quick wit mcdermott

Paul McDermott

Self described "writer/recluse/comedian/fuckup", comedian Paul McDermott's slashing wit has entertained us on stage, television, radio and in his new book The Scree. He admits that a career in comedy was an accident. "It seemed to be a good choice. When it was the only thing I could get paid to do. My awareness of 'funny peculiar' came from others, the 'funny ha-ha' is something I've had to work at." A conversation with McDermott is like a little peek into the realm of the absurd. He is rarely serious for more than half a sentence. "I certainly enjoy being able to sing, perform and write, but others, not cursed with such hedonistic and selfish pursuits, may well have found love in their life, a family and be thought of as a decent person by their friends and business associates. "Stand up can be joyous or excruciating, occasionally both at the same time, that's what makes it interesting. The creative juices never stop flowing, however at present they have the consistency of beige mucous pleurisy of thought." Strangely, he doesn't get bothered by fans much. "I've been fortunate, people seldom speak to me and when they do they are usually polite - apart from the freak who accused me of stealing his thoughts and tried to attack me with a hot meat pie, or the Christian who accused me of being in league with Satan or the girl who screamed I was the manifestation of a monkey." He has secret and shameful ideas about what is funny. "Australia's Funniest Home Videos but I'm plagued by moral and ethical dilemmas afterwards and overcome by a sense of delicious guilt." Shopping worries him. "I certainly enjoy wearing clothes, the other option is unthinkable, but I don't spend any time researching it." He describes his new book,as "a simple blood thirsty Gothic-horror story for children. It's about overcoming personal demons." His advice for others is simply, "Don't make my mistake brothers and sisters, don't waste time reading this. Life is too short, go out and enjoy yourself ...or someone else."

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Rove

His real name is John, he harbours no dark demons in his comedy closet. He names "high-fiving the Pope" as his ultimate life experience to date. He's made a professional living in seeing the funny side of every situation; he's filled our television screens with his own brand of 'take no prisoners' comedy and irreverent take on the mundane things in life. "Funnily enough, I have always felt strange that I don't really have a dark side to my personality," says Rove McManus, the 27-year-old television host and producer of Rove Live. Life's pretty good for Rove right now, and he knows it. "There are not many people in this world who can say they go to a job they love every day with people who are more friends than workmates, and piss-fart around for an hour a week on television talking to people more famous than them," admits McManus. "I get it pretty good." Performing in high school musicals in his hometown of Perth led to writing comedy sketches for radio and as you would expect, it didn't take long for his performer's ego to kick into gear with the realisation "that to get my material heard by a larger audience, I would have to perform it myself". Stand up comedy got him "jack-all financially" but landed him a gig hosting a community television show in Melbourne, which in turn led to every wannabe's dream - the call from Channel Nine. They didn't renew his contract after the ten-week series, but Channel Ten was around the corner and Rove Live became the surprise hit of the year, making Tuesday nights worth staying in for once again. Did he always know he would be a comedian? "I just sort of stumbled and fell into comedy. It makes me laugh when I bump into old school friends who say, 'I always knew you'd end up being a comedian,' which is rubbish because I myself never knew I wanted to be a comedian. I really always wanted to be a zoo keeper. Hopefully people like me and like what I do. I can only assume if they didn't, complete strangers would stop me in the street, punch me in the face and say, 'That's for being crap.' Thank God it hasn't happened yet."

By Fiona Scott-Norman March 28 2002

How like Paul McDermott - that wild, omni-talented bundle of contradictions who disappeared with Good News Week 18 months ago - to spring back into public notice at the Comedy Festival with not one show but two. A festival season is gruelling - financially, emotionally, creatively - and most comics think carefully about committing to one show. To do two, Comedyoscopy and GUD Hard Core Cabaret, particularly when expectations are high because you're a television personality who's been off-air for a year, and your last live show (Mosh) was panned, is nothing short of true bravery. But then we are talking about Paul McDermott, who made his mark with The Doug Anthony Allstars (DAAS), the Mass Debates, and TV's Good News Week and to imagine Australia without him is to imagine a pot of shit that has never been stirred.

But where others see signs that read "Here Be Monsters" and "Turn Back", McDermott pulls up a banana lounge and daiquiri."

I suppose I wanted to pressurise myself into doing something. I mean, if you're not going to challenge yourself why do anything? I love live performance, it's not sanitised, cut back, trimmed, and genitally mutilated to go on television at 7.30pm. I'm not going to just sink back into the TV train.'' If McDermott, who moved from Canberra to Melbourne to London to Sydney, is a Gordian knot of paradoxes - a displaced artist, a retiring performance extremist, a fearless introvert, an aggressive Greta Garbo - it is this mess of impulses which makes the man so compelling.

It's been a year and a half since the satirical current affairs show hosted by the playfully acid McDermott, Good News Week, finished up on Ten after five very successful years. McDermott was exhausted and happy to let it go, and gladly dropped off the public radar until now, going to ground in his Bondi flat to protect and indulge his intensely private side.

"I went into my cave, which is what I tend to do when I finish something. I did it when the Allstars finished up. I like it in there. There's a nice big lock on the door, and mirrors all the way round that look out on to everyone else. I just watch them pass. Not a lot happens in the cave except, um, looking at the ocean.''

McDermott, a shy, intense, anti-social Canberra youth from a middle-class, Christian background, was going to be an artist. He attended the Canberra School of Art, letting the hours fall away into oblivion as he sat drawing, colouring in, and cross-hatching in meditative silence. But, in his last year at school and strapped for cash, he decided he didn't want to shoplift any more art supplies.

He started performing at Cafe Boom Boom with a group called Gigantic Flyer, after meeting then-buskers Richard Fidler and Tim Ferguson, and his life changed forever.

McDermott still spends his days scritching quietly with nib and ink, and The Girl Who Swallowed Bees, his second solo illustrated book (he put out a few collaborative graphic books with the Doug Anthony Allstars), will be released in April.

He spent months writing and drawing his books, marking his days by the passage of ocean liners across the horizon of the Pacific. ``If I saw a big ocean liner out of my window on the north side of the bay, and I didn't see it again until it reached the south side, I was having a good day. If it took an eternity to get across, I was getting distracted.''

The first of his planned series of seven books, The Scree, had a deliberately low-key release at the end of last year. The second, The Girl Who Swallowed Bees, is an adult children's tale about depression, but on another level it's about a jolly group of adventurers who go off to an island and get eaten by monsters.

Besides working up Comedyoscopy and GUD and trying them out in Katoomba and other regional centres in New South Wales, McDermott has also been doing a live music show with Mikey Robinson called Rat Pack. You can hear the joy in his voice as he describes it. ``It was a dream we had, to be a bit Sinatra. We wanted to dress up in tuxedos and sing songs from the 1950s and '60s, so we've been doing that with Will Anderson and Peter Berner up the Gold Coast and around Sydney. It's such fun . . .''

There'll be no smooth crooning and smart tuxedos for Melbourne though, just a rejuvenated, loud and passionate McDermott bringing his opinionated, feral alter-ego out for a long-awaited airing. That Paul (Stinky Paul, Cranky Paul, Kill The Hippies and F----The-Dogs Paul), will be familiar to those who followed the reactionary and non-bathing antics of the Allstars. For newer fans, used to the smart buttoned suit and smooth barbs of Television Paul, it could be a shock.

It's certainly a more extreme persona than the one people saw on Good News Week. ``In your face and unapologetic, grotesque, offensive, loud. But it's all essentially me with the amp turned up - I don't own that many great acting skills.''

He does own a tremendous and pure singing voice, however, and that will be getting an airing in GUD - Hard Core Cabaret. The cabaret consists of original songs written and performed by Paul, with Mick Moriarty from the Gadflys and Cameron Bruce from Club Luna Band. It's essentially about contemporary issues, the state of the country, ideas and beliefs.

``I called it GUD because that's who Americans thank at awards ceremonies, and I thought someone should be taking the credit. I've started calling the show Moral Decay Cabaret, or Urban Decay Cabaret; that's what it is. If anyone comes expecting a couple of tunes from My Fair Lady they're going to be disappointed.''

Although McDermott, who wrote most of the songs for DAAs, has planned GUD as musical social commentary, he insists the political content is implied and oblique rather than overt. He misses the opportunity Good News Week gave him to comment live about fresh issues, but isn't planning any material about the current political state of Australia.

``At the moment, I'd just get too bitter. When I was living in London (early '90s) I was so proud of this country, but now I'm just ashamed of it. I get up every morning and read the newspaper and I'm filled with an incredible sense of shame.''

Talking about the children-overboard issues, he asks: ``How do you deal with a government that has done this? That has an ongoing campaign of belligerence and deceipt? How can it be just a lack of communication, a boo-boo, on such an important issue, and how can it just play and play for the government weeks before the election? And how can the media be sidetracked . . .?

``The Governor-General, and now Justice Kirby . . . it's all colour and movement, look over there! Children overboard is page 14 on Sunday, and Russell Crowe and his new squeeze is on the f------ front cover. God, this f------ nation at the moment . . . Sorry, sorry. You see? There's no comedy there.''

Comedy will be provided by Comedyoscopy, essentially a deconstruction revealing how comedy works. McDermott has always been a dissector; he thought that examining comedy from the outside would be more interesting than simply material.

It's possible that McDermott might inspire hate this festival, but you'd expect nothing less from a performer who has also inspired fear, admiration, devotion, love, repulsion, anger, hysteria, confusion, loathing, lust and envy. Still, that's what happens when you base your comedy instincts on fanaticism, manipulation, and an early involvement with Christian youth groups.

There are no guarantees what emotions you'll experience but the chances are boredom won't be one of them.

Comedyoscopy: at the Powder Room, Melbourne Town Hall, until April 20. GUD - Hard Core Cabaret: is on at Victoria Hotel, Lt Collins St, same dates, at 9.45pm.

The Age is a festival sponsor.