Television, Heckler, Jumpsuit, Jetlag

Hallo lovely punks.

This morning I landed back in Sydney from London. This evening I did one of the Just For Laughs comedy galas at the Opera house.

That flying in in the morning, performing that night is an interesting (read, probably v silly) thing to do. For those of you who weren't with me last year, I did the same stupid thing last year for the filming of my show The Resistance for the ABC.

My harebrained theory is that jetlag is unpredictable, and you're better off doing something the night you arrive, when you're tired but still a bit confused about what your body should be doing than trying the next day or a few days after, where you could be an absolute zombie. I don't have any facts to back up that theory, and of course, the sensible thing would be to come back two weeks earlier and be a normal human.

The set went decently, with a few solid laughs and a few moments where I got the distinct sense that the audience thought I was a bit up myself.

I blame this on the fact that I forget when I'm in England that I need to be more self deprecating over here on stage. Not only do I have a soft, slightly prissy accent for an Australian, I was also wearing the fanciest (in fact the only fancy) TV costume I own which is a super snazzy jumpsuit that makes me feel like one of those treacherous bond-girls who betrays and then beats the crap out of 007.

Look, it was that or the jeans I wore on the plane, which smelled like 26 hours of transit, because most of the rest of my admittedly limited wardrobe is in a storage locker in Melbourne.

The jumpsuit is a great outfit, because it is slightly fancy but also actually very humbling because it requires you to strip down completely and confront your own body every time you go to the bathroom (which I was doing a lot, through a potent combination of excitement, nerves and having tried to compensate for airplane dehydration by drinking about five bottles of water). It is a well balanced experience, wearing a jumpsuit.

But to the audience, it doesn't necessarily look like an earthy yet encouraging safe choice. It looks like I think I'm the kind of lady who wears a cool glamorous jumpsuit on the reg and is pretentious. It's hard when people think you're pretentious, but also, I am totally wearing pretentious clothes and making pretentious jokes so you know, drop em a line.

Which you know, tall poppy syndrome is real and you should ask your doctor what treatment is right for you.

I should probably have dressed down and/or dropped a few lower status jokes in, adjusted to a more Australian register, or just generally been better at comedy but I was high on adrenaline, air travel and jumpsuit fumes.

Anyway, it was one of those fun challenging gigs where you get em, lose em, get em again, fumble one word, do a good joke, get a run of laughter that makes you feel like you've caught the wave, then get caught helplessly on the one person in the audience who is busily hating your guts for secret reasons of their own or just isn't a 'face laugh person'.

It was heaps of fun and a real thrill and I was pretty happy until my last joke where a man heckled twice in a pretty aggressive, arguably sexual way during my last set-up. I delivered the rest of the joke as though he hadn't said anything because I figured they could probably edit him out with the whole cameras and television magic, but it threw me.

I told the audience they were lovely except for him, and that I'd beat him up in the car-park (it was a bit more explicit than that), which got a very good laugh because he was a big man and my female privilege means that graphic threats of violence come across as cute rather than genuinely menacing.

Anyway - we'll see how it all comes out in the edit.

The rest of the acts on the lineup were spectacular, and all of them nailed their sets. Tommy Little hosting, Amos Gill, Rose Matafeo, Cal Wilson, Greg Burns, Sam Simmons and Steve Philp on warm-up all nailed their spots, and performing at the opera house always feels like a surreal and spectacular dream.

So I'll chalk that up as a good night overall. Now I'm going to sleep with the strength of ten men because my heart is pure exhaustion.

Chiz