Boothby Graffoe thinks being interviewed at 11am is cruel and unusual punishment. In fact, what he is really doing is sitting up in bed, trying to drag his eyelids open in between begging his partner to make him a cup of tea.
He claims he's been a comedian for two years, then confesses (yawning) that it's more like 12. "I was going to start a series of lies but I don't have the energy," he moans.
It's no surprise to hear that Graffoe, the British comedian who's heading for Sydney in May as part of a five-week international comedy season at the Comedy Hotel (formerlet the Harold Park Hotel), is a laid-back chap on stage, shambling on clutching beer and cigarettes.
Right now he's concentrating on keeping his kids quiet about their mother's grey earwax so he can talk.
"I got this family once I came over here. It's much cheaper than the one I have in Britain," he confides. "The problem is they keep eating all the time, they're always whingeing "we're hungry' and you have to keep feeding them otherwise they get thin and brittle."
Graffoe, born and bred in Hull, started life as Jim Rogers but chose his working title from the name of an small English village through which he drove regularly when he was working as a sock deliverer.
"I've never regretted it (the name that is)," he says languidly, "except when I saw another village named Goltho Apley..."
He was last seen in Edinburgh having remarkable success with his exploding kitchen, but says the kitchen is now packed away in small parts back home.
"Nobody wants to book it," he says mournfully. "It was great for Edinburgh with all those boring stand-up comedians with one prop." Now he, too, is back to one prop (and, no, he won't say what it is, it's a surprise).
Graffoe has been applauded in Melbourne for the way he has quickly laced his routine with local references and he was thrilled that one reviewer described his routine about Christians and drug-taking as "risque".
"I've always thought of them like that but most reviewers just tend to call me amiable," he yawns.
Not so many miles away, (actually in the same hotel), American Greg Proops makes a complete contrast to the laid-back Boothby. Proops divides his career between LA and London (he's the heavy-rimmed glasses guy on Whose Line is it Anyway?) and gets reviews which use words such as slick, seamless, smooth and consummate professional (which doesn't even start with an S).
These words seem to make him tetchy in a funny kind of way.
"I'm not certain what they are expecting," he snorts. "If you want me to shamble on to the stage, I could do that but I tend to look like I've done it before...I think comedy should be left up to the professionals, that way everybody's safety is protected."
Proops' material ranges from amusing insights into the English character (always a big drawcard for Australians) to politics.
"You're going to get my opinion one way or another...since I have the microphone and the lights are on me, you don't have all those tiresome interruptions you get in a conversation," he says.
Credit : The Sydney Morning Herald
