Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Peter Helliar: The Craft of Comedy

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Peter Helliar: The Craft of Comedy · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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  Good day, humans. Welcome to the safe space for dangerous ideas. Peter Hellier is one of
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  the most iconic and hilarious Australian stand-ups beloved of stage and screen. Mostly
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  small screen, but also sometimes big screen. He's been a fixture in our living rooms in
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  Australia for a quarter of a century since he first appeared as a sidekick to Rove McManus
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  in Australia's version of the tonight show at the time in the late 90s ran for a decade
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  called Rove, and Peter was there making us crack up all over the country. More recently
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  in 2014, he joined the desk of a show called The Project, which is an institution of Australian
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  broadcasting. He was there for, what was that about eight years and left the year before
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  last? And then last year he was on, I'm a celebrity, get me out of here. He now appears
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  as a narrator in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well, is it the Rocky Horror Picture
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  Show if it's live or is it just the Rocky Horror Show? You know the show I'm talking about.
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  So he's on stage at the moment, and I was so grateful to see him again. We have a little
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  bit of history in the sense that shortly after I had got my break in New York City as
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  a host and producer on Half-Post Live, which was this new streaming television network with
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  tons of money behind it, and it was the hot thing and the place where all the celebrities
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  would go, and I would host three, four, or five half-hour shows every single day. It
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  was 12 hours a day. It was all great. But in, after I'd been doing that for about 18 months
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  or so, I was invited back to Australia because the host of The Project, Charlie Pickering,
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  was leaving the show, and they were auditioning new hosts. So they brought me back. I sat in
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  the chair for a couple of weeks, ended up going back to New York, but in that time working
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  with Peter Hellier on a live television show at a panel desk. If it's live, it's based
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  on the news, it's fast, it's furious, he was so quick-witted, he was so hilarious, and
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  he was so generous that it's a delight to see again, my friend. The very talented, one
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  Peter Hellier.
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  Well, I've started it now, so how are you doing? So I was looking at your buyer, and it's
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  in that you started on The Project in 2014.
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  Yeah, yes, I did 10 years there, but the first two years were me basically filling in
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  for Hughes. I'd do like one a week, he'd gone to Monday to Wednesday. Working as little
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  as he's humanly possible, who worked the whole day for these days. Some reason he
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  wanted to do three days, but that's stage. Yes, I joined Bati Bing, he's proxy and then
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  he eventually left. He was on the way out. I don't think I was speaking out of school.
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  Not enjoying it as much in that last year or so, and I think 10 backed up a bit of a truck
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  to him and the guy in the stay. I did not with him in Sydney, actually, and when he was
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  definitely leaving and they'd offered me the job. He actually said, I don't think you should
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  take it, mate. You can leave the job, mate. You don't talk me out of taking one.
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  Exactly. You can be bored of it. I'm not bored of it yet. Give me a couple of weeks
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  before I get the size. The reason it surprised me that it was 2014 is because that was the
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  year that Charlie left and that I came back and did it for a week or two. That was, and you
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  were so nice to me. I don't know if I've thanked you before, but you were like very, very generous
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  to me and very welcoming. You said lots of nice things about me. It was a weird time in my
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  life where I was just making it in New York and then they flew me out, business class here
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  and all of a sudden, Charlie needs replacing, so maybe who's it going to be? There was
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  revolving door of interim hosts. It was a strange year. You were great. You were lovely
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  blokes. Are you easy to be nice? I wasn't fishing for that, but thank you. We had different
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  hosts. Sometimes it wouldn't be three different hosts a week. You would have, you on Monday
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  and then Ray Martin on Tuesday, there's something else I'll eat on the Wednesday.
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  I'm trying a few things. With me, it was a single block because I had to come back and do it,
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  and then I had to go back to New York. In my brain at the time, you were a fixture of Australian
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  television and to find out that you'd actually only just sort of started. It was a funny.
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  Well, I don't ten years on Rove Live before that and before the game, five or six years on
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  that. The project was the first job. I'd been doing stuff before the project. The project
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  from me was almost like a two point zero. I'd gone from wearing goodies on Rove Live and being
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  in sketches with Skid House and talking footy on before the game to wearing a suit and looking
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  out and still wanting to be silly and not be too serious about it, but it was, you know,
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  God, you were funny. You were very, you were so funny on that show. For people who I only know
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  the project from the past maybe five years or so, they might not remember that at the time,
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  it was a pretty big deal. It wasn't a bunch of like woke youngsters just jabbering about the
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  news. It was sharply satirical. It kind of must see TV at the time.
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  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I was at Sand Tortonshire who took over from me and he's a great guy and
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  very funny comedian. And he makes a point. He's not saying it as an inside of it. He's kind of
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  saying everyone, like the project is a massive, it is actually a massive brand. Everyone
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  in Australia knows the project. Everyone's got an opinion on the project. I find that people
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  have the most opinions on the project. It's generally people who don't watch the project.
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  I mean, the comments on the project, you know, when the story goes up from people who didn't
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  see the story, they saw very strong opinions about it. It's incredible. But, yeah, it was,
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  I think it's, I think it's channel 10, to be honest. And I've said most of my career at channel 10.
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  I think there's something I, I feel like they have shows that a lot of people talk about,
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  like, you know, amongst your friends and people will approach you on the street and talk
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  about these shows that aren't always reflected in the ratings for some reason. And I know
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  that's changed recently. The rating system has changed. And because it used to be the whole thing
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  that you couldn't live in an apartment and have a ratings box. Now, if you're, your demographic,
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  that you're going after is a younger audience, what channel 10 does, you know, a lot of them
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  are going to be in apartments. So I feel like shows like, you know, I'm a celebrity and survivor
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  and feels like a lot more people are watching them than actually sometimes are reflected. So
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  I'm not sure if the project falls under that or not. But, I mean, there are, but I mean,
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  isn't that just the way that we consume media these days? In the sense that so much of it,
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  even like the late night shows in the States, where it used to be the case that everybody,
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  you know, would get into bed and turn on Letterman or Carson. Now Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon
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  is going for the clicks on Instagram the following day. So they're doing, you know, viral moments
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  that people watch it. I mean, they're basically in the same economy as like this show.
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  Right. We'll say something. It'll go on Instagram. And most people will be consuming the project,
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  probably or a significant proportion of them from flicking through something on Instagram and
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  watching a minute of it. That's probably how I watch it. But seriously, because I won't sit down,
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  I won't sit down to watch it generally. Which I mean, admittedly, I didn't,
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  necessarily do before I joined the show. It's just not a time of day where I would be sitting down
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  to watch something. But I, yeah, certainly on Instagram, I pick up their stories. And occasionally,
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  if I see an interview that I really want to see, I'll click the link and watch it. But
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  yeah, you're absolutely right. The way we are consuming media these days is completely changed.
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  Did you ever watch you? No, not really. No. Because I feel like there are a couple of types of
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  people. There's like you Letterman who never wants to see a single second of himself on television,
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  just wants to put it out there and then let it be what it will be. And then you've got
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  a Jay Leno who will sit down and go over and over and over and over his performance and
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  Michael, you know, Michael, analyze it and try to make it better. I am somewhere in between of that.
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  I don't have a thing where I can not possibly watch myself on TV. But if I feel like I've
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  done a good job, I generally won't watch it back. Because I'm like, that's kind of perfect or at
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  least very good in my mind. So that can exist. I'm happy with that. But if I was to watch it back,
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  I might find something that makes it not as good as I'd have. Right, right. So watch the
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  shit and let the good stuff be. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, I also got used to watching myself back
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  because I've had to, like we did this, you know, it's a date and had to stay married and
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  I was in some of those and the movie we made. And so it's kind of like I've got used to being
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  an edit suite and watching myself and kind of going, okay. And allowing other people to
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  decide if I was any good or like, you know, and I can obviously have my say, can we not use that
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  shot or there's a better take up, you know. So I've gotten used to watching myself, but I don't
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  I don't seek out to watch myself. And what about stand-up when you're building a set? How much do
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  you go back and like listen to it? I tend to record every show that I do for a while. And then
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  once you start the tour and you get into it, you start recording it because you're not listening
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  to it back. Funnily enough, I've really listened to them back to be honest. Like I'm more like
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  pen and paper kind of like making notes, what worked. But there might be something where you kind of
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  go, something, sometimes you have a routine where something or just a bit never a routine where
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  something's working and all of a sudden it's not working as well. So it's just got to have a
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  reference to go back and go, okay, well, I'm doing anything different a week ago when it was
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  seemed to be working. And is there any, sorry, we finished that. Well, I was just going to say
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  in Rocky Horror, which I'm doing at the moment, there's a bit where there's a heckle from the audience,
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  which you know, it's basically like no Rocky Horror. It's famously, there are these famous
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  heckles that people yell out and there's often new ones and it's the narrator you're responding
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  to these heckles. But there are some that happen each night and there's one that's having a
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  gotten the writer in the state of his career or their career. And so, and I had these jokes and
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  it was like, oh my, I do, it's that of his two different little bits that I would do. And then
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  I added a third bit. And as a result, the bit that I was doing at the, the joke that I began with,
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  which was working, wasn't working anymore. And I said, why isn't that, and I kind of referenced
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  the project in the joke. I said, why isn't that working as well anymore? And it's just, I think
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  simply it's just because I added the joke and it's just diminishing returns, you know. Right.
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  So, like the third joke isn't working or the second joke isn't working because you know,
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  the third one. The third joke wasn't working as strong because the first one, big laugh,
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  even maybe a big laugh and then the third one, this is not quite, you know, and I could,
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  I could, I thought about changing the order. Can you tell us what the jokes are? You don't
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  respond. I guess I can. So there's a bit in the show where I say one of the characters, Brad,
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  says he's my relationship with Janet. It's over. The whole thing's over. And the
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  radar pops out and says, over, what was over? And somebody always goes, you're career.
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  So I react to that, you know, like the audience already laughing and, oh, yeah, before you even,
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  like, so it's a perfect, it's so, so much fun. And, and the joke that I was, I first said was, I,
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  Rocky Horror and Pete Hellier, a natural combination. I'm surprised it hasn't happened earlier.
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  You may ask yourself why I did the project for 10 years. I've been, I'm used to jumping to the left
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  or I love jumping to the left. Right. And that was getting really big laugh. And then I added a joke
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  about how could you say my career is over? Last year, I did, I'm a celebrity. Get me out of here.
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  Okay. Maybe you have a point. And then I added the really awkward thing is that that was my manager
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  who yelled that out. You know, like, you're career, which I really love because it's one of so
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  economical and quick. And to the idea, I do love when you can follow a joke and actually imagine it
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  and kind of like, imagining, yeah, why would my manager come to see Rocky Horror? And, yeah,
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  and heck of me and say, your career is over. This is a very weird thing. So, um, so when I,
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  I started with that and then I went into the other celebrity line and then I went into the project.
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  So he's just like, big love, big love. And then, and then like, but the time I got to the project
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  thing is just like, you know, it's not loud enough. Like, it's not like the generally you'd be
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  usually pretty happy with. I could change the order with it, you know, I could be, to be honest,
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  how many laughs do you need? Well, and I do, like, you do have to be careful of not making it about
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  yourself too much. It's still a story to be told. And there I said, I mean, it's not much of a
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  story in Rocky Horror. I don't think there's a bang at me. I don't think three eggs is going to derail.
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  You're complicated. There are bangers to be had, you know, so I, um, but I, uh, there are some
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  lovely moments that I've kind of created in the, in the show, which I feel like I got a little bit of
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  space. So it's not bad time for me to probably move along a little bit. Right. Right. So, yeah,
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  you try to get that balance right. And do you have, do you find that, and when you're doing stand-up
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  as well, there's a beautiful joke that you just love, but you can't quite figure out where to put it,
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  or it, like, it's coming off the back of something that makes it not work. It's not working.
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  I mean, eventually I come and go, well, it's not working enough to be in the show. What's
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  its purpose for being in the show? It is just to be, is to get laugh, which is generally what
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  my jokes are there to do. Sometimes they're there to set something else up later on, you know,
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  so sometimes you'll take a small little bullet to, because something else is coming up later on.
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  So if there's no purpose outside of just being funny and the audience is not quite clocking it,
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  then generally I'll take it out. But there are, you know, there are some times you're going to go,
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  I like this joke, and it's not for everyone in the room, you know, there might be, you know,
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  it might be for six percent of the room, and that's okay, you know.
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  And once you've got a stand-up special down, is it basically then verbatim once you're touring?
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  Yeah, yeah, yes. The way I describe it is, like, when you, the first time you walk out and say
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  to do the show, and you're warming up to it, so you're, what I do, I go at the regional areas,
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  and I do a show, it just advertising, it's like Pete Hellier Live, and I can, you know, if I haven't
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  been to that particular area for a year or two, I can do a bit of the last show, and I've got all
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  this scaffolding, and then introduce the new material with all this scaffolding around it,
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  and then you start just ripping away the scaffolding, and eventually you have, you know, an hour.
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  Well, and so when you take that show and you start in, I started a new castle for this tour
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  I'm on, and, and, you know, you are, like, spending the hour or so leading, or day you're thinking
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  about it, the hour leading into it, you know, you might be riding up the set list again, and
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  that maybe this, in your hotel, going over the, or backstage, going over, saying it out loud,
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  just making sure you might hit certain notes, and phrasing, and transitions, and, and then, and,
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  you know, there's some excitements and nerves, and, and yeah, you might arrive like an hour and
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  hour and a half before the show, and then eventually it gets to the point where you could not even
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  think about the show, and, and walk on, you could arrive at the theater and be on stage a minute later,
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  and you can have rates still the same, you know, it's, but what I, when I get to that point,
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  what I try to do is change something in the show, but to keep me, you know, like, some of the
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  it's almost like an act of sabotage, or sometimes during the show, I will deliberately this do
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  something out of order that I know is gonna make me have to work it out. Oh, that's interesting.
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  Yeah. It's almost like, yeah, it's like, I'm gonna not do the set up for the joke that comes
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  later, and work out how to make it funny, you know. Right. Yeah, I remember in New York I was
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  friends with a Broadway star, she was starring in Mama Mia on Broadway, and she said that she
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  often, after doing it for months and months and months, she often walks off stage not knowing,
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  not remembering anything about the show, and the show comes in within about three seconds to time
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  every night. Yeah. So you've got like a two-hour show, and it's just this unspooling performance of
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  wrote kind of performances from everybody, and they just, they go out, it's, it's muscle memory,
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  like there's no changes to it, and I thought it's sort of a subset of a bit of creativity when it
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  gets to that stage. Yeah, I was speaking to some of the actors, you know, I've been doing Rocky Horror
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  for a bit of a mis-run almost a year, you know. They still try to find new things to keep them engaged,
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  and I've been so impressed with one, they're an extraordinary cast, but you know, and I've
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  sat in the audience quite a few times to watch them leading into, you know, taking on the
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  narrator role, and you know, and then you get to know them, you know, and everyone's got stuff
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  they're dealing with during the day, and they're kind of putting their lives on hold, you know, because
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  you, as much as you know, you do, you can't get a rock up to the theatre and do it, you do have to,
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  you can't let the show float too far away from you, you know, you do, like, so during the day,
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  you just, like, you wake up in the morning, it's got some of the actors telling me that, and they
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  were like, first seeing this trick, they throw it, you know, is the voice, has the voice, you know,
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  and their ability to change roles as well, like, you know, like, there's somebody who can play
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  Frank and Ferdinand Brad and, you know, and one of the other, you know, and riffraff, you know,
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  so it's, I think it's extraordinary, but yeah, like, they've got, you know, they've got lives
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  outside, but when you're watching them, you know, from the audience, you have no, you know,
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  it's just this magical performance that you could go, you could have seen it last August, and you
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  could have seen it, you know, you could see it tonight, and, and it will be, you know, much, much
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  the same performance. And what about during the days? Are your days, I mean, I would hate it,
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  I just hate the rhythm of having to be at 110 percent in the evening, and the whole day is empty
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  beforehand. I never understood how my dad did as well, who's a theatre actor for many, many, many
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  years. And like, I just imagine what it was like having, you know, a couple of, I don't know,
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  primary school aged boys and dealing with them at the same time as your brain and your heart
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  knows that in three hours time, you're going to be standing in front of hundreds of people,
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  having to eat a cry or eyes out or make them laugh. Yeah, and then for me doing the role
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  as the narrator, like, it's, it's, it's not a particularly stressful role for me. I guess
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  I'm talking about stand-up really, when you're, when you're, yeah, when you're there to bring it.
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  Yeah, it's definitely different because I do need to be, it's just me and I need to be absolutely
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  engaged and, and, and, and focused. And, and when I'm starting out a tour, I'm, you know, it's,
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  it's a pretty selfish kind of endeavor, I think, you know, like, because I do have to be my head,
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  I can't, I'm pretty good at compartmentalising, you know, and it might mean, okay, the tour is
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  the most important thing in my life right now, you know, and that doesn't mean I disappear from
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  my family, or I don't help out around the house, or I'm not, you know, you know, you know,
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  Papa's locked in the basement, yeah, but don't disturb him. That isn't spoken to us for a week.
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  But, no, it's, it's just that I will sometimes, even in conversations with my wife, my,
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  my, my mind will fly off to something else. She'll say something that triggers an idea or
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  thought. Yeah. She's very understanding of, like, she'll sometimes just say to me, just, okay,
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  go write it down. You'll see that there's my eyes, it's like drifted off. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  Oh, my, I mean, my partner and I have that, and we don't even do stand-up. We're just going
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  to gradually glaze over and yeah, yeah, you're not talking to me, are you? Sometimes it's not
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  just that stand-up, yeah. And so when you put, and what system does that then go into, are you
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  physically putting it into a notebook and, and then, like, going over handwritten notes? Yeah,
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  it's, I keep people often asked about process. My process is like, as much as you can, there's
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  many different ways. So I will discover my, and expand, and develop stand-up through,
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  obviously just thoughts coming to your head, and then I write in my notes on my phone,
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  and also in a, in a, in a, in a, you know, notebook. I'll do some typing. It's funny. I was
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  with some comedians a couple years ago, and in Karatha, and they were chatting, and one of the
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  months, the other comedian, how many words is your show this year? And they were able to say,
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  it's 65,782, and then they said, I said, oh, yeah, mine's 72,000 blah, blah, blah. And they said,
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  what's yours? And I said, I have no idea. I just don't, I have no, it's not how. Once, they'll
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  show good frisky, and I had so little time to get out, and actually kind of develop it,
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  that I had to, I felt like the most written show that I've done. But that was the only time,
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  and I used to just carry it around and read it, if I was on a train or in a cab, but I'd like read it
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  just to get it into my head, because I wasn't able to get on stage as much as I wanted to.
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  So, but I, there's no kind of manuscript for that in my show.
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  I remember one thing that you said that really stuck with me, obviously, because it's 10 years
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  later, and I still remember it, we were in a production meeting at the project, and there was
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  some guest who was coming on, and the producers were debating how to introduce them. I don't
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  remember who it was, and I was saying, you know, comedian, so and so, and you chondin said,
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  should we actually say comedian? Like, are they actually a comedian? Or are they just like a
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  funny person who does funny things? I thought that was instructive, because obviously there's a
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  certain amount of possessiveness if you're a professional stand-up to be like, let's leave
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  comedian to be actual professional comedians. I mean, and there are some, you know, I've heard
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  Ricky Gervais get shit for, he basically goes into a room and writes one man play, and then he comes
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  out, and he recites a memorized play to an arena, you know, or a huge theatre. He's not Dave
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  Chappelle, who's, you know, dropping by the comedy seller of a Thursday night at the late show,
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  and just working on shit constantly, and then building up a routine out of that. Yeah.
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  And what is the dynamic between the two? Yeah, I mean, Ricky Gervais is an outlier as far as
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  like, and I love Ricky Gervais. I necessarily agree with everything he says, but I quite like that,
• 23:10
  as well, like, but I think he's a pretty good ambassador for comedy. It's very rare, like, not
• 23:17
  many people would do that. It's a luxury that he has. I do sometimes watch some of his specials and
• 23:24
  think it could have done with your job being into some rooms and developing that idea. Yeah,
• 23:29
  even more, but I think he's brilliant. Someone, I don't remember which comic it was, but they were
• 23:35
  giving him shit for his transgender staff saying like, so Ricky doesn't actually go and work as a
• 23:41
  stand-up comic. He just represents himself as a stand-up comic. So he's really, you know, he's
• 23:50
  like identifying as a stand-up comic, but he's not a natally-born stand-up comic. Yeah,
• 23:55
  I mean, yeah, I have found Ricky and Dave Chappelle's obsession with the trans thing,
• 24:06
  a bit dull to be absolutely honest. And the war on work is in my final little dull,
• 24:14
  it's like, I feel like work is in me. Is there even a thing still? And they've developed a
• 24:22
  fair percentage of their shows around. It's like, can you just go back to being...
• 24:26
  Well, I mean, with Ricky, I'm not sure that it'll age very well, necessarily, and it can seem a bit
• 24:31
  mean. I find Chappelle's stuff much more interesting because he's coming at it from a well-informed
• 24:42
  perspective of a person who lives as a marginalized community already. And he draws these interesting
• 24:48
  parallels between, you know, I mean, just the point, and I can say this as a gay man,
• 24:54
  and just the point that he makes about how fucking quickly society got cool with gays in comparison
• 25:00
  to how bloody long it took for people to get cool with black people. And like, you know, it's like
• 25:06
  the moment what the moment whites have a liberation struggle, it's like, bam, we're done, like trans,
• 25:11
  yes, everybody's on board. But like, you know, the black man is just still... I think that
• 25:16
  is insightful in a way. Ricky's saying, I could identify as a chimpanzee.
• 25:21
  Yeah, I mean, that's the, you know, that's a whole, same-sex marriage thing, isn't it?
• 25:26
  Oh, what's next? You know, dogs will marry cats, you know, and that's, you know, a little bit
• 25:32
  passing, but the, I found Shapal, the one, the special before the last one, I forget what they're all
• 25:39
  called, where he got into a lot of trouble with that. To be honest, the mistake he made for me,
• 25:45
  and he's a, obviously, a genius, and I will watch everything he puts out. And I generally love
• 25:50
  everything about most of it. We put out. But I just found it dull. I kind of found it, it was just,
• 25:57
  it wasn't funny enough for me. But then when he, the last one he made, we was almost responding
• 26:05
  to the controversy. I kind of found that more amusing and funny. There were some things I was like,
• 26:12
  I'm not sure exactly about that, but generally I found it very funny. But I do, I do.
• 26:19
  If you're talking about, you know, bus strikes for three shows in a row, I'd be like,
• 26:33
  okay, I can get over the bus strikes. Right, right, right. For kind of the hobby horse.
• 26:37
  But also, it is a big conversation in the world, and I do find it interesting when you can't
• 26:48
  acknowledge that the world is moving at this really rapid rate, you know, without seeming like
• 26:53
  you're not being supportive enough or something like that. Yeah, I think about our parents, you know,
• 26:57
  and they just grew up and they had, you know, things were a bit more black and white, you know,
• 27:02
  and then all of a sudden it's like, oh, no, there's, there's nuance in gender. You know,
• 27:07
  like, there's a lot. I mean, there's a lot of, yeah, and also, I mean, when you say
• 27:11
  wokeness, is that even sort of a thing now? I mean, maybe the term woke is kind of
• 27:15
  passe, because it's now just used as a right-wing cudgel to sort of, I didn't mean anything that
• 27:20
  they don't like. That's progressive. But there is obviously a phenomenon that still exists
• 27:26
  that I've experienced myself in working for the public broadcaster, where there's sort of a
• 27:31
  social justice orthodoxy about the way that people ought to think about things. Yeah, concerning
• 27:36
  race, sex, sexuality, gender, you know, transgenderism and so on, that if you do want to prod it and
• 27:44
  poke it and wrestle with it and question it, you know, do we all need to be saying welcome to country
• 27:50
  when it's just a bunch of white middle-aged women on a Zoom call doing an HR meeting and, you know,
• 27:55
  they're all doing acknowledgements of kind like, you can't, to joke about that would very easily
• 28:01
  be perceived as being racist, to question, you know, if you wanted to do material about how great,
• 28:08
  I don't know, trans women are at sport, you'd get into trouble still. So there is, what do you
• 28:15
  make of the state of sensoriousness or freedom? Yeah, I mean, you well aware now that if you
• 28:25
  felt like Stan, it was a safe place to explore ideas and the audience were well aware,
• 28:31
  that these are jokes, these are jokes. And I think where we're giving comedies to a higher
• 28:37
  perch, I think, I think we need to kind of just remember that, you know, these are jokes. And
• 28:43
  now, you know, in recent years of, you know, comedies have become, you know, it's not a blabla,
• 28:48
  you know, maybe they're partially the blame as well for being, you know, wanting to
• 28:54
  get too serious sometimes and pontificate and it's just like, can we just get back?
• 29:03
  And sometimes I flip a bit about it, because sometimes I'm like, can we just get back to being
• 29:07
  this doing the jokes? And then there are times where I was like, no, you know, like this is a,
• 29:11
  you know, it's good. And the other I get is a comedian, I do want to explore ideas that,
• 29:15
  you know, like I used to go the first few years, I did comedy, this is like, you're walking
• 29:20
  around and like, you know, ideas are floating to your head and kind of go, okay, yeah, that's a joke.
• 29:24
  I'll put it, you know, I'll say that and it felt very kind of easy in a way. And,
• 29:30
  and now what I try to do is go, okay, what do I actually want to talk about, you know,
• 29:35
  what are the things that I actually want to address? And I take it, you know, this is what I want
• 29:40
  to say, how do I make it funny, as opposed to the funniness leading to the funny, from a writing
• 29:45
  perspective, I'm going, okay, like for this recent show, I'm exploring the idea of like this,
• 29:51
  you have these people who say, we live in this age where you can't say anything anymore. And
• 29:54
  that's what all people want to talk to comedians about is you can't say anything. Yeah, right.
• 29:58
  All right, it's, it used to be, how do you come up with material? That was number one question.
• 30:01
  Now, with a bullet, it's, it's, well, I've already gone through how do you come up with your
• 30:05
  material? Now we're on to it. You can't say anything anymore. So I'm glad we're really,
• 30:09
  but this is a new ground. But the thing I'm exploring a show is like, you say you can't say anything
• 30:13
  anymore, but we also live in this age where more than any other time in human history, we are
• 30:17
  bombarded by opinions from people we don't know. Like I would argue that more than any other time
• 30:23
  in history, you can say whatever you like, but there are always ramifications. If you, you know,
• 30:29
  if you say certain things now, yeah. So I, right, but these aren't the question, how tight do you
• 30:36
  draw the boundary around where those ramifications kick in and how, how intense should the ramifications
• 30:41
  be? So I mean, listen, who's really been canceled? You know what I mean? We're doing a
• 30:46
  cancel culture all the time. Like, and we're not talking, how have you once thing wasn't canceled?
• 30:51
  No, the rest he was putting Jail. He was a rapist. He was also a rapist. He's a rapist. Exactly,
• 30:55
  you're right. So he's like, people talk, you know, like, like the criminals, the justice system will
• 31:00
  handle the criminals. Right. You know, no, but I mean, there's not many comedians really.
• 31:05
  Well, I mean, who've been canceled? Isn't it possible that there are young comedians who aren't
• 31:10
  as prominent as they would be because they're sort of regarded as being, you know, you know,
• 31:14
  you don't really, I don't really talk to them. I mean, I certainly know that in journalism,
• 31:18
  there would be people who'd be regarded. And I may be one of them as, you know, he's always doing
• 31:22
  his fucking uncomfortable conversations. You need to be, does he need to always kick a hornet's
• 31:25
  nest? You know, it's like, you know, do we, we want, there is a, there's a caution. And I mean,
• 31:31
  who's been kind of like, I wouldn't say that JK Rowling's reputation has emerged on scale.
• 31:35
  Like, she's still very, very wealthy. Yes. But it does matter that she's not invited to, you
• 31:41
  know, fancy parties. No, she's regarded as being demonic. And I guess, I guess I was probably kind of
• 31:46
  keeping it in the comedy world as far as, um, um, JK, I'm sure he's amusing, but, um, I'm not sure
• 31:53
  if it transcends as it has been based on trying to get laughs or, yeah, right or not. Like, like,
• 31:58
  well, I very, you know, Kevin Hart, you know, um, uh, you know, they found some old tweets from him
• 32:04
  and, and, and then he had to give up hosting the, the Oscars. So what did we achieve? The, uh,
• 32:10
  having a black man who's worked really hard to get where he is, you know, made some, you know,
• 32:15
  off-color remarks on Twitter, which he'd already apologized for. So we've robbed a black man
• 32:20
  the opportunity of hosting an Oscars, which has really been done. When you're just saying that
• 32:23
  nobody has been canceled, that would be an example. Okay. Yes. But then Kevin Hart's making more
• 32:28
  movies and making more money now. So what was the point of, you know, robbing him of one gig?
• 32:33
  Yeah. But they did rob him of one gig. Yeah. And like, you know, as he's answering,
• 32:37
  he had, you know, there was this embarrassing moment where he was nominated for an Emmy and nobody
• 32:41
  clapped because, you know, he had a fumbled day. Yes. Someone wrote about, you know, how he did.
• 32:46
  It's, yeah, sorry. You know, it's a very good way without going in this way into, yeah,
• 32:49
  or the detail. That was the, almost the one I was like, oh, this is, this is getting
• 32:55
  this dangerous area is here because it's like this, it was a fumbled date really. It was almost like,
• 33:00
  oh, there's a consensual, you know, sex gone on, but there was a regret to it.
• 33:08
  And anti-zenzari, all of a sudden, he wasn't very good in the sack.
• 33:12
  Well, therefore he's gone have a television show. Yeah. Yeah. And he's at what this movement
• 33:17
  is really about. Like, um, so that was, so you don't feel any, like, does it ever happen to you?
• 33:23
  I mean, at the risk of being predictable about like, oh, you can't say anything, but I am interested,
• 33:27
  like, does it ever happen to you that you're wandering along? You're sitting on the tram and you go,
• 33:31
  oh, there should be that, you know, it would be funny. And then you go, that would be tricky.
• 33:37
  There's some times where I've kind of gone, I did have a routine about race about.
• 33:42
  This is your famous N word routine. We just said the N word over and over again.
• 33:48
  It's a shout out. It'll all black people in the get very uncomfortable.
• 33:50
  Shout out to all the black people in the audience to leave the room.
• 33:53
  No, my routine was, and I kind of spoke to a few people about it, the kind of, and,
• 33:59
  and they were, you know, people of color, by pop people. And they were like, it's great.
• 34:04
  Like, it's kind of bulletproof, you know, like, and it was the idea was, um,
• 34:09
  is like, the like, that I can actually see, I've got a special power, a super power,
• 34:14
  I'm not going to whisper it, I can actually see race. I can see it.
• 34:20
  And it's, you know, based on the other people's, oh, I don't see race,
• 34:23
  I don't see race. You do, like, yeah, and, um, that's very funny.
• 34:30
  And, and like, so everyone I've spoken to has that reaction. Everyone laughs and I can see
• 34:35
  the audience gets really uncomfortable. Right. And in the end, I kind of just dropped it,
• 34:41
  because I just thought, well, maybe the audience, my audience, doesn't really need me to talk about race,
• 34:46
  you know, as a, maybe they do. Maybe Australia does need a straight white middle-aged male
• 34:53
  comedian talking about race because there's a, there are a lot of straight white middle-aged
• 34:58
  men in Australia who feel like the climate is not such that they're able to wrestle with these
• 35:04
  things. They're just being forced to follow a particular orthodoxy that somebody else
• 35:08
  decided on. Somebody else who may not be a person of color themselves, somebody else who might be
• 35:11
  a university educated social justice, you know. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's, it's, it is interesting.
• 35:18
  I mean, many years ago, you know, this is, you know, about 20 years or plus, I remember doing,
• 35:24
  and this is back, you know, I always think comedy is better for it, for, for, for evolution.
• 35:30
  You know, like we need to evolve. We're, we're not doing mother-in-law jokes, you know,
• 35:33
  so, you know, and, um, and so early 2000s, I was doing routine, which involved a very light,
• 35:41
  you know, um, Chinese accent. Um, so about an exchange I had with a, a lady in a shop.
• 35:49
  Right. Um, and I, I enjoy a roleplay, so I was doing, you know, like, I use deliberately,
• 35:56
  like a large kind of, you know, like, they would get laugh and, and, um, and I'll kind of,
• 36:01
  I'll address it with the audience, you know, that I, you know, I'll play everyone on stage.
• 36:05
  I'm sure, you know, this and, you know, so I have to, you know, separate myself from the shop
• 36:09
  keeper of the kind of picture of what was going on. Um, and we have, we have some fun with that.
• 36:14
  And, and a friend of mine said to me, you know, I said, oh, what do you think? I just, you know,
• 36:21
  uh, and it wasn't about it being funny. It was, it was very funny, you know, and, and, and they,
• 36:26
  he said to me, are they laughing? Because a lot of the interview team was also about, um, that,
• 36:31
  you know, migrants come to Australia and they learn that, you know, they learn a second language,
• 36:35
  well, they're three or four languages, and we only know the one language. And that was kind of,
• 36:39
  you know, that broader point that I was kind of making. So I was kind of, I was having a go at,
• 36:43
  maybe the laziness of Australia, you know, having no interest in learning a second language.
• 36:47
  And, um, and he said to me, are they laughing at that, like, that point, oh, you're laughing,
• 36:52
  because you're just doing a silly accent. And I said, I think they're laughing because I'm doing
• 36:56
  a silly accent. And like, so I just stopped doing a routine. Um, and, um, it can be a little from
• 37:02
  column A and a little from column B. It can, it can be. And I, um, yeah, you know, for, for years,
• 37:10
  I was like, why can we do some accents? We can't do some, you know, it's good as we just sketch
• 37:14
  basically, you know, based on that as well. Um, so I've always kind of been curious and fascinated by,
• 37:19
  yeah, you could do a French accent, no problem. Yeah. So you wouldn't even come up late into the
• 37:23
  French as much as you want for some reason. Um, but, uh, no, it's interesting. I mean, I think back to,
• 37:30
  I mean, I, my first job was doing funny voices on, on the radio here and writing and performing
• 37:35
  a satirical comedy sketches on Mike Carlton's show. Yeah. And, uh, I think of the stuff we did in
• 37:41
  the mid 2000s when I was, uh, fresh out of uni. And, um, a lot of it you couldn't do. I mean,
• 37:47
  I was playing, you know, Saddam Hussein with like this incredibly racist sounding like Arabic accent
• 37:54
  and, uh, stereotypes of gay people, a very stereotypially gay. And, um, was it, but the jokes were good.
• 38:02
  I mean, I think I was writing funny jokes as well, right? But they were certainly enhanced by the
• 38:07
  ludicrousness of the performance. I've certainly spent a lot of actors who were like, you know,
• 38:12
  we'd need to act like we can't, and sometimes it involves different voices. Now, nobody's,
• 38:19
  you know, kind of saying they, you know, defending Mickey Rooney and breakfast at Tiffany.
• 38:23
  I don't mind you. Believe it or not. Dad did that. There was a Australian show in, it must have
• 38:29
  been the 70s or 80s. I've seen video of it. They needed a Vietnamese Australian doctor. So they
• 38:34
  just put plastic eyes on my dad and brown him up and like, you can go back and look at like this,
• 38:42
  not a single Vietnamese person, you can find this part. So he's like putting on a Vietnamese accent
• 38:47
  with like these hooded, you know, plasma, cosmic surgery sort of plastic, you know, what do we call
• 38:53
  like special effects essentially to make his eyes look slanty. And as recently as when, you know,
• 38:58
  as recently as when he was acting, what, 30 or 40 years ago, that was, there was nobody,
• 39:03
  no, at no point in the process did anyone put up a hand and go, should we just find an agent?
• 39:12
  And this is why, this is why it is good that we have, we listen to, you know,
• 39:19
  you know, messages from the community and society and evolve because, yeah,
• 39:25
  there is a line, I think, now and the line's always going to be a bit blurry and the line will
• 39:29
  always move. But actors do, I think, still need to be able to act like this. I think it was Bill
• 39:39
  Bird, you know, a great routine about that French film about the black man and the paraplegic
• 39:52
  and he becomes his carer. So I think Bill on the butterfly, no, that was the upsides or the
• 39:59
  upsides or something like that. And it was a big French film and then they made an American remake
• 40:03
  and Brian Cranston played the, I believe it was a paraplegic, I apologize for my, yeah,
• 40:09
  when you're wondering who gets canceled for what? That's it, that's it, that's it. There's a
• 40:13
  quadrupleage you go or paraplegic and and there were people in the community who are upset that
• 40:19
  that why can they be, you know, fine, they find a real quadrupleage, you know, a quadrupleage actor.
• 40:25
  Yeah, you're going, but the point is like that movie, the reality is that movie probably doesn't get
• 40:33
  made with that actor because there are certain boxes, investors need ticked off, they want
• 40:39
  somebody else. Also Brian Cranston's an amazing actor, he's one in a hundred million. So you need
• 40:43
  like, you need to allow him to act. Yeah, he can't just be Brian Cranston all the time, like, you
• 40:47
  need to be able to. But also how many paraplegic or quadrupleagic actors or of Brian Cranston's
• 40:52
  caliber? I think I'm not sure if I kind of thought of this or when I was watching it, Bill
• 40:57
  actually said it, but he goes, like, who's your favorite quadrupleagic actor? Right, you know,
• 41:02
  like, if you can't name one, then you're part of the problem, you know, like, but I mean also,
• 41:06
  like, I mean, this comes up with gay roles as well all the time, right? And like, uh, you know,
• 41:10
  so what was it? Um, there was a trans, there was a whole movie that didn't get made because
• 41:16
  it was an old film actress playing. It was a headwagon, the, um, angry engine. Well, there was that,
• 41:20
  but this is also different. No, there was a remake of an Asian movie. This is really entertaining
• 41:25
  for people to listen to us just trying to remember movies that we can't remember. Welcome back
• 41:29
  to movies. Movies that can't remember and can't properly describe with Peter and Josh.
• 41:35
  Now, anyway, so, but I mean, one point that was made to me by someone who's skeptical of this
• 41:40
  whole thing was like, and who's also gay, was like, I mean, if you only, if gay people are
• 41:44
  insisting that straight people should not be able to play a guy's, are they okay with us
• 41:48
  insisting that gay people can only play gay characters? Yeah. And the gay people shouldn't be allowed
• 41:52
  to play straight. That's it. And also, do you have to declare? Yeah, that's right. Yeah,
• 41:57
  when at the audition, people who are not out yet or, or, you know, I so, I do think there needs to be
• 42:07
  space for actors to apply their craft. And in terms of like the worthiness of when you were
• 42:13
  talking about like, you just want comedy to sort of be comedy again. I mean, this is going back
• 42:18
  to Dave Chappelle. He gets stuck into Hannah Gadsby for basically not being funny, right? Like for
• 42:23
  kind of doing a one-woman show, which is very worthy, which has a lot, there's a kind of a
• 42:30
  noble instinct in audiences to find profound social justice revelations. Yes.
• 42:39
  To feel compelled to respect that, regardless of whether or not it's actually funny.
• 42:45
  I think I followed the Hannah, and I interviewed Hannah quite a few times at a project,
• 42:49
  you know, post-NANET. And the one thing that people miss, I think when they're talking about
• 42:56
  NANET, is that it was funny for like, for like however long, 40 minutes or 45 minutes, whatever
• 43:03
  whatever that turning point is, that last 10, 15 minutes, where it's like a blistering kind of,
• 43:08
  you know, like monologue. It's really funny up to that point. I mean, what's your going?
• 43:15
  What's this whole thing about not being funny? It's really funny. And then it really goes for it.
• 43:20
  And I think people just remember that people think the hour is at 15 minutes or 20 minutes, whatever
• 43:24
  it may be. And yeah, as much as I'm like, I do flip sometimes, I'm like, yeah, let's just go
• 43:30
  being funny and telling jokes and other times I'm like, no, but comedy can be more and we could be,
• 43:33
  you know, I mean, the best thing obviously is if you can do both, right? I mean, Delbert is a good
• 43:37
  example, I think of someone who makes, like if you can say things that are profoundly contrarian,
• 43:45
  and genuinely risqué in a way that is intellectually rigorous and also funny, that's the bullseye,
• 43:53
  right? And Delbert does it. Maybe he's the best at it, of making jokes about something that happens
• 43:59
  in, you know, an issue is society, but he's almost catering to both sides in a way, like he's not,
• 44:07
  he's not, I mean, he's pretty anti-work. Yeah, but at the same time, I think he also,
• 44:15
  has some kind of, you're right, he's anti, yeah, yeah. But he's smart about it. Like he's, I think
• 44:23
  you could be, you could be woke and listening to his, you know, he's stand up and still smile
• 44:30
  or laugh along and kind of go, yeah, that's a fair point. I think, yeah, I think you're pretty aware
• 44:35
  of where he's tongue is in his cheek, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's the same with
• 44:41
  Louis, you know, I mean, for all of, you know, scandal noted about Louis K, not good to do the
• 44:47
  things he did. Nonetheless, I think an incredible stand up, I went and saw him in Sydney. He has
• 44:52
  a bit speaking of accents where he's talking about seeing an old black lady in a supermarket and
• 44:57
  he does a voice where he's like, oh, look at this old potato got here, something like that. And
• 45:02
  everybody has that instinctive like half laugh, half gas, half like should he really be doing a
• 45:09
  voice? And he looks at the audience and he's like, that's how she spoke. I'm not being racist.
• 45:14
  Like she's racist if you think that voice is racist, because that was her voice. Like all I'm
• 45:17
  doing is just a perfect similar kind of what the of what she was saying, which again is like
• 45:22
  he's only doing it in order to be able to make that point. Yeah. But we had, we had, we're on
• 45:26
  a chain, you know, it was two episodes of it's a date for us with an anthology series. I kind of
• 45:34
  created on the ABC. And we had people, you know, a couple of people kind of, you know, on socials
• 45:38
  kind of saying, oh, in this day and age, you're really going with that accent. That's how he speaks.
• 45:44
  That's right. That's that's trying to chain. Yeah. It's like, yeah, it's it's it's it's incredible.
• 45:52
  We had it and had to say married a character who, yeah, like really,
• 46:03
  I don't think of her background. I'm just going to say we have apologies. Just Asian,
• 46:09
  but I'm not exactly sure which can't just cancelled again. Cancel again. Sorry.
• 46:15
  You can just call her a yellow person. I think that's the that's what he's supposed to say.
• 46:18
  These days, and we said, we said, but how do you want to play this character? Like, you know,
• 46:23
  do you want to like lean into, you know, she, we work out where she's from and, and, or do you
• 46:29
  want to play it? Like, you know, I'm not going to Aussie. She goes, no, let's lean into the
• 46:32
  Asianness. It's kind of funny, you know, and, and, and, and we get a couple of answers. It's
• 46:36
  kind of got you do whatever, you know, do it. And she really went for it. Yeah. She really went
• 46:40
  for it. And I thought it was hilarious, you know, and both this she was bringing stuff and fun
• 46:44
  physicality to it. They've really made it really funny. Yeah. And yeah, there was some people
• 46:48
  get you actually going. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, please, come on. Look at that. Like,
• 46:53
  this is coming from it's going to hurt. Like, you know, this is it's so glossy. It's so pure
• 46:58
  technical. It's so sort of finger waggy to be like my version of diversity has to be the one
• 47:03
  that everybody has to agree with instead of the one that the actual Asian Australian actress
• 47:08
  thinks is funny. Yeah. You know, Michael Hing has a bit about asking himself
• 47:14
  pensively whether or not he's a China man. He's like, he's a Chinese Australian comic.
• 47:20
  He's like, you know, I guess I'm a, I'm a China man. I'm a China man. Am I a China man?
• 47:27
  It's really funny. Cause like, yeah, yeah, it's such an old school word. We wouldn't be able to say it.
• 47:33
  He can say it because he's a fucking China man. And on the standup is also in the news because
• 47:42
  of this whole incident about the baby that was making noise at Archbarkers. So talk to me about
• 47:49
  the focus that you need when you're on stage and you're hearing something from the audience and
• 47:54
  the decision about whether or not to intervene. Yeah. The one thing that I read about the mother,
• 48:00
  you know, and I hate it, to be honest, that in some ways she's being shamed and I hate it,
• 48:05
  you know, that the arch is being shamed because I think there's, yeah, it's, it's tricky. But the one
• 48:12
  thing that I read that she said that I do disagree with is she said, you know, you have hecklers.
• 48:19
  You know, my baby was making some noises, but you know, you have hecklers. Isn't it the same thing?
• 48:23
  And it's clearly not the same thing. So with a heckle, you can respond to that because it's
• 48:28
  something that somebody has said that you have then they're giving you material to work with,
• 48:33
  you know, like they've said, you know, it could be you're not funny or like what it might be,
• 48:38
  what it might be trying to add to a joke or something. And you can then play with that.
• 48:41
  The worst thing as a standup when you're on stage is if somebody's chattering and you can't,
• 48:47
  they're not really yelling out that it's chattering amongst themselves because this noise and you
• 48:52
  can hear it and you can't really respond to it because you're not catching what they're actually
• 48:55
  talking about, which is what the, you know, you can't respond to a baby. So because it's this noise,
• 49:01
  isn't a baby, this, yeah, they don't understand because they're a baby. And so I do think, listen,
• 49:09
  I don't think taking a baby to a standup
• 49:15
  gig is helpful for the comedian and potentially people around you. I sympathize with,
• 49:22
  you know, I'm often impressed, you know, when I see, you know, parents out with, you know, babies
• 49:30
  and like, you know, it's still, you know, we're not going to be tucked away. We can get out and
• 49:34
  enjoy ourselves too. But there's no denying that it's, it's, it's, endless that baby's sleeping
• 49:42
  and not making any noise. It's, it's, it can be a distraction. It can be a big advantage as well.
• 49:47
  And I know I'm certainly someone like this. I need that room to be quiet when I want, when I
• 49:53
  need it to be quiet, you know, when I want the room full of laughter, you know, that's, that's great.
• 49:57
  But it's not, it's not a stand show isn't 100% laughter, laughter, laughter all the way through.
• 50:02
  So that's 60 minutes and laughter there at times when you are setting stuff up and you need quite,
• 50:05
  it might venue this year that in my first show, there was somebody making, I heard, because it was,
• 50:11
  is in a pub and I heard, okay, I thought I'm making a coffee. And it was just really distracting.
• 50:20
  They were just getting high on vitrosoxide bulbs. What was it? They're pouring the soda.
• 50:26
  Oh, yeah. So that was the, and I said to him, I said, can we, can we not make coffees during the
• 50:31
  during the show? It's a really distracting and, and, and they said, I was, and then they fixed it,
• 50:36
  they, they kind of worked that a way they could not do it during the show. And, but it was,
• 50:42
  you know, it was something that I had to kind of talk about because it was enormously distracting.
• 50:46
  Like, you are, like, there are times when you are, you are curating this silence in a studio,
• 50:54
  in a theater. And one little noise, whether it be a soda, you know, a, a, a soda stream or a,
• 51:00
  um, somebody coffee or, even somebody coughing, you know, or, or, or a baby, you know, takes,
• 51:07
  takes it the moment away a little bit. So, um, I think people don't appreciate what's actually
• 51:12
  happening on stage. No, I think they think you just go in and the stand up just does their thing
• 51:17
  and, you know, people laugh and that's that, they don't understand. And, ladies, we load, we load
• 51:22
  the talk about in the way, like, the, the craft and, and, and the good, the whole thing is
• 51:27
  supposed to look effortless and, and easy and, and, and we, we generally talk down what we actually
• 51:32
  do. But, but there is a lot of work that has gone on to get to where, like, somewhere, ah,
• 51:39
  she's, and even to get that show ready. Um, and let's, uh, I don't think I would have asked
• 51:47
  the, the amount of the leave. Um, I do, I generally have empathy, you know, for her. Why not?
• 51:54
  I mean, if you're, if you're, if you're, if you're doing brain surgery on stage,
• 51:58
  essentially, and you're curating each moment and you know that this line is going to end in
• 52:03
  a silence and a beat and then you're going to yank the rug out from under the audience's
• 52:08
  legs with a big punchline. And then in that space, there's like a, a cry and it snaps your
• 52:15
  attention out of it. It breaks the moment for the audience. People start shuffling in their seats
• 52:19
  a little bit and the joke doesn't quite land. Well, I'm what you do. Well, well, I'd probably have
• 52:23
  to write it off a little bit like, uh, there'll be ways I could deliver it differently kind of going,
• 52:27
  okay, I need to maybe move through this a bit quicker than I normally would. But then I would be
• 52:31
  saying to the, the, the staff, uh, no more babies in the audience. Well, apparently it said 15 plus.
• 52:37
  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what I maybe had a fake ID.
• 52:39
  I mean, then you're basically, if you, if you're right, if you're hurry through it,
• 52:49
  because the baby is going to screw the joke, then you're ripping off the other hundreds of
• 52:53
  people who came to see you at your best. Well, yeah. And that is, that is the complication.
• 52:59
  It's not just about us being, or the, say, the comedian in that moment being about him,
• 53:05
  like you are trying to service your audience. They all paid money. Yeah, they all paid money. And,
• 53:11
  I don't know, except for the baby, probably, the baby probably didn't need a ticket. That's a good
• 53:14
  point, actually. That has been the sunrise. But maybe, maybe comedies, maybe we should be doing
• 53:21
  mums and pub sessions, you know, like, but that's the thing. I mean, I, this is a perfect
• 53:26
  distillation of like what's crazy about our national conversations and the way social media
• 53:31
  deranges them because everyone started taking these very hot stances on our
• 53:35
  side of this story. It's like, so yeah, being a parent to a young baby is really hard.
• 53:45
  Anyone who's been an apparent knows it's really hard. God bless people who want to go out,
• 53:49
  as you say, go to a mums and pub session at the movies. They have those, you know, go to
• 53:55
  Kid Friendly cafes. I've had to have, I've had nine month old twins like driving me absolutely
• 54:01
  batch it crazy. But respect, like certain spaces, respect certain crafts, respect the other people
• 54:10
  who've paid a bit of money. This is not like a hill to die on. I don't get it. Like, it's like,
• 54:15
  you read some of the things from Mama Mayor or one of these other outlets. And it's like, this is
• 54:19
  like the civil rights movement of our, of our time that women should be able to bring
• 54:24
  gurgling, crying, screaming little babies into everywhere in the world, including the most,
• 54:30
  this kind of sanctum of intimacy, which is a standup. I mean, personally, I mean, again,
• 54:39
  I just not sure how you would enjoy it to be honest. I mean, worry constantly, worried, you know,
• 54:44
  that I'd be freaking out the whole time. The mum, it's got a huge show. And she made the point,
• 54:51
  that Huzi, you know, acknowledged it, made a point, made a joke and moved on with his show. And
• 54:55
  that was committing him for his professionalism. And Huzi certainly is a professional. But I
• 54:59
  wouldn't make the point that Huzi and Arja are very different comedians. Huzi doesn't leave the space.
• 55:05
  He doesn't, he doesn't crave those silences. He's not like role-playing. Huzi is very joky and
• 55:11
  and, you know, and I'm sorry, she's Huzi, you know, hilarious and he's brilliant. But he's not,
• 55:18
  he's not trying for those moments where Arja does, you know, and I do as well. I need the room
• 55:26
  for this room to be absolutely pinpoint silent for the next 10 seconds, you know, or three seconds,
• 55:32
  or seven seconds, whatever it might be. So again, I'll also make that point.
• 55:37
  Well, I mean, yeah, so there are different types of comedy. But did she go to Huzi's show before,
• 55:43
  did she go to an early Huzi's show? Like did she go to? Not only is she dragging the kid around
• 55:49
  to a stand-up show, she's doing a double header. She obviously had a festival pass if you want to
• 55:53
  get maximum bang for a buck. No, no, no, no, maybe another day. My impression was just a different day.
• 55:59
  Yeah, all right. Okay. But the kid's getting dragged around to all of the greatest hits. You can
• 56:04
  look forward to it. Maybe she'll be at Rocky Horror. I'm going to follow this baby. This maybe
• 56:07
  might be like a legendary comic in, you know, 20 years. Exactly. Yeah. No, if that's,
• 56:13
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• 56:17
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