:31
  is you've got to say, I'll be fine, no matter what, I won't drop you and we'll all be good.
• 30:37
  And then, what you watch is, you watch this, those of this. You watch the fold of arms go to her.
• 30:46
  You do. And you watch people's physical stands really open. And then, and then, you know,
• 30:58
  then you know that you've got kind of got a chance. But once there is that trust, you betray that
• 31:03
  trust, you're fucked. You know, you really are. Because you've said, trust me, trust me, trust me.
• 31:10
  And then, and then you stab them. And then, yeah, you tank. And once again, they are feeling,
• 31:17
  I was just like, they're feeling very sad. How do I put it? They're embarrassed.
• 31:23
  Funny, the last summer was in New York. I went to an 1130 session at the Comedy Seller on a Saturday
• 31:29
  night. And it was a weird crowd. You know, it's 1130. It's the last show. Half the people are
• 31:35
  drunk, half the people are, you know, at the end of their night, some are tired. And a couple of
• 31:40
  the first couple of comics bombed. And we're sort of taking an hour on the crowd, you know, joking
• 31:45
  about what a shit crowd it was. And then, the last guys got up and just really took his time.
• 31:56
  And didn't try, overtly, and drew the audience in and made us come along with him.
• 32:02
  Yes.
• 32:03
  And did exactly what you're talking about, which is exuded an air of, don't worry, I got this.
• 32:10
  Yep. I'm a pro. We're going to go somewhere interesting.
• 32:13
  Yep.
• 32:13
  Together, you know, it'll all, let's all be in this. I'm not going to attack you for not getting it.
• 32:18
  You know, we're on this journey. And the whole, well, the whole, you could feel the crackle
• 32:23
  in the room turn around.
• 32:25
  Yeah, we know from it.
• 32:25
  You could feel that, oh, you, you know, I mean, I got to the point where, you know,
• 32:31
  at the, you know, I haven't, I haven't done stand up for a while.
• 32:34
  But I got to the point with my stand up that if a joke really bombed, I would just laugh.
• 32:39
  I actually remember sitting at the back of a stage just laughing my head off because I thought,
• 32:45
  what a absurd situation this is, you know, and we all recognize it. I mean, it's such a
• 32:51
  phone setup. It's so weird. And I know it's the reason why I think this is why improv and like
• 32:57
  radio always appealed to me. And I'm interested in your feelings about radio because the every time
• 33:03
  you can make someone laugh, if it's an off the cuff remark, is a massive win. And people really
• 33:08
  appreciate it. And they want to be made to laugh. And they love the feeling of like, are they going
• 33:13
  to be, is someone, is this person going to be able to pull something out of their ass and make
• 33:17
  me laugh? Oh, yes, it happened. Wow. Whereas in stand up, I feel like the default is you have to make
• 33:23
  me laugh. As an audience, being as the audience over here, you know, go ahead and make me laugh.
• 33:27
  See if you can make me laugh. I've paid for you to make that tip. But in improv or in radio,
• 33:33
  it's just like, I wonder if you're going to be able to do something. Oh, great. You did. Yeah. Well,
• 33:37
  I think, look, and I think we stand up is that we all treat those moments where those unscripted
• 33:45
  laughs come, you know, from the heckler, you know, down the back. And I mean, if you're really in
• 33:51
  the zone, that is the most, the most brilliant place to be. Someone says something down the back and
• 33:57
  you go, and everyone goes, well, this has got to happen again. Yeah. This is unique. This is just
• 34:03
  made up for me on the spot. Oh, how good is this? And I think that's when the real magic happens.
• 34:08
  And that's why people, you know, so many people really love improv. Was there a period in your life
• 34:14
  where you were just flying where you were in that zone? Oh, very in that flow state. The
• 34:19
  most like, when is that the when when we when we when do highlight in your career as being,
• 34:23
  I was absolutely at my peak. I was flying every night. Yesterday.
• 34:30
  Good answer. Fuck you. Very good. Sure. Why not yesterday? Right now. This very interview,
• 34:37
  ladies and chats. Sure. No, but no, when when a routine was going really well, it felt like,
• 34:50
  you know, it was like, you know, a hula hoop, you know, going down the hill. And all you'd have to do
• 34:56
  is just tap it to keep them momentum. Yeah. You know, this is roll of laughter and you just
• 35:03
  wait and then you know, and the rolls again. So it was pretty, it was fun. I mean, I've
• 35:10
  and the other thing too is to be in this sort of state where you kind of don't really think about
• 35:18
  what's coming in you don't think what you're going to say. It just happens in this sort of flow.
• 35:24
  There was this ridiculous night. I remember where I missed a good example or not, but
• 35:30
  in Jane Turner and I, we were at the last laugh and we were doing a sketch about two leather
• 35:36
  punks who were at the Fitzroy pool called a razor and blade, although razor, although blade,
• 35:42
  you know, in new letters and everything, sweating and out the pool. And there was a bit of a
• 35:47
  silence. And then someone up the back went, I see, yeah, yeah, I can feel, I can feel it's getting
• 35:55
  in late indices. And because I can hear the swallows my right and back to Capastrano. Now,
• 36:03
  I mean, I don't know anything about the swap. I didn't even know I knew that kind of thing,
• 36:07
  you know what I mean? And so that's why I've been like, you're in a state of place.
• 36:13
  You go, I love that you can still remember that moment. Yeah, yeah.
• 36:15
  A quarter of a century later probably because, because how long?
• 36:19
  I said a quarter of a century, would that be right? Yeah. Are you going to do this to be the
• 36:24
  whole thing? I'm revealing about my weight loss. You're revealing about your age,
• 36:29
  we're going to end up in a place of unity. But I mean, yeah, yeah, so I do remember that very much
• 36:36
  because I was so shocked by what I'd said. I mean, where the hell did that come from?
• 36:42
  And I think, you know, it is about sort of channeling that stuff. But of course, having a big
• 36:48
  mouth as you know, my friend can also get you in a lot of trouble. You know, I like sometimes you
• 36:55
  say things like, Oh, I don't know what you're talking about. I never said such a thing. I've never
• 37:01
  gotten into trouble. What is it about radio that appeals to you so much? I love talking to
• 37:09
  interesting people and teasing out, you know, think different ways of looking at the world and
• 37:14
  different experiences. It doesn't have to be radio. I liked it when I was on TV. I like it in
• 37:19
  podcast form even more. I mean, it's people are fascinating. That's a big world out there. There's
• 37:24
  a lot to understand about it. And I am, but one tiny little mammal crawling across the surface of this
• 37:30
  rock, you know, whizzing around a star on an outer spiral arm of our solar system. I want to
• 37:35
  understand as much as I can before I carcass. Are you just channeling your brine cocks a little
• 37:41
  moment? The thing that I love about radio is because I worked, you know, in TV and stage sketch
• 37:49
  comedy, I worked in journalism and books and stuff. You can think of something and you can make it
• 37:55
  happen. Like you can get, you know, when you're when you're in a really, really fantastic,
• 38:01
  really fantastic team when you got resources, you can think of something and then they run
• 38:07
  around to the production booth. And then you know, you put the bells and whistles on it and then
• 38:12
  it's on air two seconds. And that immediacy of that creative process that happens like that. And
• 38:20
  then it's on air in a minute is the most exciting thing can happen. And there's not a lot of places
• 38:26
  where you can do that. You can't even do it on TV. You know, it's almost improv, but yeah,
• 38:32
  obviously it is, but it's there. It's probably the closest thing. Well, certainly when when I was
• 38:37
  doing sketches, I mean, when I was writing and performing certain sketches, which was my first
• 38:42
  radio job for Mike Carlton, yes, being able to conjure up and, you know, the idea of Alexander
• 38:48
  Downer parachuting into Baghdad ahead of the Iraq war, in fishnet stockings. And then they put on
• 38:53
  the sound effect of the helicopters and right of the Valcrease and everything. And there's a whole
• 38:58
  universe that's being created that people can visualize using only sound. That's great.
• 39:04
  You're even even more than that though, being able to do it like
• 39:08
  turn it around a dime on that morning. You know, you know, in moments that is really exciting.
• 39:15
  I've always been attracted to the radio and stand up and books because
• 39:23
  once that red lights on, once you're on stage, once you've got the pen in your hand, there is no one
• 39:30
  telling you what you can't do. And I am inherently bossy. And you know, that's why one of my
• 39:37
  characters was a police woman. And so I love that, you know, I mean, I radio. I mean, you're so fun.
• 39:47
  I radio. Well, you're doing something in the red lights on and you can see your boss outside the,
• 39:53
  you know, outside the window going, stop doing that. Bing, ping, ping on the glass. And you just
• 40:00
  go, and you keep going, you know, it's so fun. Yeah, I'm the conjuring up of weird, amazing,
• 40:05
  you know, sort of mental images. I remember reading, I think it might have been John Mulaney.
• 40:09
  I love John. Yeah, talking about you being high.
• 40:13
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