Last week or so in Sydney

The air smells like bushfires here - it’s a hazy and worrying smell.

It’s been a strange and surreal delight being back in Sydney. Because I have some writing deadlines I haven’t done many gigs while I’ve been here - basically just people who have asked, and mainly headline spots rather than full shows.

If you are in Sydney, I’ll be at a secret warehouse gig this Saturday 23 Nov (papafire.com for last 10 tickets and address details)

It’s made me reflect a little bit on the movement of my career in comedy. The shifts in perspective that have happened between doing 5 minute spots at the Laugh Garage after work to being in a place where I’m more used to doing my own solo shows or headlining than standing up the back of a room hoping the Booker will have a dropout.

‪Show last night in Canberra was an absolute delight. I haven’t gigged there since 2015 and‬ to just show up and have a full house of absolutely adorable people (including Buglers, Tea With Alice listeners, Trilogy beans and some of YOU glorious Patreonites) felt like an utter thrill. Like genuine joy.

The only words to describe it properly are overused, and not quite right, but put the feeling somewhere between “a privilege” and “blessed” without the modern baggage of either and you have about the right emotion. My family jokes sometimes about how ridiculously happy it makes me when people enjoy my work, and it absolutely does. I’m a simple creature in some ways - and a lifetime of being the weird and puzzling one has primed my pump for proper appreciation of appreciation. (That was more alliterative than I’d intended but I’ll let it stand).

Thanks to Tim Duck of Comedy ACT who emailed me and asked if I’d do a show there, to the civic pub for hosting it and letting me change my clothes behind the bar, and to all of you who came.

Moreover, I’d like to do more for you on here than provide just the free plus one tickets for when I happen to be in a city near you, so let me know if there’s anything (live videos, any topics to address, something you’d like to see that I haven’t thought of) that I can do on the Patreon platform itself. I would like you all to feel as special as you are.

Collectively, you’re the King Cophetua/Prince Charming/Wealthy Dowager/Discovered Inheritance That Turns Out I’m a Duke/Narrative Deus Ex Machina that’s turned my work life into a series of more and more open doors. So let me know what the internet version of a nice hat is for you so I can give it to you as a token of my thanks.

If you want something more concrete, some Tea With Alice Stickers will be available soon as well, via Patreon’s new experimental merch fulfilment thingummy for $15 Patreonites.

Xxx

A