On December 6 the 50-year-old Australian comedian performs at an international standup comedy night at Pontoon nightclub in Phnom Penh alongside Ward Anderson and Shazia Mirza.

Interview

When did you first realise you had a talent for comedy?

When I was a kid, I used to get away with murder in class – as long as I could make the teacher laugh. It’s very hard to get angry when you're laughing.

Who were your formative comedy influences and do you reference them in your own work at all?

I cut my teeth on the Marx brothers and National Lampoon magazine as a teenager. I don’t reference them at all, but can see that the need to poke fun at sacred cows was inspired by them.

Who would you rate as the best standup in the world today?

Zaganar. He is a Burmese comedian I had the honour of meeting during one of his moments out of jail. He makes fun of the junta and is constantly being arrested for his efforts. He galvanises the people and gives them a chance to have their grievances aired – I wish I could be that brave.

What's your favourite joke of recent times?

Many comedians don’t really do jokes. We make observations, reflecting on both important and trivial matters. And talk about our genitals.

What kind of set can we expect from you? Will you include any material specific to Cambodia?

I deal with the human condition. My subtext is that despite ethnic, religious, cultural, linguistic and political differences, people are people and share the same foibles regardless of their background. We will of course include our first impressions of the country and I'm sure that will resonate with the crowd. Let’s face it, we were all newbies once, and it probably took a while for most people to work out what the hell is going on.

You are a well-travelled man, how does that influence your set?

It is what I’m about. I speak several  languages and that comes from living ‘local’ in Asia and Africa.

Does that make it easier to adapt a set to audiences in different parts of the world?

Indeed. What is more important than language is discourse strategy. Every crowd has a different harmonic and a good comic must be adaptable if they are to travel to far-flung places and connect with the audience.

What has been the toughest crowd you have faced? What happened?

A corporate conference in Kuala Lumpur. The crowd was mostly Arab and they were very polite, but only a handful laughed. I found out later that none but the upper management spoke English. Luckily it was the bosses that were laughing, so I still got paid.

Not including comedians, who is the funniest person you know and why?

My late father. He was a fearlessly sarcastic journalist and would take the piss out of anyone – from the gardener to the prime minister... to their faces.

Is it difficult to make a living being a comedian?

Comedians are generally quite lazy. We live in our heads and work 40 minutes a day. But if you can manage four or five gigs a week, you will make more than a school teacher. In other words – not much.

Most comedians tend to fall into two categories offstage – the natural show-off, and the deep-thinking, troubled introvert – which are you?

I’m a deep thinking show-off.