‘Luckily, I wasn’t decapitated’: 17 comedians’ stories from 40 years of Melbourne international comedy festival
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Lano and Woodley
First MICF: 1988
Colin Lane: Frank and I did our first MICF as The Found Objects [with Scott Casley]. Our show was at The Last Laugh in Collingwood. We thought it would be hilarious if we pulled out all this camping equipment from our backpacks, including a little bar heater which we plugged in on stage. We then did this routine where we put bathing caps and goggles on and spit water into each other’s faces. Hilarious!
Then a guy in the front row put his hand up. We went, “Alright mate, stop interrupting.” And he goes, “I just thought that you should know that a towel was thrown onto the bar heater, and now it’s on fire.” We were a bit pissed off he was interrupting us, but our backdrop was painted in acrylics - that whole place would have gone up very, very quickly.
Frank Woodley: I still have nightmares about that fire occasionally, but it all ended okay. You could smoke in venues back then and I remember reaching down and picking up a packet of cigarettes off a table in the front row. I was acting like I was going to smoke a cigarette to deal with my shock from the fire. And then I just ate the cigarette? I can still feel the tobacco burning in my throat. It’s making me feel sick just thinking about it. Luckily, those kinds of unhinged improvisations are a thing of the past. I’ve got a semblance of impulse control now.
Then, I thought it’d be funny to step out onto one of tables and I got hit in the head by the ceiling fan. It was very funny for the audience. Luckily, I didn’t get decapitated – though that would have made a much better story.
That was only the second MICF ever; there were about six shows at the festival back then. I was only 19 – I’m 58 now! It’s just great to see that the festival has lasted so long. We’re so lucky to have it.
It was the first time my uncle Len had come to see my show, which was on at the Swiss Club. And he had a heart attack due to laughing and had to go to emergency. What an attention seeker uncle Len was!
He seriously had a heart attack and he’s never been able to come to a show since, just in case he died. He loved it - well, that’s what he told everyone, that it was from laughing. I can’t remember what the show was. I did a whole hour on local council rules – uncle Len was probably desperate to have a heart attack.
I was part of the Great Debate at Town Hall. The topic was “Money Is the Root of All Evil”. At some point I invoked the biblical metaphor from Matthew: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter Heaven.” On paper, looks dicey. But I figured we should at least give the camel a stab at it.
The director, Ted Robinson, who never met a comic challenge he didn’t like, made a few calls and secured a camel. They coaxed it into the Town Hall. He pronated, I climbed on his back. Then he slowly stood up and I think my head touched the roof. Someone held a needle in front of his nose. I said something stupid like, “Giddyup.” The camel was fairly benign about the whole experience. Looked a little pissed off to be honest. Turns out, Matthew was pretty accurate on this one.
I was a kid from a dairy farm in country Victoria, so standup to me was the big Bills – Cosby and Connolly. One of those is okay now! But I remember seeing Miss Itchy at MICF and it blew my mind. These two incredible women would be described as cutting edge now; there are people in hip LA comedy rooms right now who think they’re inventing what Linda Haggar and Fahey Youngerwere doing 30 years ago.
All I ever really wanted to do was MICF. I’ve done 30 in a row. The first year, I was the support for the Canadian musical group Corky and the Juice Pigs. Most of my material at the time was heavily political – lots of Victorian state politics and Pauline Hanson had just arrived on the scene. But Corky would set me a challenge every night where I would have to do a thing during my set, like fall over 10 times while never explaining why, or insert a phrase into my set without it being too obvious. The hardest one they got me to say was: “I like tits, but I’m really an arse man.” I need to point out this wasn’t okay to say then, let alone now! To this day, it was probably the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do. They were all at the back, losing it.
I did my first MICF show when I was 14 - I did [MICF’s teen comedy workshop] Class Clowns with my friend Tom Ward. We went on as a duo wearing suits, because we were just copying Lano and Woodley.
It was an absolute shock to find out the audience thought I was funny. When I was older I did [emerging standup competition] Raw Comedy; I had a bit about how everyone thinks I’m gay, but I’m not gay. Spoiler alert, I am gay. I also talked about how my mum went crazy one day and bought me all these condoms at the supermarket. That was before she was diagnosed bipolar – looking back, I realise now she was having a manic episode. We didn’t know that I was gay, and we didn’t know that she was bipolar. And that was the next 10 years of my career!
The first time I came, I couldn’t believe I was in Australia; I’d only been doing comedy for four years. I was amazed to walk out on the first night and find a crowd waiting for me. With hindsight I think they were all given free tickets to get the ball rolling, but it didn’t matter. I remember hearing the “ting” from the tram going down Swanston Street, ad-libbing around it, and getting a laugh. I thought: maybe this could work.
In about 2015 I did the Gala, as usual, where you are limited to a very strict four minutes on stage. It’s one of the highest-pressure gigs you can do; such a huge crowd, so little actual time to impress them. There was an act, since turned sober, who was at the time quite hammered. He did, not just four minutes, not even 10 – but 17 minutes to a nearly silent crowd. Everyone was either agog or appalled. It was the greatest onstage car crash I’ve seen.
During my second season in Melbourne, my friend Bec took me to legendary Greek restaurant Stalactites for dinner at 4am after a night in which I’d done three performances of my show. I didn’t believe her when she said you could get moussaka at four in the morning, and I also never would have believed I could attract three separate audiences here. Pretty much anything is possible in Melbourne. It is the best place in the world to do comedy, for me at least.
As much as I love seeing a good show, I love it when a show goes wrong. There was a great comedian called Adam Vincent but his show wasn’t going very well, so he pulled his wallet out and gave it to [fellow comedian] Adam McKenzie and told him to get everyone’s ticket money out of the ATM, to give us refunds. McKenzie left to do it, but then the show improved because of the stupidity of what Adam was doing. When McKenzie came back with the money, Adam handed out $25 to everyone and we all filed out! Isn’t that glorious?
MICF is turning 40 this year … and I have been lurking about for 20 of them. I have managed to reach some incredible heights. I won an Emmy! That’s no small thing. To put it bluntly, the kind of success I have enjoyed means that I don’t have to do this festival. But I am choosing to do it. And I have some very good reasons for doing so.
Twenty years ago, this festival chose me, and it invested in me. Sure, I could say a lot of my career wins were due to my raw natural talent and immense personal charisma, because I have spent enough time in America now to know that you have to spin that kind of bullshit to get anywhere. But I don’t actually believe that. I know that I am a world class comedian because of the rich eco-system that MICF has nurtured. And that’s why I choose to keep coming back. I am always inspired, and pushed to do better work, and take risks here, because of the wealth of talent that graces the festival each year.
I was 24 and it was my first show. I’d heard from other UK comedians about how brilliant Melbourne was, but it was basically the best month of my life. I can’t tell you how incredibly exciting and romantic it was. I fell in love with the city, made amazing friends and I also fell in love. It was just too perfect.
One night, Mark Watson was doing a 24-hour show. I took a break from it and went to St Kilda with a bunch of friends for dinner. We went walking on the beach and I found this massive palm frond. We decided it had to come to Mark’s show with us, so we lugged it into our taxi, with one hour to go. When we got back, I presented the room with this big branch and everyone lost their minds – they were so delirious and tired by that point. I think about that night all the time
My most memorable MICF has to be when I married Zoë Coombs Marr in 2016. Gay marriage wasn’t legal in Australia then, so we started laughing about us getting married, because it was so wild that we could marry each other and not our partners.
The next day, Zoë called and said, “I have an idea – do you want to get a coffee?” We met at a cafe and she essentially proposed to me. We got a glass of prosecco to celebrate and told the waitress, “We just got engaged!” The waitress was probably thinking, god, this poor woman has been tricked by this evil gay person.
We were so excited about the idea and pitched it to MICF. I wondered if a gay wedding would be too politically charged for them, but they loved it. Our partners understandably took a minute to wrap their heads around it. Zoë’s partner Kate wrote about how she felt in the Guardian. The press went wild over it. A week before, Zoë and I were like, “Fuck, we need to actually plan this thing.” We went to a ramen place and planned our wedding on a paper towel.
It just kept snowballing into this much bigger thing. Hannah Gadsby did a speech that ended up informing Nanette. Celia Pacquola, Denise Scott and Judith Lucy were the flower girls. We decided that we needed to sign a will, so Wil Anderson came out at the end and we signed him.
Without hyperbole, it’s probably the most meaningful thing I’ll ever be a part of. Before it, I was a perfectly fine comedian. I was chugging along. All credit to Zoë – she could see I wanted to do more interesting things than making dick jokes at 10.45pm.
Urzila Carlson
First MICF: 2009
Seven years ago, Nazeem Hussain was playing the Forum’s big 500-seater room, when his wife went into labour with their first baby. So myself, Joel Creasey, Des Bishop and some other comedians covered his shows so he didn’t have to lose the money. The audience was expecting to see Nazeem so we went out and told them: “Listen, Nazeem’s wife is in labour. If you want to leave now, you’ll get a refund. But he’s going to need this money for that baby, so think carefully.” Only two people left. And the show was so much fun.
Sam Campbell, Tom Walker and I did a show in 2017 called Zanzoop: Feeble Minds and it involved Sam playing an alien with his dad. Every night we would paint Sam and his dad in green body paint. Every single night. Sam and his dad would ride in on a tandem bicycle. It was maybe the most stressful month of my life – Sam and Tom are interesting mentally. I am interesting mentally. But it was also very funny and exciting.
Jenny Tian
First MICF: 2013
Comedians are always looking for great shows to watch. In 2014 there was so much buzz about Piotr Sikora, this clown from Poland called Furiozo. It was really popular so he added an extra show quite late in the evening, around 10 or 11pm – when all the comics could make it. So the room was filled with comedians and it was like a party. He would get people up on stage – I ended up being a policeman and one of my friends became a table for his cocaine.
Patrick Durnan Silva: Honor [Wolff] and I started performing together at MICF in 2016. We performed to about five people each night. We had this sketch about Neknominate, which was this internet challenge where people would nominate others to video themselves drinking alcohol. Honor played this middle-aged woman who’d say, “Hello guys, no one’s Nekominated me, so I’m gonna Neknominate myself!” And then she’d drink a whole bottle of Savvy B by herself while a Nina Simone song played. And each night, people in the audience would start crying! We were like, what is going on? We were making people cry, and not with laughter. But when that festival finished, we were like, “This is something – we should keep doing this.”
Hot Department’s Amalgamation is on until 19 April
Garry Starr (Damien Warren-Smith)
First MICF: 2018
I only really discovered MICF in the last decade because I left Australia when in my 20s to be an actor, I wasn’t really aware of the comedy scene. In 2018 they put my first solo show in the Malthouse – they built a tiny little theatre within the Merlyn Theatre called the Mini Merlyn. It was an 80 seater – I played to maybe 20 people on the first night. But eventually it was packed. People were standing at the back. That was so thrilling because it was my first ever solo show. I was a country boy, I grew up in regional New South Wales. I was like, “Oh, I’m not cool enough to ever go to Melbourne.” So it was a thrill.
The next year, I came back with another show. I thought, “Well, I got nominated for Best Newcomer and the Golden Gibbo last year. I’m not going to have any trouble getting an audience now.” But it was Good Friday and five people showed up. I had so much audience participation in my show, I needed at least half a dozen people to be there. So I came out beforehand and said to everyone, “Look, do you want to do this?” And they said, yeah! And to this day, that was one of my favorite shows.
It was my first year and I was catching the train in. I saw this couple on the train watching an Urzila Carlson clip, and I had my flyers with me. When I got off, I gave them a flyer and I said, “This is my first show, come along if you can make it.” I didn’t really expect them to.
But at the end of my show, they came over and said, “We changed our dinner plans just so we could see you.” It was the nicest, sweetest thing. It’s a real struggle to get people through the door, so it was really special.
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