Uncomfortable Truths

Thomas Banks is a Melbourne comedian with cerebral palsy. This means that his speech and mobility are affected. He’s not always easy to understand, but I do always “translate” for you guys, and I encourage you to hang in there. It’s not often that you hear disabled people having their voice heard, particularly if they have a speech impediment. That is particularly why I interviewed him. He is outrageous, funny, full on and uncensored. I’ve known Thomas for a few years now, and I learned a lot more about him in this podcast – in depth stuff about what it’s like to be him. He tells us about his world, and it’s fascinating! We discuss The Slut Song during the podcast, particularly because Thomas is in the Slut Song video clip. So, I play you out with The Slut Song. Please check out the video clip on YouTube. If you could, please give this podcast a good rating on Apple or Spotify – much appreciated!

If you want to learn more about Thomas, please watch his documentary on Stan called Thomas Banks, Quest For Love.

Pradeepa Timmermans

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Akwasi Osei-Tutu, Melbourne comedian, soccer player, and all around good vibe guy is about to go travelling. We will miss you Akwasi!! Originally from Ghana, and grew up in Perth, Akwasi started comedy specifically to face his fear of talking to a group. One and a half years into comedy he performed his own comedy festival show, successfully, and continued to perform shows in following MICF, Adelaide and Perth festivals! How? He is self-disciplined and chooses to consciously face his fears and work on his weaknesses. The results are self evident. We discuss his journey as a comedian, overcoming personal fears, self discipline, not cheating yourself, having a strategy for challenging times, turning up and doing the work, being true to yourself, exercise, fear of rejection and the Australian tall poppy syndrome. It’s a very dynamic conversation, and we get into it. Life is a series of incremental actions and choices that we make, put together over time. Each one of those actions and choices make a difference. We talk about it. 

Check out his YouTube channel, Instagram page and Facebook page under Akwasi Comedian, and for his upcoming shows, go to akwasicomedian.com.

Akwasi Osei-Tutu

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Pradeepa Timmermans

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Krutika Harale, comedian, recently moved from Sydney to Melbourne – Melbourne wins!!

Originally from Mumbai, Krutika has lived in NY City, Brisbane, Sydney and now Melbourne. She is also an architect and graphic design artist. An adventurer at heart, curious, wanting to know how other people in the world live, think and interact, Krutika took jobs in these cities to have new experiences and meet new people. Her path to becoming a comedian started with improvisation classes in Sydney. This helps explain where her excellent crowd work skills come from! She then moved onto a stand up comedy course, the open mic comedy scene and has performed in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with Aarti Vincent and James G. Warren. Their sketch comedy group is called “The Amazing Cannonball Flower”.

Krutika has comedy gold words of wisdom. Her way of seeing the world through the lens of  designing interface at work, in comedy and life in general is fascinating. What she has learned about comedy through improv, her comedy course and performing is well worth listening to. I learned so much in this podcast, and I will be listening back with a paper and pen in hand! If you are looking for a fresh way to view and create your comedy, this is the podcast for you! Travel stories, different views on the world and wise words for creating comedy – this podcast has it all. Enjoy!!

Now, this podcast will be released 2 days after Christmas, and most of us probably ate too much, and might be feeling a bit fat. Well, I play you out with a Cosmic Egg classic “You Don’t Have To Be Skinny To Be Sexy! Happy New Year everyone! See you in 2022! 2021 – over and out!

Krutika Harale

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Pradeepa Timmermans

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Grant Cater performs regularly on the open mic. comedy scene, and I’m so glad he does. He’s unique, he’s hilarious and his distinctive laugh is second to none! (Except maybe Thomas Banks!) We talk about getting comedy stage time again after lockdown, his experiences on the comedy scene, his muscle condition and how it affects him,  our friend Thomas Banks, and Grant’s trip to the USA with his brother. This includes his experiences with a medical marijuana dispensary over there. Crazy shit!! We are both marijuana enthusiasts, so I play you out with The Hemp Song. It’s another Cosmic Egg classic from 1999. It’s a cruisy convo, so kick back, enjoy and thanks for listening.

Keren Storai, the Princess of Dark Comedy here in Melbourne has recently had baby Jemimah!! We talk about the total lifestyle change from becoming pregnant, having a baby, the sacrifices, writing comedy,  alcohol, mental health and ayahuasca. It’s a very honest, deep, rich, vulnerable conversation. How does one go from drinking at gigs almost every night of the week, to not drinking or doing gigs, and taking care of a baby? Find out. Keren’s advice on writing and performing comedy is gold! I had no idea that Keren had such depth and keen mind – I learned heaps! Have a listen – you’ll be glad you did. :) I play you out with the heaviest song that Clint and I recorded with Cosmic Egg. It’s called Rothschild. It’s a dark favourite, just like Keren. Enjoy!

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Aarti Vincent, local Melbourne comedian. Aarti's catch phrase - "Yo yo bitch tits!" I first met Aarti on the open mic. comedy scene at the Yes All Women’s comedy in early 2020. Aarti is originally from Delhi, India and has lived in Australia for about 15 years now. She tells us about her life back in Delhi, her transition to living here in Australia and how she got into comedy here in Melbourne. It’s very interesting to hear her talk about her observations of Australia and Australians, from the point of view of someone who did not grow up here. She’s already her MICF show “I Didn’t Grow Up Doing Yoga”.

That’s amazing for someone who started performing comedy in 2018! We talk about being a Mum and a comedian, and what that entails. We also discuss how important it is to be at the start of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Guide!

I love hearing about other people’s lives in other countries. I like finding out in what ways we are the same, and in what ways we are different. I love hearing something that surprises me because we do it differently and I always took for granted that everyone in the world does it the same. I love how Aarti took an unconventional comedy path because she didn’t know any different, and it has worked in her favour! It just shows that there is no “right” way to do anything! We all have our own path. Aarti will be performing in the 2022 MICF in a sketchy show by The Amazing Cannonball Flower. Aarti and I may well do a show in the 2022 MICF, so watch out for us.

I play you out with the music you hear under my talking! It’s called Groove Smoothie, by Cosmic Egg. Aarti mentioned that she likes this tune, so I thought I’d let you all hear the whole song. Enjoy! Over and out!

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Andy Goodone has been a comedian here in Melbourne, and Sydney, since 1981. 40 years!! Amazing hey? It was fascinating hearing about how comedy, as we know it, was just starting come onto the Australian entertainment scene in the early 80s. He tells us how it all started, what it was like here in Melbourne back then, how the first Melbourne Comedy Festival started, who won the first Moosehead award, what the comedians and audiences were like back then and what it’s like being back on the open mic. comedy circuit after all these years.

This episode really is a treasure. Andy opens up and tells us the stories behind how comedy started here, who was involved, and what has evolved to bring us to where we are now, in 2021. He’s like the Grand Daddy of Melbourne comedy, the man with The Voice, the comedian who has us crying with laughter, he’s Andy Goodone.

This episode was cut off prematurely, so there is no proper ending of the episode. But we certainly recorded a very decent podcast with heaps Melbourne comedy history, and now we can listen and learn about how it all happened, whenever we like. He is a wealth of comedy knowledge, having worked in Australian comedy for so long. If you haven’t seen Andy perform, I can’t recommend him highly enough! He’s hilarious and definitely has his own unique style. I play you out with a track called Cigarette by the Emotional People. Emotional People are the band that won the Moosehead Award at the MCIF back in 1998, and Andy directed and acted in their show, Phenomenomenon! Thank you for listening to Uncomfortable Truths. Please subscribe if you haven’t already. Enjoy the podcast!

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Lisa Gatenby, Melbourne comedian and the woman I want to see on Playschool! I’ve been gigging with Lisa on the Melbourne comedy scene for several years now. We got to know each other a lot better when worked on the Slut Song video clip together. She was great fun to work with! She’s got lots of life in her, lots of positive energy, easy to work with and very funny!! I loved getting to know Lisa better in this podcast. She’s traveled and done lots of cool things, as well as having intelligent insights as to how comedy works and what she does to keep getting better. She doesn’t talk about herself very often, so this is a rare treat!  I play you out with a song called Orbit, from my old band in 1999, Cosmic Egg. Most of our songs had a fierce and important message. This song is just fun and easy to dance to. That’s Lisa – fun and easy going.

I certainly hope that you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

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Welcome to Uncomfortable Truths Episode 6. In this episode Kieran Butler and I talk specifically about Australian Politics. Well, actually, Kieran explains to me how Australian politics works, because I have never had any interest. If you want to learn about the Australian governance system, then stay tuned. If you want to hear about how Kieran got started in comedy, go back to episode 5. Aussie politics – here we go!! 

I play you out with another song by Kieran. He used to perform this song down at Station 59 and we’d all sing along to the chorus. It’s very catchy! I think that this song really captures Kieran’s opinion of Australian politics - You're Not Australian!!

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Welcome to Uncomfortable Truths Episode 5 with Kieran Butler. Kieran and I have been friends since 2013, when I started comedy. He ran an open mic. comedy room back then, under the banner of Free Comedy at Station 59 in Richmond, and I gigged there all the time. It was a safe place to start doing stand up comedy because even if you really died on stage, you knew that he would still give you more gigs. This is because if you signed up online, he would give you a gig, easy as that.

He also put on Yes All Women’s Comedy Night once a month at Station 59, and that was my favourite place to gig ever. He would do the admin, and introduce the MC at the start of the night, and then the night was ours. Yes All Women’s was had a huge impact on me as a comedian just starting out, and I feel very fortunate that I was around to experience those years of Yes All Women’s at Station 59.

Freecomedy.com.au is Kieran’s website and Kieran ran his comedy room under the free comedy model from Edinburgh. When Station 59 closed down, and after a short break, Kieran took free comedy to the Highlander Bar in the CBD in Melbourne. We’ve been gigging at the Highlander since 2017. Kieran is also an excellent musician, music producer and video clip producer. He recorded my song The Slut Song, and also shot and produced the video clip for the Slut Song. If you haven’t seen the video clip for the Slut Song yet, please check it out on YouTube.

We talked for over 3 hours, so I have split the podcast into 2 parts. In this first part we talk about how he started in comedy and music, the challenges he encountered, where we both were when we heard about 9/11, Pauline Hanson and how Australian politicians started playing the race card, and some very convincing John Howard impersonations. I hope you enjoy this podcast with Kieran Butler.

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