This interview was conducted via e-mail on the 25-26th of May 2000.
1. What was it like working with Kim Hope on Sassy?
Great fun. Kim and I have been friends since I first started doing standup and this was our third festival working together. Previously we worked on "Shame" with Peter Helliar and "The Loft" with Rove McManus, then we worked together on "All Star Squares" where Kim was a performer and I was a writer. "Sassy" was the first time it was just the two of us, and it was great fun. The least stressful Comedy Festival show I have ever done.
2. Did you enjoy being a guest on Hey Hey It's Saturday?
Being on "Hey Hey, It's Saturday" was a great honour. I thought it was very brave of them to allow me to perform the material I did, live to air, without interference. I gave them a script a week before and I asked them about twenty times "are you sure it's okay to say 'poof' at 7pm, and they were more than fine with it. They encouraged me to be as gay as I liked.
3. Did you cry when you found out it was axed?
I have to admit I was a little upset. I grew up in Melbourne and had "Hey Hey" as my morning show from a very young age. I had all the Darryl and Ozzie records when I was a little kid, and I loved them. When the show moved to night-time, I was in my teens, and it was as if the show was growing up with me. Hey Hey started the year I was born, and I thought it was quite fitting that a show that was perpetually youthful, never quite got to be 30 years old.
4. What was it like being a guest on Rove?
Rove is a great friend of mine, and we worked together on "The Loft" on Channel 31 from the very first episode, and we both left that show at the same time. (Although I did return on tape for the last series with Ged Wood). Being on Rove was not like a normal TV appearance. I have worked with Pete a lot, Dave was a guest throughout the second season of "Shame" and Corinne has been one of my closest freinds since before either of us started performing standup. It was more like hanging out with mates than being on TV.
5. How did you feel when you found out I had put false information about yourself on my site?
Oh , it happens all the time. I get introduced by people as having been on "Good News Week" and "IMT" and a number of shows that I have never appeared on in my life. It is bizarre. I will be appearing this week as a guest on "The Big Schmooze" on thecomedychanel with Matt Hardy, Dave O'Neil, Kate Langbroek and Gerard McCulloch.
6. Describe your first time on stage.
I was really excited. I have done a lot of stage work. Acting, presenting, spoken work performances, monologues, and standup comedy seemed the next natural step to take. I was talked into it by Ged Wood who was running Elbow Grease every week at Nicholson's in North Carlton.
7. What would you say a stereotypical comedian is?
It's hard to put all comedians into one basket. There are certainly a lot of comedians who are similar in nature, but to be successful requires you to be a lot different than everyone else. How else can you be remembered. If you say "I like that guy that tells the joke about his dick" you could be talking about ten or fiteen guys that regularly appear at the espy. If you say "I like the guy that talks about crabsticks and being on the dole" then we all know it's Hughesy. "That girl who does the old woman with the thick glasses." We all know that is Andrea Powell being 'Ethel Chop.'
8. Do you fit that description?
I fit the description "that poof who dances to Britney Spears."
9. How many comedians do you know that fit that description and who?
Just me.
10. What newspaper do you buy the most?
I read The Age online. If I am MCing The Espy on a Sunday night or arvo, I will grab the Sunday Herald Sun - full of material.
11. What is your favourite novel?
Ever? That's a hard one. At the moment I am reading "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" because I absolutely adored "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." Best children's books I have read since Roald Dahl's Charlie books or Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree series. I recently read "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson, which is a great science fiction novel. My friend Eric Dando wrote a book called "Snail" which is one of the most affecting and hilarious novels I have ever read. I have lots of favourites.
12. When you were young, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Shirley Bassey. (True story).
13. Is there anything else you'd like to say?
Be good, and don't break anything.
