An interview

I might as well post some of the pieces I have done for Rabelais, our uni paper. Well perhaps the ones where an intimate knowledge of campus politics is not required. It sounds like we might have some new neighbours. A rather ramshackle punk band judging by what I can hear. They need some work.

Here is a piece I did on a comic playing at the Comedy Festival.



So you’re asking yourself who the hell is Jim Jeffries? You know, the comedian. Still nothing? Well, in Britain he has done four years at the Edinburgh Fringe, appeared on numerous television programmes and been a hit on YouTube, literally. Footage of him being punched in the head by a punter while performing has been viewed almost 300,000 times.

In the US he has just completed a special for pay TV giant HBO, a prestigious gig for any comic, and is involved in a feud with the Osbornes. Still never heard of him? It is all the more unusual when you consider he is a bloke from Sydney.

Jeffries is quick to admit that it is his own fault that he doesn’t have a better profile in his homeland. “Fair enough I haven’t put the time in over here…so I can’t expect to just swan in and expect a tickertape parade,” he said in an accent that betrays a number of years living in Manchester.

Jeffries’ material isn’t for the sensitive. Sex and religion dominate his story telling style and expletives punctuate every sentence. He was anointed “Britain’s Most Offensive Comedian” by Q magazine, a title he embraces mainly because it helps sell tickets. “I’m not going for dirty. I’m going for laughs. It just so happens that I have a dark sense of humour, so most of it’s going to be dirty or slightly twisted,” he said.

Jeffries comes across as a keen student of the art of stand-up and is proud to be considered one of the “smutty” comics, a group in which he includes icons such as Richard Pryor, Billy Connolly and Lenny Bruce. He feels that comedy festivals often focus on “intelligent” comedy, featuring “acts who play the keyboards and talk about badgers and gnomes,” while ignoring his type of comedy.

Jeffries is in Australia to perform at his first Melbourne International Comedy Festival. “I’ve got to be honest, I’m quite nervous about doing Melbourne,” he said. “I’d hate to do badly in Australia. You don’t want to disappoint anybody.” You get the feeling that Jeffries is putting a lot of pressure on himself to carry over his success to his homeland.

Don’t expect to see him on Rove or Good News Week though. The invitations haven’t been forthcoming. He thinks producers are terrified that he is “going to start swearing or raping animals or something.”

A premier

I'm from Queensland.

I'm from Sydney.

I sometimes confuse myself when I am asked. To be honest I offer up the information, unbidden, more often than I am asked, perhaps in an effort to make myself different from those around me.

I am not sure how I decide which truth to tell. I feel more at home in Sydney but I feel that I need to come from somewhere. A place in the world that I can point at and say "It began there" even if I may never really belong anywhere ever again.

I haven't traveled north of the Sunshine Coast since I was a child. I am a Queenslander whose boundary ends at the Noosa River. I have no affinity with the vast expanse beyond but I suspect this is the case with many from "The Great South East". Does that make me less of a Queenslander?

Now my weather reports are full of unusual place names like the Mallee and the Grampians. Not the Wide Bay or Darling Downs of my youth or even the Hunter and Highlands of my Sydney years. Strange unexplored lands that I have no connection with. Maybe one day.

Until that day I am still from Queensland. A state that voted in the first ever popularly elected woman premier on Saturday. My knowledge of her isn't the best but I like what I see. I think she is an honourable woman. That's good enough for me.