Proper True Yarn

Part 1 with Clancy Sinnamon, better known online as CC Donut. Born in Miles and raised in Jackson, a town between Miles and Roma on the Warrego with no pub, no store and nothing at all. He reckons it once came in seventh poorest postcode in the country on a Channel 7 list. After boarding school he went to the Gold Coast to study film and television, and his first full time job was travelling with the Australian cricket team as their videographer.

He started the same day Marnus Labuschagne, Travis Head and Aaron Finch debuted in Dubai, filmed them getting their baggy greens, and did four and a half years on the road before coming back for the Amazon doco The Test in England. Yes, the dressing room question comes up. His theory is the blokes with medium sized ones are the ones who get it out the most.

The big yarn: on a London tour, a few beers deep at the hotel in Chelsea Harbour, Clancy wandered down to a jetty on the Thames, walked through a gate and it slammed and locked behind him. Freezing wind off the river, his only options were swimming the Thames to a ladder 30 metres away or sleeping out there, so he rang team security, a little Italian bloke called Frank, who turned up with two big bald security blokes. First thing Frank did was photograph him and send it to the whole team. Then the ICC integrity man, a big Irish fella, pulled Clancy aside at the ground and told him a lot of prostitutes work that part of London, so was there anything he wanted to tell him. It was a stitch up, Nathan Lyon still messages him to stay off the jetties, and it was the moment the boys let him in.

⚠️ Explicit content. Follow CC Donut Comedy for Clancy's skits.

Part 5 and Buster Kirby flips the show, taking the host chair to drag a few untold yarns out of Knuckles, with producer Zak there as the witness. Knuckles is the bloke who can go three or four days without a weakness. Turns out there is one: tequila. In Vegas at Ole Red, Blake Shelton's four level bar, someone drove a Clase Azul shot into him and he spewed all over Paul White, the former Broncos CEO, on their first meeting, with Tommy Busby from Busby Marou nearly jumping off the balcony. Security came over to ask if he wanted another drink. On the way out he tried to fight 14 Irish blokes.

Then the night Knuckles' son learned to crawl. He was FaceTiming his wife from a booth at a Rick Ross show while the boys yelled at him to hurry up. Zak went home early and woke to what sounded like a water feature in the room. Knuckles was standing at the foot of his own bed, pants down, pissing on it. "What are you doing?" "I'm fucking pissing in the bed." He finished, lay down in it and went straight to sleep with his feet in the wet patch.

One more for the road. After a big charity lunch in Brisbane, the crew were on the piss at Eagle Street Pier when a bloke parked his Merc out the front, left it running and walked across to the fig trees on what looked a lot like a drug deal. Knuckles jumped in and bounced it off the rev limiter. Old mate sprinted back and started throwing punches, the video looks like a stabbing, a water bottle hit one of the wives and someone kicked his back panel in.

⚠️ Explicit content. Spot one of Country Trucker Caps on a Vegas cabbie? That'll be Jamali, he listens.

Part 4 with Buster Kirby, and the second Vegas yarn is the big one. The lady at the gun range looked him up and down and said "the big boy ain't making it on foot, darling". He walked anyway, in thongs, to Planet 13 on Sammy Davis Jr Drive, got knocked back for not having his passport, bought new walkers and a plastic yard glass of coconut rum, and lost six kilos on the trip.

Next morning, passports in hand, he and Angie jump in an Uber. Big Texan looking bloke, big hat, big Chevy. He asks why they're going to Planet 13, says that's where the tourists go and he'll take them where the locals go. Buster says no thanks. The driver opens the glove box and pulls out a .44 Magnum. Angie gets out. The doors lock, the Uber app goes off, and they head out into the Mojave with Buster dropping pins to his wife the whole way, confessing his regrets by text and telling her to go see the hookers without him.

It finishes at a strip mall: a laundromat, a 7 Eleven, and three blacked out shops with a steel door. Three bangs, a slot slides open, passport held up but never handed over, and inside it's a shiny chemist full of bud. They hand him a basket and a menu, he buys a marijuana cigar, pre rolls and gummies, and qualifies medically when they ask about depression or anxiety: "fucking both". On the way back the driver pulls over, splits a joint with him and admits that 10 minutes in, he decided not to kill him. Plus Fremont Street, a cop asking which part of Britain he's from, and the Heart Attack Grill scales.

⚠️ Explicit content. Buster Kirby is heading back to Vegas next year, catch him on tour before then.

Part 3 with Buster Kirby, and it's the first leg of his Vegas trip, the one his wife Angie literally had to drag him to the airport for. He's already rebooked: two and a half weeks next year, flying into Dallas, then a week around Austin trying to get a spot on Kill Tony. The flight over was rough. Someone told him to wear compression stockings, so he cut the feet off them because they annoyed him, and landed with feet like basketballs. A panic attack sorted the rest. The upside: the first snow he ever saw was on the mountains flying into Las Vegas.

On Knuckles' advice he and Angie booked Battlefield Vegas, about a grand Australian to shoot everything a bloke from a 12 gauge and .22 background never gets near, AR-15 and .50 cal included. While they were waiting on the pager, his mate Keith, a cop in Oklahoma, rang and asked what he was shooting. Buster rattled off the list, said AR-15, and Keith told him to open his phone.

It was Keith's body cam from the night before. A welfare check off a 911 call, he pulls up the driveway, leans forward to tap the screen in his cruiser, and a bloke walks off the veranda and empties an AR-15 magazine through the windscreen. Hit in the arm, the chest and shrapnel in the neck, saved by his armour. He'd been given one day off. Buster sat in the corner feeling sick, told him to quit, then went in and shot the guns anyway, including a .50 cal that lifted the two blokes holding it off the ground. The armed guard in the corner? "He's itching to do his job."

⚠️ Explicit content. Catch Buster Kirby live, he's on tour now.

Part 2 with Buster Kirby, and he's the first to say he doesn't condone drink driving. This is a yarn from his young days around Murwillumbah. His old man promised to buy him his first car, then just pulled his gear out of the family Sigma wagon and handed him the keys. Buster snapped the gear stick off driving it like a dickhead, Dad welded something on so it would go back in, and because the key was jammed in the ignition and the doors wouldn't lock, the only security was taking the gear stick with you to the party.

One night at 2am the local copper, drunk himself, offered to jump in and get Buster home. His mate, a straight laced cop from Sydney, sliced his hand on the wire hanging out of the Sigma's tyre, then sat on something in the passenger seat and pulled out the gear stick. "What does this do?" It changes gears, mate. Buster reckons it was the last time he ever drove after a drink.

Back then the coppers in town would just give you a lift home in the back of the wagon. So Buster booked one, a sergeant, for a 21st at the Condong Bowls Club. The sergeant said he had a probationary constable from Sydney with him and he'd put on a bit of a show dragging Buster to the car. Two days and a lot of beers later Buster forgot the plan, told him to get fucked, and the young bloke from Sydney snapped: baton, foot on the back of his head, cuffs, blood nose, his missus screaming and his mates ready to go. Turns out the rookie had been sent to the country to calm down. Buster is still good mates with the sergeant.

⚠️ Explicit content. Buster and the boys are also after sponsors for their sprint car, give him a shout.

Buster Kirby is back on the pod, and the last time he and Knuckles recorded together was in New Zealand, followed by an after party at Rock 2000 in Auckland where a mate stripped off to reveal a tribal tramp stamp on an angle. These days Buster is 45, living in the hills behind Byron near Nimbin, and has made a pact to go 10 years hard on the comedy before building a big fence around the farm at Tyalgum and raising cows. He also married his third cousin. They checked with Aunty Ollie, the family oracle, who reckoned they were related "sort of, but not close enough".

Then come the wedding yarns. At Buster's own wedding in the Catholic church at Murwillumbah, the priest was his wife's uncle, Father Paul, who asked best man Pig to get rid of his chewing gum. Pig gobbed it straight into the priest's hand and said "thanks bud". Knuckles tops it with his farm wedding: one of the bridesmaids got so smashed she spewed, shat and pissed through the motorhome he'd organised for the night, then passed out with the door locked. He and his new wife spent their wedding night in winter on a bare bed with no linen, and a couple of weeks later he got a $180 cleaning bill.

Buster never gets asked to be a groomsman, he's always the MC, "because I'm the fat, loud guy". At his best mate Clancy Fallon's wedding up at Midginbil Hill behind Uki, Wendell Sailor turned up. Buster grabbed the mic, told 200 guests how nervous he was to be standing in front of his childhood hero, a bloke who could score from anywhere on the field, and asked everyone to put their hands together. Del stood up. Buster said "Ryan Hansen", a Q Cup second rower and goal kicker. Del sat straight down, ropeable, then copped a second one when Buster introduced Lote Tuqiri. He eyeballed Buster for an hour, then walked over with two glasses of champagne.

⚠️ Explicit content. Catch Buster Kirby on his comedy tour.

Part 4 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher, wrapping up the series. First things first: the shop is at 65 Bellmere Road in the heart of Bellmere, near Caboolture. It's a back to front shopping centre, so Jack is working on a giant sausage sign for the street so nobody drives past.

Jack's grown up around food, his parents ran Italian restaurants in town, and after 10 years inside the same four walls of less than 50 square metres, the new shop is how he keeps himself and his team interested. New creations are on hold until they've got the room to make them properly every day, not as a one off. Hot food is coming too, but no menu: whatever's in the hot box is what's available. No pies either, out of respect for the baker in the same centre.

The bigger plan is weekend smokers out the front with taste testers and advice, the same thing Jack does at home when 30 or 40 people turn up on a Sunday with the kegs on. His line is that it's not butchers against butchers, it's butchers against the big guys. To prove it, he and the butcher up the road have a golf buggy challenge running, and he's been called out to a go kart race on the other bloke's property. Loser donates to charity.

⚠️ Explicit content. Find Bellmere Butcher at 65 Bellmere Road, Bellmere, and keep an eye out for the new shop opening.

Part 3 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher. Knuckles asks why the self proclaimed sausage king has never entered the sausage awards. Jack actually signed up this year, membership and all, then the reminder email landed and he saw what it takes: every sausage in every category, every ingredient listed, made, cryovaced and shipped by a deadline. With 12 staff jammed into a shop under 50 square metres, it's a job for next year. His figures don't lie and he's got nothing to prove. Knuckles just wants to know who cooks them, because one bad cook could wreck the best snag in the comp.

On beef, Jack has been loyal to Nolan's since he was a first year apprentice, the kind of supplier who'll sort him out on a Sunday when someone else has left him stranded. Reps are welcome to leave a price list, but he's not changing for a dollar a kilo. Knuckles backs it, saying the best eating beast he ever shot was a dirty old Jersey, not a pretty Angus heifer. The new shop gets a walk in butcher's vault with a block where Jack will cut your meat in front of you.

Then Knuckles asks how to pick a good chook, and Jack tells him what a bad one looks like. Cornish Cross birds, full white with blue eyes like a sci fi clone movie, six kilos in about four months, some so heavy they can't walk, and some growing two extra legs out their backside. Knuckles reckons breed the four legged ones and sell more drumsticks.

⚠️ Explicit content. Get into Bellmere Butcher, 65 Bellmere Road, Bellmere.

Part 2 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher, and this one's all snags. Jack had Facebook for Marketplace and nothing else until Blake, a meat marketing bloke, talked him into a month of videos. The first few were average. Then they filmed a sausage he'd dreamt up during COVID called the Counter Lunch: rump steak, hot chips and pepper gravy. Over 3 million views on the first proper video.

The comments went both ways and Jack couldn't care less, but Megan lost three days of sleep trying to reply to every one. Knuckles reckons the keyboard warriors are doing him a favour, every bad comment just pushes it further. What mattered was the door: every bugger walking in wanted rump steak, hot chips and pepper gravy sausages. Twelve months on, they've dropped a new flavour every single week, over 100 of them.

Jack explains what goes on behind it. Gravy made days ahead, $500 a week on hot chips with no margin in it, people driving six hours through the night and turning up to a window that only fits eight to 10 flavours. His plea: ring ahead and they'll make it for you. The new shop should take it to 20 or 30 flavours with its own kitchen and chefs.

His favourite? He eats that many he goes back to a plain snag, but right now he's on a jalapeño craze, especially the pork jalapeño ones made for Alpha Fest.

⚠️ Explicit content. Follow Bellmere Butcher for the weekly sausage drop, and if you're travelling, ring ahead.

Part 1 with Jack from Bellmere Butcher. Two weeks out from opening his new shop, Jack had his tradie mates (mostly cousins and family) knocking off with beers at 2.30 on a Friday, trying to come up with a yarn he could actually tell on this show. Then a little Kia pulls up in the middle of six blokes and a lady in her 80s gets out, looks at the sign and goes, "not the Bellmere Butcher", she was hoping for a Domino's.

The boys couldn't help themselves. His cousin the sparky asks if she shops there. Never, she's Woolworths and Aldi all the way and can't afford it. She reckons the new owner is spending big on that stone wall, the old guy was a legend, and she doesn't know how this new bloke makes a living. Jack, sitting there in full Bellmere Butcher uniform, agrees with every word. His mate in the Bellmere Butcher hat tells her he had to knock it off because the tight arse owner wouldn't give him one. She never clicked.

Then the real story: 10 years ago Jack was picking up cars along Bribie Island Road, kept driving past an apprentice wanted sign at the Ningi butcher and finally walked in. He did his trade there, met his partner Megan when she was the counter girl at Bellmere, managed the shop for years, then walked away when their daughter arrived eight weeks premature. A phone call to his old boss, now his best mate, and two weeks later he owned the place. Three years on, he's known as the sausage man.

⚠️ Explicit content. Get down to Bellmere Butcher at 65 Bellmere Road, Bellmere, and tell them the old girl sent you.