The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny: A memoir

by Meshel Laurie

  MELBOURNE, FOR GOOD

  I have to tell you, without a word of a lie, that Julia Morris remains the most amazing stand-up comedian I have ever seen, and even back then, November 1994, I’d seen some greats. The way Fedele ran his main room—the Sit Down Comedy Club—was by flying up a different comedian every week from ‘down south’—usually from Melbourne, but sometimes from Sydney—to headline the show. We locals would fill out the night doing support spots before them.

  I shouldn’t assume everyone knows how a comedy night is run, so here’s the basic template as it existed back then. There were three ‘brackets’ of acts, with fifteen-minute breaks between each. The first bracket consisted of the MC doing 10–20 minutes to get the night rolling and the crowd warmed up. Then two or three newbies got five minutes each, for which they were never paid. Some people stayed in the first bracket for many years, begging and pleading for a paid twenty-minute spot, which was not just about the 60 bucks, but also about the acknowledgment that they had moved beyond the first bracket as a comedian. Once you graduated to the $60 twenty-minute spot you were moved into the second bracket. There might be two acts in that bracket, with a little top and tail from the MC, and then another break. The third bracket was for the headliner, and it was considered the height of rudeness for the MC to do any more than five minutes before bringing them on. MCs themselves need to be pretty skilful comedians, as it’s a tough job to do well. They need to keep the crowd enthused after bad spots, and stop them peaking to early before the headline spot. Typically, one proved one’s skills as an MC before being offered headline spots.

  Within those first few months I moved from first bracket to support spot comic (in Brisbane . . . settle down) and had the opportunity to watch people like Greg Fleet, Judith Lucy, Anthony Morgan and Pete Rowsthorn up very close a couple of times over. I learnt a lot. I even had the nerve to approach Tim Ferguson after a Doug Anthony All Stars gig, to ask for some tips on comedy. He gave me about an hour and a half’s worth, speaking to me so respectfully that I didn’t feel like a creepy fan-girl at all, which he and I both knew I was. What a gentleman he is.

  I watched Eric Bana wade through his set one weekend, which was fascinating as he just wasn’t a natural stand-up. He was an actor, and it showed. All discipline and no discovery. Mick Molloy, on the other hand, tore Brisbane ‘a new one’ as he might put it, with half a handful of actual jokes but a bottomless glass of mischief. ‘Hmmm,’ I thought to myself in the darkness, ‘I really must develop some charisma.’

  Julia was something else entirely. She was a powerhouse persona, she was an act. Grunge was the order of the day, and most comedians dressed down accordingly, but not Julia. She stepped into the spotlight sparkling like an American at the Logies. She wore a black chiffon dress that shimmered and flowed to just below her backside, showing off long legs and expensive stilettos. Her skin was tanned, her teeth were white, her hair was glossy and her eyes twinkled with cheek. Her bosoms were hoisted up below her chin and her long arms and fingers were tastefully bejewelled. She had writing skills to match her showmanship, with a jokes-per-minute ratio I’ve never seen anyone else come close to. She talked so fast, and everything she said was so funny, that everyone’s faces contorted into the ugly laugh, where your nostrils flare, your chins triple, your eyes and nose run and your body wobbles. She was good. ‘How is she not famous?’ I thought. ‘What is with everyone in the entire fucking world, that she is not famous.’ I didn’t know much about fame back then.

  I wasn’t supposed to be on the week Julia was headlining, but after talking to her, and her mesmerisingly gorgeous manager Ingrid, they convinced Fedele to give me ten minutes the following night so they could see my stuff. By the end of that weekend, I’d been invited to Sydney—to stay with Julia and perform at the Comedy Store. Nothing comes easily, but eventually it comes.

  I flew to Sydney a few weeks later. I was eating into my moving money again, but at least it was a sidestep in the right direction this time. I hadn’t flown since I’d sat between my parents as a toddler pointing out clouds, and I’d never been to Sydney in my life. I somehow understood well before I got there, though, that Julia and Ingrid were ‘very Sydney’. They picked me up from the airport in Ingrid’s sports car and pointed out everything they thought I might’ve heard of from Botany Bay to Redfern’s ‘Block’ on the way to Julia’s house in Paddington. They were gorgeous, confident and sophisticated. They knew amazing gossip about famous people and they were incredibly generous to me, an actual random from Brisbane. That night we walked into the Comedy Store, which was then located on Parramatta Road in Petersham, and I had the most intense déjà vu I’ve ever experienced in my life. To this day I swear I dreamt about that stage with its distinctive proscenium arch when I was a child.

  Julia was the resident MC, which I’ve never heard of a comedy club having before or since. There were two shows on Friday and Saturday nights, and she was pumping out about seven shows a week. I realised that night, as I watched her work the crowd that was a lot rougher than the Brisbane crowds I was used to, how she came to be such a formidable act. She was just match-fit, and I knew I had to do as many gigs as humanly possible when I got to Melbourne to achieve that level of skill.

  I was on at the end of the first bracket that night. It’s a pretty safe place to bury someone you’re not sure about because the MC can repair the damage pretty quickly and throw to a break, by the end of which the dud act will have been forgotten. I was milling around backstage with a nice lady Julia had introduced me to by the name of Kitty Flanagan. I thought she was so pretty, but not in a Sydney way—in a natural, wonderful girl way. What really made me laugh about her was that she was in her early twenties, but spoke like she was an old woman, peppering her sentences with ‘Oh my word’, and ‘Heavens!’. Natural and hilarious. Kitty was preparing to try out some new material that night and was predicting it would bomb miserably, then squeezing her lips together and opening her eyes really widely, in that great way she does. Of course she had a great gig and told jokes I still retell today whenever I find myself talking about her. Ask her about the gig she did in a men’s prison if you ever get the chance.

  As nervous as Kitty was about her own spot, she was really trying to encourage a quirky young man who was pacing around, rehearsing to himself and wringing his spidery hands so hard his whole body seemed to end up in a knot. He was sort of whispering and occasionally bobbed his bald head for effect. She introduced him to me as a brilliant young comic and as he blushed, he pursed his lips and his big brown eyes rolled up towards the ceiling. He was Carl Barron, and she was right.

  My gig was good enough. Not as good as Carl’s or Kitty’s, but I was thrilled with the entire episode. At eight months into my stand-up career, I’d done my first gig in Sydney. I hadn’t won it, but it had happened anyway, and more importantly, I’d seen what was actually going on out there, in the real comedy industry. We all knew Brisbane wasn’t the proper industry—why else did they need to fly someone in every week? And why else did half the comedians tell the exact same jokes that none of them had written? The Brisbane scene was strictly for hobbyists with day jobs, but these Sydney acts were deadly serious about what they were doing, and I could only imagine Melbourne would be even more serious again. I was so up for that night as we drove back home to Julia’s in Ingrid’s sports car . . . with none other than Elle McFeast (Libby Gore!) cadging a lift in the back seat—if you don’t mind! I mean, she worked with Andrew Denton!

  ‘What a town!’ I thought to myself as I drifted off to sleep on the couch in Julia’s house.

  Within weeks of my visit, Julia and Kitty had exciting news: they were the newest cast members on Full Frontal, the sketch show Eric Bana was on (plus an unknown guy from Adelaide called Shaun Micallef). Lo and behold, it was shot in Melbourne, so Julia moved down over the summer and graciously gave me a place to stay upon my arrival in May 1995.

  Truth be told, I probably outstayed my welcome—I ended up ther
e for a month by the time I had an application on a flat accepted. It took that long to string enough lies together to convince a real estate agent that I wasn’t actually an unemployed blow-in with barely a month’s rent and no prospects, which is exactly what I was. I was determined to live alone after my hideous share house experiences, and ended up in a tiny one-bedder in St Kilda.

  Within weeks I saw Paul Hester and Mark Seymour chatting in the street outside Safeway and almost screamed with happiness. That was the moment I knew I’d done it: I’d stepped through the Michael Hutchence poster on my wall and I’d made my fantasy my life.

  Well, almost. I hadn’t done a gig yet.

  Julia was the only person I knew in Melbourne, and she was flat out with Full Frontal. In any case, she didn’t know much about the Melbourne stand-up scene, so I decided to check out the Esplanade Hotel in St Kilda. The Espy had two rather famous comedy shows a week, on Tuesday nights and Sunday afternoons.

  I’ll never forget walking up the front marble stairs, past an enormous Maori man I grew to know and love as Robbie, and into the grand old pub overlooking the sea. The interior was rough. It looked like the sticky carpet and memories were the only things holding it together. It was très Dogs in Space, Nick Barker was belting out a Sunday afternoon set on a stage at the end of the front bar, and at the other end of the bar was the beautiful bay window with sweeping views of Port Phillip Bay.

  I asked a barmaid where the comedy was, and she directed me to cross the pub, go past the grand staircase that looked like something out of Sunset Boulevard, past the smoke machine (as in cigarette machine, not as in theatrical dream sequence) and hang a right, up the hallway to the Gershwin Room.

  The hallway was decorated with cheap fabrics and black-and-white gig posters, another smoke machine, and at the very end, a grand set of doors. The doors were open, and the room beyond was dark, smoky and enormous. As I made my way up the hall, trying desperately to look unimpressed, I saw with increasing clarity the stage, deep inside the room. By the time I reached those doors I could see it, in all its glory, and I was suddenly not so sure I’d made the right decision in moving to Melbourne. I was terrified.

  That stage was glorious. It was so high off the ground, at least chest height, and its surface area had to be six times larger than the stages I’d been used to in Brisbane. It was beautifully lit, the cigarette smoke dancing through blues and greens towards the black ceiling. It even had a set, which I’d never seen at a gig before. The set comprised an intricate cityscape and bore the logo Espy Comedy. On the walls hung enormous black-and-white photographs that I later learnt were taken by Peter Milne (who was best known at the time for his work with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds) and the photos would later become his Fools’ Paradise exhibition. I’ve used a couple of Peter’s photos in this book, but I urge comedy fans to check out the exhibition online. It features some stunning fly-on-the-wall photos of the ’90s Melbourne comedy scene.

  As I peered into the Gershwin Room from the hallway, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realness and the immediacy of where I was. I could smell it in the air: this was the Melbourne I’d been dreaming of. If I turned and walked away, that was it, dream over, choked at the last hurdle—and I considered it, believe me. I even took a minute to sit on one of The Espy’s many sets of ancient stairs that seem to lead to nowhere to steady myself. I felt like it all came down to that moment, to that day. It was one of those times when I knew there was no one else watching but me, the one person I could never run away from.

  I asked the girl at the door who was running the show, and she pointed to Trev, a long-haired, tripped-out, middle-aged gentleman who stood with a beer at the bar, in front of a large, shabby diary. Trev and I hovered together over that diary many times in the years that followed as he gave me more gigs than anyone else—including my first paid gigs in Melbourne—and squeezed me in many times when I was desperate. He started helping me that very first Sunday by taking me out to his office, offering me a joint and explaining how to get gigs in Melbourne.

  For the next decade or so, my life revolved around the incredible back room at The Espy, which was covered in band graffiti and always contained a well-stocked tub of beer for performers and friends. At uni I was in heaven, at Triple Z I was through the looking glass, but at The Espy, I’d finally come home. It grounded me in Melbourne, gave me purpose, structure and crazy beautiful friends. I was where I could take risks, trust advice and be myself, whoever that was on any given day. It was a place in which it felt really good to be me. The first place in which that had happened in a very long time.

  THE BACK ROOM OF THE ESPY

  I met everyone in the back room of The Espy. You’ve never heard of most of the people I knew and loved in that room, and I’ve decided not to write about them because my mother is constantly waffling on about people I don’t know and it’s beyond boring. Instead, I thought I’d write about some people I love whom you might love too.

  On the next page is a photo of Trev and Lynda Gibson, who smoked very shonkily-built rollie cigarettes and was just so many shades of inspiration.

  ‘And now how are you going?’ she’d ask, frowning in concentration and focusing all her attention on me. She’d wave those crooked little smokes around as she spoke in her beautiful crusty voice. Her hair, tied haphazardly around the back of her head, would fall forward in streams across her face whenever she burst into pantomime or dance, which was often. I couldn’t believe it the first time I saw her there. I’d been such a big fan of the bizarre TV show Let The Blood Run Free that she’d done with Pete Rowsthorn and Brian Nankervis among others, and I thought she was far too famous to be doing gigs in places I was doing gigs. As I said, I didn’t know much about fame back then, and certainly nothing about Australian comedy fame, which was rarely accompanied by fortune until very recently.

  Sunday afternoons were for new comics, and the MC was the only one who got paid. You could tell by the way Trev positioned you in the running order if you were moving up in his estimation and closer to his cash tin. Lots of older comics used to come down and hang out, though—guys I’d watched on The Big Gig and Steve Vizard’s show while sitting on my bed in Toowoomba. It was beyond thrilling. I felt successful just being there with them.

  Trev and Lynda are pictured in the back room of The Espy; just behind Trev is the door that led to the stage. (Photograph—Peter Milne, courtesy of M.33, Melbourne.)

  Greg Fleet was always hovering around the place. I walked into Trev’s office one day to find Trev conducting some DIY dentistry on Fleety, who’d lost a filling. Trev was packing Blu-Tack into the hole with a biro. Greg was just back from his triumphant turn at the Edinburgh Fringe festival where his show ‘Ten Years in a Long-Sleeved Shirt’ had won rave reviews and changed the face of the hour-long comedy festival show. He was the King of Melbourne Comedy and I had a raging crush on him. I was totally star-struck at staring down his gullet through Trev’s flowing hair and biro work, and fled the scene admonishing myself for being such a lame idiot loser in front of Fleety. Anyone would think I was the one with Blu-Tack holding my mouth together!

  He was also performing with Matt King and Marty Sheargold in those days in a threesome they called ‘New Joke City’ after the seminal 1991 American film New Jack City—a gritty urban drama about the emergence of African American drug trafficking gangs in New York City and the crack cocaine epidemic they precipitated. The way Marty tells it now, ‘New Joke City’ was about three white private-school boys who used to take themselves camping to write jokes, but generally ended up very drunk and experimenting with fire. Geez they were pretty though, and very, very funny.

  If you have Foxtel you would recognise Matt from his role opposite Claudia Karvan in Spirited. If you’re a British comedy fan you probably know that he’s enjoying a very successful career back in England, most recently cowriting two TV series, Whites and Starlings.

  Marty Sheargold, the little cherub of the group, was always a lot of fun around the pla
ce back in the day. We used to call him ‘Champagne Sheargold’ in reference to the extraordinarily offensive things he’d get away with saying, both on stage and in private conversations. ‘That’s a bit of Champagne Sheargold,’ we’d say. Marty has always been an old man trapped in a young man’s body, which makes me wonder how impolite he’ll actually manage to be years from now.

  He was an enigma to me in 1995 because although he was only my age, he was already working with heavy-hitters in Fleety and Kingy. It gave him an enormous amount of cachet on the circuit, which he played to the hilt. I thought he must’ve been some kind of prodigy to have been chosen by the other two. He knew it was cool as shit, and just took it all in his stride, as he does.

  Andrew Goodone had been one of my TV favourites for years. His is still the voice that introduces performers to the stage every year during the televised Comedy Festival Gala. He was a Sunday fixture and became a very good friend very early on. Andy never bought into the comedy class system that prevents more established performers from befriending newbies. I wish I could say I didn’t, but when my time came I must admit I put very little effort into getting to know new comics. The truth is I found them very threatening and didn’t want to encourage them too much in case they overtook me. Andy never seemed to think that way, and even as I was failing at it, I was always wishing I was more like Andy.

  What I didn’t notice at the time was the archive he was quietly establishing. These days he blows our minds by periodically publishing old photos on Facebook. It’s one of my favourite things in the world.