Comedian Josh Thomas discusses the worst gig he’s ever done, dealing with douchebags, and his part in this year’s silliest reality TV show.
Hey Josh where in the world are you and what have you been up to today? I’m on my bed with my dog. My friend Tom was living with me but now he’s moved out, so today I’ve just been turning his room into my office.
So are you secretly happy he’s moved out? (Laughs) I don’t mind. He’s a mate of mine. But I’m glad to have my office back.
So that’s where you do all your writing and stuff. Yeah…in theory. It’s a room. I don’t do any work in there I do all my work on my bed but it makes it look like I’m more professional if someone comes over.
No meetings on your bed. Right. No meetings, it can accommodate other writers doing stuff. If that were to happen in my room that would be embarrassing. But, you know, I write with Tom a lot and if he comes over we don’t go into the office I make him sit on the end of my bed.
Speaking of writing, do you just start writing jokes and then find the overall theme of your stand up shows or do you have something specific you want to say and then base your material around that? I think it’s a bit of both. You’ve got to put your show concept in the comedy festival guide in October which is way too early. And usually what happens is you’ll over commit to something and then you write jokes and try to force them in. But I never really have much of a running theme.
Your show this year is called Douchebag, though. What was the genesis of that idea? Two things. People kept bringing their twelve year old kids to my shows and were annoyed that I was swearing. Because I don’t swear on TV? I don’t know. It’s illegal to swear on TV so that’s why I don’t do it. So I put the harshest word you can put in a title you can still print. Even though I can’t link to it in a Facebook post. You can’t link to anything with the word douchebag in the title, isn’t that crazy? We couldn’t put in on a tram, either. So, yeah, that’s part of the reason. The other thing was that one of my biggest fears is this idea that, like, Josef Fritzl wasn’t always Josef Fritzl. Presumably he was a reasonable guy once, you know? He had a wife and everything. I’m just afraid that I’m going to spiral into becoming a horrible evil person. So this show is about bad things that I’ve done that could be the beginning of me becoming evil.
So what is one of the things that past Josh would have perhaps found disturbing? Things like I was holding this day-old baby chicken last year. I was holding the smallest one whose name was Melinda. I looked at her for a second and I thought, “I could just crush you to death”. I kind of liked that feeling of exerting power over this tiny bird. I didn’t crush her to death which is the point of the show. I never do these things. But who knows? It might become the next thing I like. I used to dislike olives, you know? Now I love olives. So I just don’t know.
Can we talk about douchebags in the audience. How do you deal with them? I’m the worst with them because I actually actively encourage them. I just love watching them train wreck themselves. I just love watching someone talk and talk and talk and make no sense and the whole audience gets annoyed with them. But I don’t want to be mean to them so I just let them be a douchebag for a while and never really deal with it properly. My audience is generally made up of the sweetest people. People who come to my shows are people who want to hear a tiny little man chat for an hour. They are the gentlest people. They’re all quite nicely dressed twenty year old girls, sometimes with their mums. Or a lot of cool 60 year olds who want to hear jokes about sex and things. They’re never that bad. But if someone’s being a cunt I’ll let them know about it.
Are there douchebag comedians? It’s inclusive. And everyone’s really friendly. Comedians are hopeless, demented people, though. They’re either drunk or sober. They’re either always drunk or they’ve just quit drinking. Which means that they’re just further along the path of always being drunk and they’ve come out the other side. So few comedians can do the middle ground of casual drinking.
Which camp do you reside in? I’m in the drunk camp. I’m not looking down on them. I love that.
Can you remember the worst gig you’ve ever done? I remember one time I hosted a wonton eating competition in a shopping mall. But they paid me so much money that I can’t really complain about it. Like it was shit. I was standing on this camp stage in the middle of this mall and the people who organised it hated me and clearly hadn’t seen me do anything and they didn’t want to pay me and we almost had to go to court afterwards because they didn’t pay me and said I was shit and didn’t have enough energy and I was awkward. It’s like, I know, that’s my job! It’s like complaining that KFC is fattening. That’s what you’ve signed up for. It was pretty humiliating. They had this group who they told me was like Asia’s Spice Girls. These five girls from different Asian countries who did like three songs. They had like 20 people in the crowd who were really excited to see them and everyone else was just passively loitering. I was like one those guys with the microphone outside the handbag store telling everyone how cheap the handbags are.
A spruiker. I was more or less that. But for crazy money.
How did you feel Please Like Me translated from what you imagined in the script to what eventually turned up on screen? Initially, I wasn’t sure about it. We did it and I watched it and it was what we intended to make but I wasn’t sure if it was what people wanted. And the next conversation we had after watching it was that it was moving to ABC 2 so there was a good six months there where I wasn’t sure if we had fucked up and I had made a mess. Now I really like it. When I watched it on TV it felt right and it got great reviews. People who found it really seemed to love it. Tumblr’s crazy for it. Now that people have told me they like it, I like it.
This is a fictionalised version of your life obviously, and when people write an original series, particularly comedy, they’re borrowing from their own experiences and people they actually know. Did any of your friends or family recognise themselves in the characters? (Laughs) Yeah. They had to sign waivers. They had to sign contracts. Because you’ve got this situation where you have me playing a character whose name is Josh and he has a mum and dad. You’ve got legal issues because people think it’s based on my actual mum and dad, which it is in a way. So they had to sign a big waiver so they know how much it’s based on their lives because it’s all in a contract somewhere. They were cool with it. I’ve done stand up stuff before about my mum attempting suicide. That’s an actual thing that’s happened in my life. It didn’t happen the same way in the show, it was very different, but it happened. I had to have that conversation with her where I said “I was thinking about making this TV show and in it I want the mum to do this very personal thing that you’ve done and not only are people going to think you did this thing but also it’s fiction so I’m going to get her to do a lot of other things”. It’s a big ask, you know? I said to her I think the point is that most people would be pretty lucky to go through life without knowing someone who attempted or committed suicide. But you just don’t see it on television. No one ever wants to talk about it. I think it’s important and I think I have merit on the topic because I’ve lived through it. She was down with that.
Are you doing another season? We’re working on a series two. Hopefully we lock that in soon if we get any money out of these people. I don’t have any money. But, yeah, hopefully I get to keep writing this show. Did I answer the question?
Yeah. I guess it’s just a matter of if they’ll have you still. Exactly. I mean it looks like they will. I hope so.
Onto your other notable television appearance this year. I have to say how surprised I was at how agile and talented you were at diving. Did you surprise yourself? I got evicted though. I got evicted in the first episode because the scoring was fucked. I was like “thanks” because I didn’t really humiliate myself too badly. The dive was fine and I didn’t have to keep diving.
As a comedian you probably possess more self-awareness than any other contestant on that show. Can you just describe what that show was about? Who knows? I actually don’t know. When I got asked to do it, I thought, “well this is stupid”, but I sort of loved that. I just loved how stupid it was. I was excited about learning how to dive. That’s a cool thing. You’ve got this proper Olympian teaching you how to do this bizarre thing. I could go away on holiday and do a one a half somersault. I could do that. In front of people. It’s pretty cool. But when we were filming it I remember looking around at people taking it so seriously. I had no idea. I was like “You guys are kidding right? We’re joking. This is a joke right?”. And no. Very earnest.
Is this something you can turn into material? Celebrity Splash? (Laughs) I’m hoping I won’t have to talk about it too much. Make it go away. Pay my mortgage with the money they gave me. I liked doing it, that’s the thing. But I get that it’s stupid. I love people getting angry at it. I love these people getting angry. I mean, it’s silly but it’s not mean television. Border Security is mean television. This is just people being stupid. People were almost taking personal offense that it was put on television. That was fun for me to watch.
Thanks for your time Josh. Cheers.
JOSH THOMAS’ DOUCHEBAG
When: FRI 28TH JUNE – SUN 14TH JULY 7PM (6PM SUNDAYS)
Where: THE COMEDY STORE – Moore Park, Sydney
Price: $25 Preview; $35 Fridays & Saturdays; $30 Sundays
Bookings: (02) 9357 1419 or www.thecomedystore.com.au
