Interview with Adam Richard about Gaypocalypse, Spicks & Specks, The Shelf and his busy fabulous life

Adam Richard ended 2013 with a milestone, finishing ten years with Matt & Jo on their high rating breakfast radio show for Fox FM last year. This year he begins a new exciting journey as team leader on the revived and refreshed Spicks & Specks on ABC1. It seemed like a great time to have a chat to him about the past and the future.

At the moment Adam is also busy preparing his new solo Festival show Gaypocalypse  which will be his first in seven years, not to mention all the other things he gets up to. But I will. He and Justin Hamilton have been running the pop up boutique comedy night The Shelf  since October 2011 out of which came the podcast of The Shelf which is like listening to mates having a chat. The live Shelf is also like being audience to some friends getting together and performing for a (rather wild) private party. They pride themselves on being unconventional with a great mix of performers from stand-up to the theatrical. Adam’s other podcast is the Talking Poofy podcast or ‘Poofcast’ with performing buddies Scott Brennan and Toby Sullivan. The podcasts seem to be a bit on the back burner for him at the moment, but will be back hopefully when he finds a pocket of time to pop them in.

Lisa: What led you into the crazy world of stand-up / showbiz?

Adam: There were a combination of factors: I used to go to a lot of gigs with Corinne Grant, so I saw what an exciting medium it could beÍŸ one of my old school mates, Katie Pinder, was working for Token (and her dad was John Pinder, who created the Last Laugh) so I was being exposed to some of the best comedy in MelbourneÍŸ and my friend Ged was running a comedy room called Elbow Grease that I seemed to end up at every Sunday. These things conspired to convince me to sidestep from spoken word into standup.

Lisa: Who inspired you (comedians or otherwise?)

Adam: I was mostly inspired by the comedians I saw every week, people like Wil Anderson, Meshel Laurie, Corinne Grant, Rove, Dave O’Neil, Brad Oakes, Merrick Watts, Dave Hughes, the late Dave Grant; the people who I was working alongside when I first started.

Lisa: Where & when did you start your live stand up?

Adam: Elbow Grease at Nicholson’s in North Carlton (now a block of flats) December 1996. Ged Wood, who was running it, talked me into it at a party the week before. So I technically started out in 1996, but it was one gig in December, and I don’t think you can really call yourself a comedian until you get paid. That was 1997.

Lisa: You made your TV Debut on Hey Hey its Saturday, was that on Red Faces?

Adam: No. It was my commercial tv debut, I was booked to do standup by the divine Pam Barnes. I had already appeared on the ABC on the Raw Comedy National Final and on Foxtel’s Comedy Channel documentary oz.com.edy with Carl Barron.

Lisa: I hear you studied Cinema Studies at LaTrobe Uni for a short time

Adam: Yes I did. Until I came to a realisation during a tutorial where we were talking about Doris Day in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and I thought “I don’t need to incur a HECS debt for this! I’m a gay man, I can talk about Doris Day at the pub!” 

Lisa: Do you think you perform differently for a gay audience than a straight one?

Adam: I don’t do a huge number of ‘gay’ gigs, but I pretty much give the same performance no matter who is watching. I believe in audience equality.

Lisa: Have you ever had an audience that hasn’t coped with your homosexuality (and/Or) have audiences become more accepting?

Adam: Depends how putrid I’m being. I have had individuals be completely horrified by the fact that I have a voice, and I’m not hiding my sexuality from them, which is what they would prefer.

Lisa: Did being on radio help with audiences knowing what to expect from you.

Adam: Radio audiences are awesome, but chatty! They get so used to participating in the show, being able to ring up and be part of the fun, that if you ask a rhetorical question on stage, they have a tendency to answer you with a story from their own life. You have to politely rebuke themÍŸ “you haven’t called thirteen ten sixty, love, this isn’t the fox.”

Lisa: It has occurred to me that your radio persona may have restricted your choices in Festival material. Did you choose your material (often about celebrity gossip) to suit those audiences and will that change somewhat, now do you think?

Adam: Actually, my radio job came out of what I was doing on stage. I did a show in 1999 called Adam Richard in Disgrace which was about gossip mags like the New Idea and Woman’s Day. Talking about celebrities became part of my club and touring routine after that, so that’s what I ended up talking about on Triple J in 2002 and the Today Network from 2003 to 2013. We only really love the kind of gossip about celebrities that we want to hear about the people we know at work and at homeÍŸ relationship breakups, weddings, babies, death, etc. Those everyday things are what I talk about in my shows, sometimes about celebrities, sometimes about me. That, and zombies.

Lisa: Are you involved with the radio gossip site Scoopla ?  Or is it a clean break?

Adam: No more Scoopla for me. No more Southern Cross Austereo at all! Well, I am still appearing on some of their shows, as well as shows on other networks, as part of my job doing publicity for Spicks and Specks.

Lisa: Has it occurred to you that you have helped pave the way for younger gay comic performers like Josh Thomas, Tom Ballard and Joel Creasey?

Adam: I don’t think I can take the credit for that. I think our society is more accepting of homosexuality than it once was, which has made it easier for comedians to be themselves on stage. If I inspired any of them because they thought they’d be better at it than me, that would make me very happy. A lot of gay men will say to their friends “I’m funnier than him!” but that’s as far as it goes, and it’s easy to say. Getting up and doing the work, day after day, that is hard.

Lisa: I adored Outland

Adam: Thank you!

Lisa: Have you ever thought about doing standup or even a comedy show specifically about your not-quite-so-secret-anymore nerdy side? Do you think there is a comedy audience for that?

Adam: Gaypocalypse will be dealing with some of that. There are zombies on the poster and in the show. Many references to The Walking Dead, for instance. There is a big thread of upheaval and change in my show, so it might seem like a regeneration episode of Doctor Who.

Lisa: Has The Shelf helped you deal comedically with all of that?

Adam: What Justin and I talk about on The Shelf podcast are the kinds of things we’d talk about on the phone, or at a cafe. Well, maybe not entirely, because we have a tendency to get into a shock spiral when we’re alone, where all the most horrendous thoughts and ideas come out and we egg each other on until one of us says “too much.” Which almost never happens.

Lisa: Has The Shelf been a rewarding experience for you? (both live & podcasting)

Adam: The live show is one of the best things ever. I absolutely adore it. I had grown quite fatigued by seeing comedians deliver their tightest material to every single audience, as if the comedy circuit was some kind of bizarre ongoing audition process for a tv show that isn’t on anymore. Those rooms are great for that, and I love playing them, but rather than occasionally subverting the paradigm of a room that is functioning really well as is, it seemed there needed to be a room where comedians could blow off steam whether in a chat, or a sketch, or in the case of Claire Hooper, bizarre arts and crafts. Justin pretty much programs the room, because he does so much more standup than I used to, and he sees who is out there who would relish a chance to do this kind of batshit crazy comedy night.

Lisa: Will your podcasts/poofcasts keep going?

Adam: I don’t have access to the radio studio anymore, but hopefully I can work something out. I haven’t done a solo show in 7 years, and I have never done a weekly TV gig, so I am just sorting out how much time all of that takes before indulging in what is, essentially, vanity broadcasting.

Lisa: Will Festival performing become more difficult (do you think) because of the Spicks n Specks workload. Or will it be easier for not having to be up at godawful o’clock?

Adam: Getting up at 4am is easy. It’s like ripping off a bandaid. It’s the afternoons that are hard. Your brain turns to mud some time after 2pm and you can’t function. You fall asleep around 8pm and your social life is nonexistent. Festival is going to be punishing, because I am working 22 days in a row without a break, doing three stage shows and one tv show all in front of live audiences. I just hope I come out the other end not looking like Hairy McClary.

Lisa: Will you acquire a different audience because of being on the ABC do you think?

Adam: I don’t really know. I was on Spicks and Specks as a guest a number of times, so I don’t know that being on the show every week will make that much of an impact in whether people come to see Gaypocalypse. I am really proud of it, as a show, so far, and I have done a lot more work on it than I would have been able to if I had breakfast mudbrain every afternoon, so I at least hope people come and see what I can do when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep!

Lisa: Are you prepared for the Aunty fan club backlash (they seem to vociferously HATE any change to any aspect of the ABC)

Adam: Weirdly, that fear of change is one of the core themes of Gaypocalypse. The fear our society has that if we allow asylum seekers to have refuge here they will somehow destroy our way of life͟ the fear that allowing same sex couples to marry will somehow destroy our way of life͟ the fear that broadcasting a music quiz show without Adam Hills will somehow destroy our way of life.

Lisa: Now we’ve all seen Spicks & Specks on the telly, it looks like a whole heap of fun. Has it been that much fun to do?

Adam: More! It was always a fun show to do in the past, and it is just as fun now. Josh, Ella and I are the only new kids on the block. Everybody behind the scenes has been there for years, and worked with Adam, Myf and Alan. We are in very safe hands, so we just have to turn up and have fun, to be honest. It’s like going to work at an awesome party every week.

Lisa: Do you think this will put you on a different plane or level of fame in Australia?

Adam: Fame should not be a goal, because it is a not an end in itself. Fame doesn’t pay the bills, and fame isn’t something you can list as one of your skills on a CV. Kim Kardashian is famous, but what does she do? I have a job, I enjoy entertaining people, I love making people laugh, if fame is a byproduct of that, and it gives me the freedom to do even more work that I love, then I’m not going to shun it, but I’m not going to chase it around you end up looking like a puppy chasing its tail.

Lisa: What is Gaypocalypse going to be about?

Adam: Gay zombies. Fundamentalists have been predicting apocalyptic disasters if marriage equality is permitted what if they’re right? What if gay marriage will lead to gay zombies wandering around Bunnings, terrorising Aussie battlers? What if gay marriage actually means the end of gay culture and gay society? Will it be the ultimate irony if achieving marriage equality is the thing that makes us all go away?

Lisa: Is this a more politically motivated show than you’ve done before?

Adam: Like all my shows, it’s ultimately quite personal. It’s about my own private Gaypocalypse, and the destruction of my world that was necessary to bring about a new and better one.

Lisa: Will you always be Fabulous?

Adam: Given the meagre budgets at the ABC, I will now insist on being billed as The Affordable Adam Richard. 

Adam Richard – Gaypocalypse is on at The Adelaide Fringe Festival in the Rhino Room from March 4
http://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/fringetix/adam-richard-gaypocalypse/ade184fd-e063-44ad-8e74-3da6bf06ff55

Adam Richard – Gaypocalypse will also have a season at this year’s Melbourne Comedy Festival from March 28
http://www.comedyfestival.com.au/2014/season/shows/gaypocalypse-adam-richard 

Shows at Adelaide Fringe Festival previously reviewed by Squirrel Comedy.

The Adelaide Fringe is soon upon us, it’s a fabulously varied festival with a big comedy contingent that gives punters a chance to catch up with shows from last year’s festivals as well as discovering exciting brand new work, some of which will make it’s way to other capital cities throughout the year.

This year we hope to bring you some reviews in the early part of the Festival. Meanwhile here are some reviews we prepared earlier.

Eurodad – Adam Rozenbachs 
Palace Nova – Cinema 9

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=3597

Luke McGregor – My Soulmate is Out of My League
Garden of Unearthly Delights – The Spare Room

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=3389

NOB HAPPY SOCK – Simon Keck
The Producers Bar

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=3550

Radio Variety Hour
The Producers Bar

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=5089

Rom Com Con – Mace & Burton
Bakehouse Theatre – Main Stage

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=1871

Simon Taylor – Funny
Garden of Unearthly Delights – The Spare Room

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=5024

The Last Temptation of Randy
Garden of Unearthly Delights – Le Cascadeur

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=5071

Wolf Creek The Musical
The Producers Bar

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=5049

Wizard Sandwiches: The Last Lunch
Tuxedo Cat @ Raj House – Room 2

https://www.squirrelcomedy.com/?p=5004

The above shows were all very popular and are highly recommended by us, some are even award winners.

The Adelaide Fringe Festival is on from the 14th of February til the 16th of March. All  information can be found at their website

http://www.adelaidefringe.com.au/

THE ANARCHIST GUILD SOCIAL COMMITTEE RETURNS TO MELBOURNE

Sketch comedy is notoriously difficult. Even for the best sketch troops not every skit hits gold, but brilliant sketches can live forever, shared around, re-discovered by new generations and quoted by nerds at parties. It can be an intimidating art form to go into and requires hard work and a certain amount of discipline to create so much silliness.

Between 2008 and 2010 Melbourne was blessed with a group of experienced local comedians who regularly pumped out over an hour of new, entertaining live and recorded sketches with an infectious sense of fun and camaraderie. For comedy fans The Anarchist Guild Social Committee became “must see” comedy in Melbourne. Audiences gathering at the Bella Union Bar of Trades Hall on a Sunday afternoon got to feel they were part of a group of friends who mucked about together, enjoying making each other laugh. So it was pretty exciting to learn that the Guild are re-uniting for a special performance at the Bella Union this coming weekend.

The core of the old crew are back including Andrew Mcclelland, Celia Pacquola, Richard Mckenzie, Tegan Higginbotham, and Nick Caddaye along with a long list of guest appearances.  The Committee’s acerbic host Nick found time to answer some questions about working with the group and it’s upcoming reunion.

Lisa: How long did the original run of the Anarchist Guild Social Committee actually go for?

Nick: The AGSC (which is what I’m abbreviating it to from now on because long titles are exhausting) ran one year full-time and one year part-time. In the first twelve months we put on a totally new 75-odd minutes of sketch comedy every month alongside special guests and other malarkey. We travelled interstate, did charity gigs and best-of shows, and generally ran ourselves into the ground.

In the second year, we were more a special-event kind of thing. We’d only turn up to celebrate seasonal holidays and festivals. Our last show was our 2nd Anniversary show in June 2010.

Lisa: Why did you stop doing it?

Nick: Exhaustion. We genuinely lived in each other’s pockets for 18 months or so – we’d see each other every week if not two or three times. Even when a team is as awesome as ours is, that can be too much. Also, people started to get busy, and in the end Celia moved to England. So, there just wasn’t the time.

Lisa: Why have you got the Guild together again?

Nick: Everyone was (mostly) available. So, we thought we’d give it a crack just the once and see how it went.

Lisa: There is a much smaller core group for the reunion show [5 down from about 8]. Was it hard to produce the same amount of material?

Nick: It wasn’t. The thing is, if you all write two good sketches, you’ve got 10 sketches and that’s the backbone of a show. Then I go away and write piles of extra stuff to tie it all together.

Lisa: Was it terrifying/thrilling to put on a live monthly sketch show of new material in front of an audience?

Nick: Everyone in the team is pretty experienced and frequently play to big houses here and abroad, so there’s no particular fear of the audience. The scary part is doing otherwise untested material for the first (and often last time) on stage. But that’s also part of the pleasure – the opportunity to try things that you might not otherwise be able to and work with people you might not otherwise get to work with.

Lisa: There was a great sense of camaraderie on stage, yet I often wondered about the tensions behind the scene and of herding a bunch comedians into getting material together & putting on a monthly show. I’m guessing it’s about everyone having certain strengths to add and knowing each other well. Are you the main wrangler?

Nick: I’m the main creative driver but our Producer, Leah Collins, is the one who worries about logistics. And yes, the hardest thing about this project was never the ‘funny’ parts – it was the logistics. Thankfully everyone not only gets along famously but they also understand each other’s strengths and can write to them. Chemistry cannot be over-rated in this context. And that means we can get a lot done in a short amount of time because so much of the work is already done.

Lisa: Was it hard when everyone had festival shows to put on etc. Or did it help in creating ideas & material for the performer’s festival shows?

Nick: Festival time is bloody hard because everyone is being pulled in a million directions. One of the reasons that we’ve been able to do this show is because Andy isn’t doing a MICF show for the first time in 12 years or so. And then Richard and I have gigs and stuff like Late Night Letters and Numbers lined-up, but not full shows. It’s only Celia and Tegan that have to maintain the balance.

As far as influencing the individual work, I know Celia has adapted sketch ideas into stand-up bits. But generally I find creativity begets creativity, so if I’m working on one thing, the next thing is much easier to start. I’m not sure if it works like that for the others, but we always managed.

Lisa: I’ve always admired the strong female contingent of the Anarchist’s, it was especially noticeable back then, but even now it seems to be a rare thing in sketch comedy groups. (Any chance of Courteney Hocking popping in?)

Nick: Yeah
 I’m not sure why it’s a rare thing. Impro groups are full of women tearing it up, but a lot of sketch groups tend to be reasonably phallocentric. There are always exceptions of course, like Girls Uninterrupted who are a two-women sketch duo. But for every one of them, there are great lumps of men putting on silly voices and dropping their trousers.

It might have something to do with sketch comedy groups usually being groups of like-minded friends, and that the sort of person who says ‘yes, I will put on a sketch comedy show with my friends’ being the sort of person who doesn’t have many female friends? But that’s a maddeningly sweeping statement that’s both insulting and reductive.

Or perhaps it’s a matter of influence? What comedy do young sketch comics watch? Do they see women in these shows and view them equally? Or do they only see men and, as such, only consider men in this context?

My plans for the AGSC were to have three men and three women. It turned out to be three men, three women and two extra men floating about (myself as host and Ben McKenzie, who was intended as a utility player but is such a fine performer and a whizz as learning lines that he ended up with more work than I had planned).

Whilst I was friends with Courteney Hocking, I’d only met Tegan and Celia once or twice each before I asked them to be in the show. All I knew was their work – that they were bloody good. So, it was and wasn’t about gender – I was looking for women for the show, but in the end I just chose the funniest people. It was a bonus that they were women.

As far as Courteney is concerned
 I asked her to be involved in the show, but she replied that she’s been Comedy clean for eleven months and wanted to keep it that way. I can understand that.

Lisa: How else have things changed?

It’s funny how little it’s changed. Despite it being three-and-a-half years since we last did it, we’ve mostly fallen back into our old rhythms and the style and structure of the show will be classic AGSC.

Lisa: Will you be doing pre-recorded sections again?

Nick: We’ve done quite a bit of pre-recorded stuff. Our promos can all be found on Youtube (just search for The Anarchist Guild Social Committee) and there is other stuff we’re keeping for the live show. Filming stuff is hard work, but very rewarding because at the end of the day you have *something*. Live comedy is more ephemeral.

Lisa: I got the impression that the Anarchists hoped get picked up for TV ala The D-gen?

Nick: Well, it’d be bloody lovely if it was. We’ve looked into it in the past, but it’s something of an impossible dream. I’ve always thought the show would suit the TV and I suppose you never know what the future holds of course


Lisa: Do you think today’s TV might be more up for Melbourne based sketch comedy than it was say 5 years ago?

Nick: Well, there are more channels than there used to be, so there’s a need for more content. And slowly but surely things are improving – you’re seeing more Australian comedy voices on TV. But it’s always going to be cheaper to show repeats of ‘sitcom X’ than fully fund new comedy.

Lisa: Do you think there seems to be more interest in sketch generally than there was a few years ago?

Nick: There really wasn’t much around when we started, and in a live sense, there’s still nothing regular. This is because it’s hard – what the AGSC did in putting on a new show every month for a year was HARD. And that’s why no-one else is doing it.

That being said, I can think of half-a-dozen sketch groups that you’ll see listed come Festival time that are good (and more that aren’t besides
). And there’s slightly more sketch comedy on TV than there was then.

These things are often cyclical.

Lisa: Do you think with a new government it might be less acceptable now to do political stuff (If aiming at a show on TV)?

Nick: The AGSC was never especially political, because the endless churn of new material meant that jokes that worked on script submission day would be two weeks old by show day and lose their zing.

Lisa: As a regular audience member I always felt like I was part of a cool club, is that what you were going for?

Nick: Absolutely. It was always supposed to be ‘clubby’. Although I’d say it was more a big nerdy club for nerds than ‘cool’


Lisa: Has anyone turned up to the Bella Union Bar at Trades Hall expecting a meeting of actual Anarchists?

Nick: Possibly at our first show, but not in a demonstrative sense. Around the time we started there was a controversy about ASIO infiltrating some groups at Trades Hall, and I always loved the idea that the mole came to see our show just to see if we were up to something subversive and then had to write a report on it.

“There was very little discussion about bringing down the government, but one of the cast seemed to eat a lot of chicken
”

 

The Anarchist Guild Social Committee (and  guests) will re-unite this weekend – (and we’re quietly hoping it might lead to more shows.)

SUNDAY JANUARY 12th @ 5pm
Bella Union – Trades Hall (cnr. Victoria & Lygon St. Carlton)
Guests include
Lawrence Leung
Yianni
The Von Muiznieks Family Singers
WATSON
Dave Bushell,
Ben McKenzie
Kelly Fastuca

and more!

Get your tix from the Bella website 

Tim Ferguson – Carry A Big Stick : A Funny, Fearless Life of Friendship, Laughter and MS.

By Colin Flaherty

Set out like a four act play (fitting in perfectly with his current career as lecturer in narrative comedy) Tim Ferguson’s autobiography covered his life in great detail. The first act covered his family background, the constant relocations and troublesome school life which went a long way in explaining his knack for comedy and its use as a defence mechanism. The larger than life characters in his family were lovingly sketched out for us through many amusing tales so that we grew to know them rather intimately as the book progressed.

Act two is where Tim began his life as a performer with his time in the Doug Anthony All Stars making up the bulk of his tale. Both on stage and off, it was quite a wild ride and reveals some amazing anecdotes. There are stories dispelling some misconceptions about their work which may be new to hardcore fans of The Dougs and his recollections of their material could possibly paint the group’s output in a different light for many. At numerous times the signs of MS rears its head, quite obvious warnings with the benefit of hindsight, but his strong work ethic forced the show to go on.

Ferguson’s post DAAS endeavours were covered next. After the juggernaut that was The Allstars, it’s easy to forget that Tim was just as busy during this time both in front of the camera and behind. The stories about the unsuccessful TV pilots developed by Tim and his associates were just as fascinating as the tales from his more well known work at the time including “Don’t Forget Your Toothbrush”, “Funky Squad”, “Unreal TV” and “Shock Jock”.

The way he finally went public about his MS and his change of career to focus on lecturing rounded out the book. He doesn’t pretend to offer advice to fellow sufferers; in fact he described it as an inconvenience rather than an affliction; but still relayed a positive message as he developed as a person and contributed to society in many ways he couldn’t have foreseen.

Through it all he downplayed his contributions, regularly heaping praise upon those around him. This allowed him to insert some amusing self-deprecation (often with the phrase ‘I’m not smart, I just sound smart’) but his brilliant colourful way with words contradicts this naivety at times. Following his own teachings, Tim wasn’t afraid to tell some tragic tales from his life to contrast against the general levity of his writing. Plenty of witty asides, self-depreciation and amusingly worded descriptions keep the mood light. Cheekily manipulating the reader, he alluded to some juicy details that he ultimately kept to himself. This interesting portrait of a man with many stories to tell was a joy to read.

Carry A Big Stick is published by Hachette Australia.

Festive Comedy Nights!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas and that means comedy Christmas nights are popping up all around the town. They are all happening on different nights in December, so if you are seriously keen, or slightly nutty, you could attend all of the following:

The Shelf Christmas Show 

In the final episode in this season of The Shelf, Adam Richard and Justin Hamilton are joined by Ronny Chieng, Cal Wilson, Lehmo, Tegan Higginbotham, Peter Helliar, Hannah Gadsby, Rob Hunter, Luke McGregor, Kate McLennan and Wes Snelling.
It’s on at The Toff In Town (Level 2, Curtin House, 252 Swanston Street, Melbourne) on Monday December 2, starting at 7:30pm. Get in quick to book through the Toff in Town website.

 

Impro Melbourne : A Christmas Carol

Impro Melbourne will stage their final show of the year on Sunday 8 December. It’s a FREE show with fruit mince pies and eggnog. Hosts Tilly and Flora will take you on a journey into a world of ye olde Christmas tales and choir songs, all with a generous nod to the master, Charles Dickens.
A Christmas Carol is happening at The Space (5 Carlton Street, Prahran) starting at 7:30pm. Book now through the Impro Melbourne website.

 

The Wheeler Centre : The Show of the Year 

They’re not calling it a Christmas Show, as they are very secular but it has Casey Bennetto in it, so it might as well be. Other comedians include Alan Brough, Sammy J, Hannah Gadsby, Catherine Deveney, Trevor Ashley and of course, the presence no doubt, of the ever witty, delightful director Michael Williams. This event happens on Thursday December 12 at the Athenaeum Theatre (188 Collins Street in the CBD). It starts at 7:30pm and bookings can be made through the Wheeler Centre website.

 

Yarraville Laughs: Christmas Cracker 

All The Yarraville Club wants for Christmas is a night of santa-belly laughs and they must have been good boys and girls because Frank Woodley, Hung Le and Rusty Berther are greeting the season from their stage with DJ Max Crawdaddy & MC Matt Hardy.
It happens on Saturday December 14 at the Yarraville Club (135 Stephens St, Yarraville) starting at 8:30pm (7pm if you book a Dinner and show). Book now through the Yarraville Laughs websitea>.

 

Local Laughs Christmas Show

Janet A McLeod finishes up the year with a huge line-up including Harley Breen, James Dowdeswell (UK), Ryan Coffey, Tegan Higgenbotham, Lauchie Clark and Steve Hall (UK). It’s on Monday December 16 at the Local Taphouse (184 Carlisle St, St Kilda East) starting at 8:30pm.

 

The Butterfly Club : Chevrons Christmas Showcases


The new Butterfly Club stand up show, Chevrons, will be hosting a spectacular lineup of Melbourne’s budding comedians on Friday December 20. The night is split into two shows – starting downstairs at 8.30pm and then moving upstairs at 10.30pm (Please Note:
A ticket for the 8.30pm show downstairs will get you into the 10.30pm show upstairs, but a ticket for 10.30pm upstairs show will  not let you see the earlier show downstairs).
The monster lineup includes: John Conway, Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall, Beau Stegman, Natalie Harris, Jonathon Schuster, David Cronin, Sophie Miller, Liam Ryan, Luka Muller, Frederich Jones, Damian Lawler, Murphy McLachlan, Mark Trenwith, Laura Davis, Stuart Daulman, Rose Callaghan, Greg Larsen, Adam Knox, Lisa-Skye, Kevin Lim, Firdi Billimordia, James Masters, Taco and Jason Chatfield.
Tickets can be booked through The Butterfly Club website. The Butterfly Club is located at Carson Place off Little Collins Street in the CBD.

 

The Bella Union Christmas Shows 

The Spendid Chaps Christmas Special happens on Sunday December 15. Ben McKenzie, John Richards and Petra Elliot as they look at all the Time Lord goodness that didn’t make it into the rest of the year, including not-quite-Doctors Peter Cushing and Richard E Grant, and spin-off K9 & Company. There’ll be special guests, songs from house band The Time Lads and a cardboard Dalek too. This show will also be raising funds for Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) and Medecins San Frontieres (MSF).
Book now through the Bella Union Website

The regular Film Trivia night Alan Smithee’s Screen Test hosts it’s Christmas edition on Tuesday December 17. Special guests Claire Hooper and Tom Ward join the regulars Harley Hefford, Sarah Jane Haywood, and Max Attwood. Bookings can be made through the Bella Union Website.

Then there is the very Special A Swinging’ Bella Christmas on Saturday December 21. Casey Bennetto and the Bella All-Star Band (Ben Hendry, Vincenzo Ruberto, Enio Pozzebon, Ross McFerran, Matt Bird and Mal Webb)! Casey and the band will be joined by guests Eddie Perfect, Virginia Gay, Steven Gates, Simon Hall and Scott Edgar, all ready to share the spirit of the season and celebrate the end of the year.
Book now through the Bella Union Website

A Very Plum Christmas sees Nick Maxwell & Declan Fay recording the yuletide episode of their podcast The Sweetest Plum on Sunday December 22 at 4:30pm.
Book through the Bella Union Website

 

Spleen Christmas Show 

Spleen is having a Christmas show, as they do every year. There will be a mystery lineup full of the absolute best of who’s been on during the year, including a special appearance from Australia’s most infamous comedian, Gary Chook. All comics that have performed during the year are invited down.
At the end of the night, the Spleen Comic of the Year trophy will be awarded – going out to the comic who’s not only performed greatly at Spleen, but who carries the spirit of Spleen too.
It’s on Monday December 23, starting at 8:30pm. Spleen is located at 41 Bourke St in the CBD.

Interview with Tony Martin.

By Lisa Clark

Tony Martin is a legend in Australian comedy with a huge loyal fanbase of punters and comedians alike. There are not many performers with fan websites lovingly devoted to previous work such as The Late Show (www.champagnecomedy.com), Martin/Molloy (www.martin-molloy.org) or Get This (http://www.rampantstupidity.net/) to name a few, years after the programs stopped airing. Tony is the dream guest for most podcasters and the dream interviewee for this Squirrel. He was kind enough to find one and a half hours for an interview during this year’s Melbourne Fringe Festival.

If this were an old media article, the interview would be, no doubt, significantly edited, but as space isn’t an issue here I’ve only edited it for grammar and the occasional potentially libelous content. He made me laugh throughout and mimicked most of the voices that he quotes.

Tony has been very busy recently working on Upper Middle Bogan on the ABC and is looking forward to the release in the UK of Ross Noble’s new series Freewheeling for which he was a Creative Producer. When I interviewed him Tony was in the middle of the Melbourne Fringe Festival run of The Yeti (in which he performs a whole chapter from his autobiographical book Lollyscramble) his first Solo Festival show in thirteen years, at the adorably kitschy Butterfly Club. His last solo festival show was A Quiet Word with Tony Martin in 2000. Though he did read out some stories from Lollyscramble in Tony Martin Reads Stuff Out at The Bella Union Bar in 2011 and has popped up in literary festivals and comedy rooms occasionally, such as his regular appearances at The Shelf over the last couple of years which always sets off waves of excitement around Melbourne. He gives some insight here of what may have shied him away from comedy festivals and sounds positive if a little nervous about his return.

Tony also gives us a lot of fabulous information about early live performances by him and comedy friends in Melbourne, for those out there keen to update Wikipedia or fan pages. He kindly offers up an idea for a government grant, documentary or possible PHD study, and confides in us his secret to a long career in comedy.
He also reveals that Ross Noble is actually a Superhero.

 

Lisa: How has the run of The Yeti been?

Tony: It’s been good, what I’ve learnt is, it’s the sort of show I should’ve done earlier in the evening. I’ve done eight O’Clock shows and nine O’Clock shows & it goes considerably better at eight O’Clock and I’ve realised that in the nine O’Clock shows people have had a lot more to drink and I think they are expecting it to just be normal standup. I have noticed in the later shows that there are a lot of drinks on the stage and as I’m essentially performing a play I can’t really refer to too many things. The first two were at eight O’Clock and they went really well. The next three went OK but they were really only laughing at the big jokes. Then I went back to eight O’Clock last night and it was the best it’s ever gone. So I thought ‘Note to Self: only do things like this early’.

 

Lisa: What is it like saying the same thing over and over? At least stand up can be tweaked but The Yeti is a form of verbatim theatre.

Tony: I’ve snuck in two extra jokes, but apart from that, it is actually word for word.

Well the reason I did it really is because I had so many people asking me to do the story, whenever I do book festivals and things. You can’t really read it out, because it’s got all those character voices, so it demands to be acted. One idea was to turn it into stand up. Although I remember, years before I wrote Lollyscramble, I did actually do a version of The Yeti in standup and it absolutely died in the arse. I realised later that in order to get the story down a standup length of about three minutes I had to sort of accelerate it and smooth it out and I don’t think anyone believed it. People were looking at me like ‘No way that happened.’ Whereas, when you’ve got fifty minutes you can leave in all the messy real life stuff. I was thinking of actually converting it to standup but so many of the laughs are in the narration, in the way the narration is so sort of flowerily worded as opposed to the rather blunt things the characters are saying
 you just learn. Franklin Ajay was in the audience last night and he was saying to me afterwards (Tony doing an impression of Franklin) “You could turn that into a kind of a sitcom like Fawlty Towers, you know all those characters living in that house” And I’m thinking, Yeah, but what he hadn’t noticed is that so many of the laughs actually come from the reaction of the narrator to the things that are said. If you stripped away the narration it’d be quite ordinary actually. So in the end I thought yeah; I’ll just perform it exactly the way it’s written and because so much work had gone into editing that story for the book, I remember thinking, well, the work’s been done.  I could spend two months trying to turn it into a more standuppy show but  at the end of that there’d be as much work as went into the actual writing of that story or the whittling down really of that material. They’re very hard stories to


When you write you basically take everything you can remember and then you just throw it on the floor and go “Right, is there a story in all of this or is just a bunch of anecdotes? What is the difference between an anecdote and a story?” And of course because it is something that was said twenty years ago, your memory only remembers odd things. It’s funny but when you ask someone to describe ‘OK you lived in a house twenty years ago, what do you remember of that year?’ you won’t remember everything in order, you’ll remember really odd, particular things, you will have forgotten months of mundane activity. So it’s a very odd series of building blocks to try to construct a story from, as opposed to if you were writing a fictional story about some people living in a house. You’d go ‘Well I need a bit so I can get from there to there, I need a proper ending. Whereas those biographical stories are ones where you’ve got to make a story from the only available parts which are the bits you can remember.

 

Lisa: There is so much information in your stories, we get some evidence of your hoarding of keepsakes at the end of The Yeti, but do you keep a diary at all?

Tony: I don’t now, it’s a pain in the arse. I just did this big tour around England with Ross Noble and we’re working 12 – 16 hour days and the last thing you want to do at the end of the day is write a diary, but because I was in England, I actually made myself write a diary every night, sometimes for two and a half hours

Lisa: Wow

Tony: So I’ve only started doing that lately, but I don’t really keep a diary but I’ve always kept notes of things people say, because what I’ve discovered is that someone says something funny in a conversation, even if it’s hilarious, when you come to tell someone three days later, you’ve usually changed the wording, you’ve usually forgotten the wording or you’ve often tidied it up and it’s not as funny. So when I hear someone say something funny I try and write it down exactly the way they said it. Like in that story from The Yeti when Gunter say’s ‘SO BLARDY FLARSH DEM TURTS!’ he doesn’t say ‘So flush them bloody turds’ the way you would say it, he says ‘So Blardy Flarsh dem Turts!’ The bloody is in the wrong place in the sentence and but it’s more like something someone would say. So I do try with phrases and things, I’ve always kept quite detailed notes. It’s not so much keeping notes, it’s just that when something funny happens
.like all the stories in those books involving my family when I was growing up, they’re stories that’ve been going round for years in our family. We’ve all told those stories. Like when Skippy came to our town and fireworks night. They are quite well known in my circle.

 

Lisa: I loved your show at The Shelf, Do you think you could turn your slide night into a show?

Tony: Laughs ‘I’ve had a few people say that to me and I’ve never considered it. It’s been so long since I did a standup show and I do want to do another one at some point that it sort of feels like cheating to have pictures. It feels lazy almost. But I notice that a lot of standups now have Dave Gorman style PowerPoint presentations. That was fun because a lot of the jokes had already been written on Twitter. In fact I think pretty much all of those photos I’d already shown on my twitter. So I had a lot of material already and I remember driving in thinking “Gee, if everyone there follows me on Twitter
but it seems like no one there did”

Lisa: Well we were laughing! Because it was funny anyway and it was a bit different and more detailed

Tony: I think you could make a show out of it, I liked the way that Adam Richard was just moving onto the next one real quick and you could have one picture and one joke and then go straight on to the next one. I thought, that’s interesting, I’d love to do a show like that where you flip through a lot of pictures really quickly. I dunno, Hammo’s (Justin Hamilton) keen for me to a bit more of that. I try and do something every time he does a series and I try to make most of them. It’s often not planned he just says (starts to do Justin’s voice) ‘Why don’t you come down?’ and it depends if I’m working or not, or if I’ve got something to do. I like the way he tries never to repeat anything on those nights. So I don’t think I’ve ever done the same thing twice, I’ve done standup spots, I’ve read out articles of mine. I did one where I read out a lot of phoney, angry letters to the editor I’d written and I’ve done a slide show. So I try and do something different every time. What I really wanted to do and Damnit, Paul F Tompkins beat me to it. I wanted to spend a lot of money and have a costume made of that bloke in Boardwalk Empire with half his face missing. Richard Harrow (played by Jack Huston) lost half his face in WW1, so he wears a tin mask over half his face and it’s a really fun voice to do. It would cost a fortune but I was thinking of having a full Richard Harrow costume made for just a one off appearance at The Shelf and then Damnit Tompkins beat me to it. He started doing it on the Comedy Bang! Bang! podcast and then he’s done a thing for Funny or Die where he’s wearing the full gear. So, can’t really do that now. Damn you Tompkins!

 

Lisa: I wanted to ask you about you’re early live Standup experience because there is nothing much online, it’s really hard to find out about old live comedy performances. There are no old records kept.

Tony: I remember the first I ever heard about the Internet was on the front cover of Time magazine in 1994 and then I think I got the Internet in 1996. Already there was comedy nerd stuff on there, but there’s a real gap. You get comedians now who’ve done five gigs and already all of them are on You Tube. Whereas there’s this incredible gap of Melbourne comedy that’s not been preserved. I’ve been trying for years for somebody to do something with all the Espy Comedy videos. I started doing comedy there, (at The Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda) it rather notoriously ran for one month shy of ten years when Trev Hoare, the man that ran it was ousted in a rather ugly coup. There should be a documentary about it. Peter Grace, who produced Martin/Molloy, used to be the kind of tech at the Espy and he had a camera set up. I don’t think it was recording the proper sound, like through the microphone or anything. Trev Hoare used to sit in his office and behind him was a huge wall of VHS tapes. It was just thousands and thousands of hours. They ran a camera across everything for years. I think someone told me they didn’t get the first two or three years but Gracie told me it was something like two thousand video tapes and it would require a huge effort for someone to transfer them and go through them all. It’s like a government grant should be given for someone to try and corral all that material. There could well be a great documentary in it and I know there are quite a lot of legendary Anthony Morgan and Greg Fleet things there; it’s just too big a job. I see Trev Hoare every five years I go “What’s happened to all those tapes?” and he goes (Does the voice) “Aw I’ve still got the tapes Tone” but that would fill in a gap if someone could get into all that material.

I started out doing standup at The Gershwin Room (in the Esplanade Hotel) when they did this brilliant thing called The Delivery Room. It started as weekly and only ran for five months. No-one can actually pin down the date, but I know I was on at the third one. I’ve got it written down somewhere, it was early December 1990. It must’ve started around November 1990 and it went through to Comedy Festival 1991, when they did a great show called Gift from the Gobs. Which there’s actually an album of. That was the famous Delivery Room, with The Rope, where they had the rope hanging from the ceiling and you couldn’t do old material, you’d have to go over and hold the rope. People would yell out ‘Rope’ if they recognised an old joke.

Lisa: I remember that and I saw a show in Edinburgh a few years ago that did that too.

Tony: Yeah, because that’s become quite famous and often overseas comedians that would come on Get This would say ‘I’ve heard about the rope thing you used to do here’. So I think the rope thing they did in Edinburgh is probably copied from the Espy Comedy one.

What was great about those five months is I just remember so much material was generated. It was a new three and a half hour show every week. People weren’t just writing standup, they were writing sketches and there was a dance troupe that did this terrible choreography and Anthony Morgan wrote this brilliant news report every week. Pretty much The Melbourne comedy scene, which was of course much, much smaller in the 90s was fuelled for about four years by the material that was created in those five months. Then, after that Espy Comedy continued through the 90s but they didn’t have the Rope policy after that.

Lisa: There is nothing on Wikipedia about all of this.

Tony: Wikipedia is great in general but once a year I’ll go have a look at my page and it’s riddled with inaccuracies. Not that I care, ‘cause I know that if someone fixes it, a week later my name will be Penis again.

Lisa: So did you do any Festival shows as such?

Tony: Gosh
 I’ve done four Comedy Festival shows but I’ve only done one on my own. The first one I did was with the D-Generation in 1991. We did a show at Le Joke called Midnight Shenanigans. That was quite a famous show at the time. Have you ever been to Le Joke?

Lisa: Yes, but I didn’t see that, I actually saw The D-gen’s very first show downstairs at The Last Laugh in 1984

Tony: Would that have been “Let’s Talk Backwards”?

Lisa: Yes, I think so!

Tony: Yes that’s the one that most of them came from, then Magda and others were in the next years one called Too Cool for Sandals. We did a show, that was with everyone from The Late Show series one, so not Judith, and then John Harrison, who was in Let’s Talk Backwards, we dragged him away from his proper job and we did a show at Le Joke. Le Joke was upstairs at the Last Laugh. I think it held about 120 people but it was really small. It was the most expensive show, I think we were paid about $500 a week to do the show and we spent thousands on really elaborate props and we had a cart system in the days before laptops and we had TV monitors and we had Santo the Magnificent. His disappearing cabinet had to be dragged up the back steps. People would come along and couldn’t believe how elaborate it was in this tiny room. So that was the first Comedy Festival show I did. Then I did one the following year in ’92, I did one with Mick Molloy, Greg Fleet and Matt Quattermaine, called The Show with No Name at Le Joke. I can’t remember a lot about that but it opened with a musical version of Cape Fear and it closed with us singing the Daniel Boon theme song but we changed the words to Jesus Christ. So it was ‘Jesus Christ was a man’. There was occasionally boos for that.

Then we did The Late Show and in 1994 I did a Comedy Festival show at the National Theatre, ‘cause that was when we were quite huge. Me and Mick & Judith Lucy did a show called Martin, Molloy & Lucy in fact. I didn’t do standup when we did Martin/Molloy and then I went all the way back.

What happens with me is that I don’t do standup for a few of years and then it’s like going back to being a tryout all over again, so I went to Edinburgh with Judith. I probably would never have done standup again after Martin/Molloy ‘cause, four years is a long time in Standup. While I was doing Martin/Molloy all these new people like Dave Hughes had come along and suddenly there was massive amounts of comics around so I was a bit intimidated. Then Judith Lucy did this great thing, she was going to Edinburgh to do her show called ‘The Show’ and I think she had a one and a half hour slot but the show was only seventy minutes, so she said to me ‘Why don’t you do twenty minutes at the top, I won’t put you on the poster’. It was quite rare for someone to have a support act in their festival show in Edinburgh. So I got to go up and do twenty minutes every night supporting her and it wasn’t advertised and no-one knew who I was which was great, it meant that the material was judged on the material and I started to build up a completely new act.

Then I did a show called A Quiet Word with Tony Martin which is nothing to do with the TV show that I did. That was in the year 2000 and that was the first solo Comedy Festival show that I did and that was actually nominated for The Barry Award. I remember Fleety (Greg Fleet) and Alan Brough were nominated as well that year for something called Interrogation but The Boosh won as well they should. But I haven’t done a show since then really which was fourteen years ago.

I did standup for about four or five years in the early nineties and then didn’t do it again ‘til what I just described. I remember there was quite an ugly
It was quite interesting when I did that Quiet Word show because there was a notorious rock journalist from Britain, I think he wrote a book about Nirvana. He  reviewed comedy festival shows for The Age that year and he wrote a really nasty review claiming my show was racist. I had to actually phone him up and ask him ‘What was the racist bit?’ and it was a fraction of a quote, an innocuous bit where I quoted word for word a conversation I’d had with this Scotsman (and in fact I’m technically Scottish, because my family are from Scotland) but it got into the papers that I was doing this racist show, although it didn’t explain what.

I always remember going to see my blood specialist who was Egyptian and he was coming into the room with my file to basically tell me if I was going to die or not, so you’re waiting for that information, and without looking up from his clipboard he just goes  ‘My ahhh, my receptionist tells me you’re doing a racist show’. 

He’s doing the Egyptian accent and we laugh despite ourselves.

So it was quite ugly, because the reviewer was writing for both The Age and Inpress, so I had The Age and the Inpress calling me racist and yet at the same time I was also nominated for The Barry Award, so it was an odd experience and I didn’t do standup for a few years after that.

I’ve mentioned Trev Hoare before, cause I’m such a fan of his, but he started up a room in Milano’s Tavern Sandringham do you remember that?

Lisa: No!

Tony: Every now and then he’ll just start a comedy room in a bizarre place. He was the one who did comedy at Young & Jacksons a few years ago on Monday nights.

Lisa: I remember that, I went to that

Tony: I used to go there and do spots. What was great about Milanos was that it was just out of town enough that there were never any comics in the audience. There would often be only twenty five people in the audience but it was a really good place to try out new material and if it went badly no-one would ever hear about it. So I think I went there every night for months and that was again like going all the way back to the beginning and starting all over again.

Lisa: I’ve heard this from another comedian; do you find it a bit intimidating sometimes having the comedians in the room, like they used to be up the back at The Prince Pat?

Tony: Well, it depends how many there are. Up the back of The Prince Pat was fine, because then you’d have, maybe 200 punters as well, but I remember (I’m not going to name any rooms) but I remember there was a couple of rooms that I used to go to in the early noughties where there would be forty people in the room and twenty of them would be comedians. Of course there’s no tougher audience than comedians for comedy. So I’d go ‘I don’t want to go try out new stuff with twenty comedians there’.

 

Lisa: I heard that you put up Internet Movie Data Base pages for obscure Aussie TV comedies that didn’t have their own page?

Tony: Well mainly New Zealand movies. I think Karl Chandler, seems obsessed with this, but in fact most of my IMBD work has been New Zealand movies. When the Internet started the IMDB only had two New Zealand movies in it and I had a project in the nineties when I first got the Internet to try and get every single New Zealand movie on it, which is something like four hundred and fifty, so it took me three and a half years and I did it.

Lisa:Well done.

Tony: So when I finished I started adding obscure Australian comedy shows like Brass Monkey and things like that.

Lisa: It’s obvious that you love movies but I suspect you have a particular, possibly goulish love for really bad/trashy films. Is that true, or do you just love movies in general?

Tony: Yeah, well, I like good and bad movies. I remember that when I was in Edinburgh, I was watching so much comedy and so much great comedy that eventually you go ‘Let’s go and see some BAD comedy’.

 

Lisa: I was impressed that you spent your money from Martin/Molloy to make your own films.

Tony: It was always something we used to talk about. It was something we used to do on the breakfast show. It all came about because we did these pilots for The Late Show in 1990 and we went out to the car park with home video equipment, which no-one ever did, and shot sketches. We shot test sketches, we thought, we’ll film it on home video and if they’re any good and the show gets up we’ll re-film them again properly. But there was just some kind of quality to these crappily low budget, shot on home video in a car park sketches, they looked like shit, but they had this life to them! What we found is that, when we were doing sketches on the D-Generation they would spend so long lighting them and they would do eight or nine takes and they’d use take nine because that was the one where the camera moves were perfect but it was probably the one where the actors were exhausted and not funny. Whereas when we shot the stuff on home video we went aw well let’s just use the takes where it’s funny. Who cares if it looks like shit.

That was such a lesson to us, so when we did The Late Show on TV we spent literally hundreds of thousands of dollars of our own money shooting our own sketches and films and post producing them ourselves. That’s how Frontline came about, that’s how they ended up being able to direct Frontline themselves on really small cameras.

Lisa: Some of those Late Show sketches still stand up today on line

Tony: So I thought well that’s a really good lesson, investing in yourself. You know, we were young, we didn’t have any children. Occasionally I’ll go, maybe I should’ve hung onto some of that money. With the film Bad Eggs, if I hadn’t invested my own money I don’t think I would’ve been allowed to direct that myself. I didn’t have any directing credits up to that point, apart from doing sketches on The Late Show and the Mick Molloy Show. Yeah, I put three hundred grand into that film and it sort of opened doors. I think the head of Village Roadshow said ‘Woah we’ve never had someone offering to put their own money into their film’. It’s a clichĂ© but it’s one you hear all the time, “The first rule of the film industry is never put your own money in because you’ll never see it again”. Although Bad Eggs has actually slowly but surely finally recouped all its money. Of that three hundred grand I think I’ve made about fifty grand of it back and I wasn’t expecting to see any of it, so that’s been a bonus.

Lisa: Well I liked it

Tony: It’s not for everybody, that film, but it does have a following. It was very popular in Germany, like David Hasselhoff’s music. It got rave reviews in Germany where it was known as Mit vollem Einsatz! which means ‘With Extreme Force’. [though literally translates as With Full Use]

 

Lisa: I read how hard you worked on Martin Molloy – basically from the moment you woke til going to bed, was it the same with Get This?

Tony: It was and possibly Get This even more so. Well we don’t have writers or anything. With Get This because I was paying everyone, (my company was making that show), I felt I wasn’t paying Richard and Ed enough to demand that they give their entire lives over to the show. So I was the one writing the sketches for that show
oh no no, that’s not fair! Because Richard and Ed would often write their own sketches, but not everyday. Martin/Molloy was very scripted, although now, ‘cause we’ve said that so much in interviews, I think people think that everything was scripted. Obviously when we were talking to callers or interviewing people that wasn’t scripted, and some of the mucking around in the second hour obviously wasn’t scripted. That whole first hour where we would do those long rants and things; that was all written.

For Martin/Molloy we’d get in at 10am and work all day ‘til 4 and then the show would go from 4 – 6pm then I’d go home and write ‘til, midnight and you’d be up first thing reading the papers. You’d have to read all the papers, there wasn’t the online aggregate, where the whittling was done for you. It was just a huge amount of work and the production was
 now you can build an elaborate sketch quite quickly on a computer, but computers where much more primitive in the 1990s. So Vicki Marr who was the Matt Dower of Martin/Molloy would spend hours on it, I remember being there ‘til midnight some times. Mick putting down a sketch that probably only went for two minutes fifteen and was probably only ever played twice. That was all kind of part of what we were trying to do.

We weren’t interested in being ‘radio personalities’, that’s not why we were doing the show. We just wanted to do a comedy show. We wanted to do a radio show that was like a TV show where you wouldn’t want to miss any of it. As opposed to a radio show that goes for three hours but you know ‘I hear about twenty minutes of it’. We’re going No No, we want people to listen to the whole thing like they would watch a TV show. So that was our rather pompous sort of declaration. The standard we set for ourselves.

Some of it sounded a bit stilted because we were sitting there reading off spirax books, but because there was nothing else like it, the novelty got us through a lot of the time. Whereas by the time we got round to Get This that style, that read out style had become a bit out of fashion, so I would write things, but I would try to do them from memory or use point form lists so that it wouldn’t sound as stilted. There was still just as much, or even more work that went into Get This as Martin/Molloy.

 

Lisa: Do you think you’re a bit of a workaholic?

Tony: Oh, not really. I think of myself as quite lazy. I’ll try and get out of work whenever I can. It’s just fear, with radio it’s just this beast that eats up every idea that you’ve ever had. So you put in a really big day’s work then you go home and you’re back to zero and you go, right what’ve we got for tomorrow? You want it to be good, sooo
. but it’s not through any desire to be a workaholic. It’s just that, this is how much work you have to do to make a show like that any good.

Lisa: Not everybody would say that.

Tony: Well I’m not saying it’s the only way to do a radio show. I mean someone like Marty Sheargold, (now I’m sure Marty does a lot of preparation) he’s got the genius of sounding like it’s all coming off the top of his head. A show that’s had a lot of work put into it can often sound like that and it’s hard to listen to, whereas radio, especially FM radio is at its best when it’s relaxed casual and you just go ‘Well here’s something I found in the paper’. The problem is that the radio year is a long year and by August most people are fucked. So if you can think of a way to do a show where you don’t have to kill yourself every day, well Done!

 

Lisa: Do you think you might do another stint on radio one day, maybe even the ABC?

Tony: I don’t know if I really fit in on The ABC. They have a bizarre rule where they only have one host and so they have a man or woman in a room talking to themselves. Whereas the kind of radio I’ve always done is talking to an actual person.

 

How has working on 3RRR been?

It’s great! Obviously you’re not being paid, it’s volunteer radio, but I remember after the sort of quite unpleasant last few months of Get This, I remember going and doing shifts with Tony Wilson and talking quite uninhibitedly for long amounts of time about obscure things. He’d go to a song and the door would burst open and Mick James the station manager would come in and I’d think ‘aww
 we’re going to cop it!’ and he’d go ‘GREAT! Do more of THAT!’ So that was great, but you can’t make a living, although that’s not fair, I think the Breakfasters get paid a very small amount of money to do that show but really it’s all volunteer radio and I love doing it but I can’t do it full time.

Lisa: Is there any chance you might do some more episodes of ‘A Quite Word With’ on the ABC? Are there more people you’d like to interview?

Tony: We did pitch a third series, there were budget cuts at the ABC and they didn’t want to do another series of that. There were hundreds of people I would’ve liked to talk to but we did two series of it and for the second series I got to go to England which was quite exciting, though we were only there for four days. We got Rob Brydon and Richard E Grant and a few people who we wouldn’t have got if we’d just waited here for people to come. You don’t get as many people coming out here anymore, unless there’s a festival on and obviously you’ll get some comedians. It was a very cheap show really, it was mostly just shot in a bar. I’d love to do some more. I’ve often thought of bringing it back just as a podcast, but finding the time


Lisa: I don’t know if you can make much money out of podcasts either

Tony: There are so many podcasts and people are always saying ‘Why don’t you have a podcast’ but it would be like a radio show. It would take up so much of my time. I have to say, we already have some good ones, I mean Justin Hamilton does a great one [three in fact, but I think Tony is referring to Can You Take This Photo Please?] and The Little Dum Dum Club and I love Green Guide Letters. We have some really good comedy podcasts in this town. I’m not sure if we need another one. I ran this website called The Scriveners Fancy for just over two years and that started out as a hobby while I was out of work. It was only one day a week but by the end of it, it was three days, sometimes four days a week work because I was having to be like an editor of a newspaper and try and call up people and beg them to write me something for free. That was great when I had time to do it, but eventually I just couldn’t keep going because I had to go and do some actual work. I do quite like the idea of doing a podcast at some point but trying not to just do
 It’s like every single comedian in the world has a podcast where they interview every single other comedian in the world. It’s what I feel like the world’s podcasting is and I think, do I really need to add to that? I don’t know, if I think I can think of a slightly different way of doing it, may be.

 

Lisa: So what about this show you are doing with Ross Noble in the UK Called Freewheeling? (starting on Oct 29th on Dave). How did it come about?

Tony: I just got an email from him. I’ve known Ross for quite a while, well, I’ve been a fan of his since 1999 when I saw him in Edinburgh and he was the talk of Edinburgh in that year. I don’t think he was even nominated for the Perrier, but he was all everyone was talking about everywhere you went ‘Have you seen this amazing guy’. Then he started coming on Get This and he was a huge fan of Get This

Lisa: He was brilliant on it.

Tony: When you watch that show he made in Australia in 2007, though it didn’t get shown ‘til a few years later, Ross Noble’s Australian Trip. He said whenever you see him riding his motorbike through the outback, he’s listening to Get This on his headphones. So he was quite the fan. He was almost like a fourth cast member, in a way, sometimes. Then he did A Quiet Word with me, then I had a really good reaction from a podcast I did with him on the ABC’s website. Then earlier this year I got an email from him out of nowhere (in Ross’s voice) ‘Do you want to come and spend Summer chasing me ‘round England?’ It sounded great. I was picturing Brideshead Revisited. Then a week before I went over I’m calling up the production office and they’re telling me that it’s the coldest recorded Summer since records began in 1813. It was pretty full on, it was a great thing to do but it was really strange because there were no other Australians there. It was just me and all these English crew members chasing Ross around the country for a few months in a van. In three vans in fact. He was on a motorbike and there were fourteen of us in three vans. My official role was called Creative Producer and I had to think up
 well it was whittling down the tweets more than anything. Ross would tweet ‘What should I do here?’ and there would literally be about 200 tweets in thirty seconds. So I would go through them and say ‘What if we did this?’ and ‘You could go there’ and ‘We could do something like that.’

Ross and I wrote a huge amount of material, because one of the original ideas for the show was that in addition to us following him around England, the format of the show would be like a send up of travel shows, because there are so many of them. So we wrote all these sketches and phony history reports and these scenes where the narrator version of Ross was arguing with the real Ross. So we wrote a huge amount of material but in the end we didn’t use any of it because the stuff with him just following the tweets was so great and there was so much of it. It’s only a six hour series and we probably shot enough material for three times that. So in the end all the written stuff has been stockpiled and Ross is talking about doing another series, where we just use the written stuff. So I’m possibly going back to do another show which will be quite different.

Lisa: That’s cool.

Tony: He’s brilliant to work with. I spent all day and night with him, ‘cause he doesn’t sleep, there’s no off switch. I would see him every day and you get to see how he operates up close. He’s not cheating, he is literally making it up as he goes along!

Lisa: Wow, so after all that time together you kept enjoying working with him and want to work with him again?

Tony: Oh yeah, he’s like a kind of a superhero really, what he can actually do. We would have had two hours sleep and we’d be in some dreary, depressing carpark in Manchester. It’s pissing with rain and no-one’s turned up and there’s just a sign in the corner and Noble would go over and somehow turn that sign into five minutes of comedy gold. Every time I thought ‘we are just going to get nothing out of this’, he would just pull it out of his mind. We were in a Services, they call it a Services, it was like a 7/11 / service station and it’s freezing cold and we didn’t have anything to do and there was a sign up for some charity that Terry Wogan does to help children in need and the logo is a teddy bear with an eye missing and he’s got a bandage over one eye and I remember Ross doing a three minute monologue about that picture. He was saying (does Ross’s voice) “You’d think after twenty years Terry Wogan would’ve done something about that poor little bear’s eye”. The crew was just crying with laughter. So that was just potentially three minutes of a forty-five minute episode, just belted off there.

We used to call it ‘Golden Minutes’. When we started, the production company was quite nervous wondering ‘What if you don’t get any Tweets? Or what if you get there and we can’t think of anything funny? We’ve got to do an episode a week and how are you going to fill the time?’ And of course Noble would just go up to a sign and rant on and we’d all look at each other and someone would say ‘Golden Minutes!’ The aim was we had to get something like nine minutes of finished show a day. On the first day we were worried about how much usable footage we had, because there was a lot of driving, we’d be driving to Cardiff for four hours and so there’s four hours we’re not filming. Then on the second day we got something like fifty-eight minutes of usable footage in one day. So yeah, his golden minutes.

I don’t know what the end result will be, I haven’t seen the final shows and I don’t know
 I assume there’ll be a DVD and I assume they’ll have time to edit some of that extra stuff for the DVD, ‘cause Ross always does really chockers DVDs.

Lisa: Like yourself

Tony: Yeah, but he’s got one out called Headspace Cowboy, it’s got six separate shows on it! Some people haven’t done six DVDs ever! He’s done six shows on one DVD, so I’m hoping there will be a good DVD of this series.

 

Lisa: Do you think it’ll come to Australia at all?

Tony: You’d think so, he’s really popular here, people almost think of him as Australian.

Lisa: He lived here

Tony: Yeah, he lived here until the bushfires.

Lisa: Yeah that was awful

Tony: I know. Ross Noble’s Australian Trip was on TEN, although that’s got nothing to do with this, I don’t know if that means they’ll show it. It was shown kind of rather late at night if I remember. The thing about that show, by the way, is that it was never going to be a TV show.

Lisa: Oh

Tony: It wasn’t actually a series when they were making it. Ross was just on a Tour and Pete Callow, his brilliant director who goes everywhere with Ross, said ‘Why don’t we just film some stuff to put on the DVD?’ They were only filming for about twenty minutes a day, Ross told me, on that Australian trip, because he had shows to do and to get to. Then they got to the end and said, maybe we’ve got enough here for a TV series. I love that show, but it was not intended to be a show when they made it. The main difference between that one and Freewheeling is that about a quarter of Ross Noble’s Australian Trip was footage from his live shows, whereas there’s none of that in Freewheeling, because we weren’t on a tour. That was probably the main reason I was brought over, because I think Ross thought well hang on, I’ve got to do this and I’m not going to be able to cut to me doing jokes on stage, so what are we going to have instead? So we were going to write all these sketches which we did but in the end there wasn’t a great deal of need for them.

 

Lisa: About The Yeti, do you think you’ll tour it?

Tony: Well you can do a fifty minute show during a Festival but outside of a Festival it’s a bit of a rip-off. Do know what I mean? If you are on tour you really should do ninety minutes.

Lisa: Yeah I interviewed Alan Davies recently and he said you need a good ninety minutes

Tony: Yeah well, if you’re playing big theatres like he does, well, maybe two hours or something. But I wouldn’t do this in big theatres, I couldn’t fill big theatres but also it’s not really a show that


Lisa: It’s an intimate show

Tony: Yeah, it’s a small show, and up until opening night I had no idea if this would even work at all, so I’m doing extra shows at the Lithuanian club which holds 220 people and I’m actually a bit skeptical as to whether it will work in a room that size but it’ll be a good experiment and if it works [according to those who were there it did work]  maybe I’ll do the same thing with a second story and maybe I’ll tour that. That’s one idea. I also want to get back to just doing standup, and get back on the road doing that.

But because I’ve been working on Upper Middle Bogan


Lisa: Which is great!

Tony: We’re waiting to see if we’ll get a second series of that, so I’m in this weird limbo where I’m waiting to hear if I’m doing another show with Ross and I’m waiting to hear whether there’s going to be any more Bogan so I can’t really make any plans at this point.

It’s good to be working, that’s what I say.

Lisa: That’s what Squirrel Comedy is all about, we love to see comedians in work, it’s good.

Tony: Well the secret is
I turn fifty next year and to keep working at this age, the key is
 the only bit of advice I ever give young comedians is
. just learn to do as many different things as you can, because when one thing ends I’ve always got another different thing I can do.

 You can buy Tony Martin’s books at his minimalist website

http://tonymartinthings.com/

Here’s the Freewheeling trailer from the comedy channel called ‘Dave’ in the UK. Freewheeling premiers in the UK on Tuesday 29th October  at 10pm

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjoON9Ds8rs&feature=youtu.be

Pic thanks to smh.com.au