Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascal Stand Up Tour continues throughout
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. For a full list of dates and tickets,
Speaker 1: go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour.
Speaker 1: See you out there, the Greig Ferguson show dot com
Speaker 1: slash Tour. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of
Speaker 1: this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people
Speaker 1: about what brings them happiness. Today on the podcast, my
Speaker 1: guest is Ronnie Cheng. He's a Chinese Malaysian American comedian who.
Speaker 2: Is a huge He's huge. He's like blowing up all
Speaker 2: over the place.
Speaker 1: He's like the biggest deal on the Internet and TV.
Speaker 1: He's very, very, very funny and very interesting.
Speaker 2: Here he is. That's a bearing night watch. Thank you.
Speaker 2: I kind of like I got it, Brightling, Brightling, the
Speaker 2: watch of white guys people.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, white guys, no whit guys. I don't
Speaker 3: think white guys are anything brightly really yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: think like people who I don't care about watches, but
Speaker 3: in a cool way, not in an ignorant way, you know,
Speaker 3: like I'll just war you know.
Speaker 1: I want to see I have to watches. Yeah, there
Speaker 1: you go, and they're both brightly. Yeah you don't care.
Speaker 1: It's not that I don't care. Yeah, I don't care
Speaker 1: about in the.
Speaker 2: Cool way absolutely. All right, all right, let me.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you something before we start, because
Speaker 1: I mean I watched I've watched a law of your stuff. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, and it's very funny. I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about Australia. Oh please, because you.
Speaker 3: Went to you went to school in Australia, right, you
Speaker 3: went to university and I only went to law school there.
Speaker 3: But which I you know, it's undergraduate, right, I went
Speaker 3: to undergrad law school there.
Speaker 2: So are you are your lawyer? Then? Yeah? I passed
Speaker 2: the buy in Australia.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so but you can only do in Australia, which
Speaker 1: is like sheep, yeah, it's all it's all criminals anyway.
Speaker 2: So yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: But what happened in Australia I think is that if
Speaker 1: you can trace yourself back to the original criminals, that's
Speaker 1: actually cool now, right.
Speaker 3: Or oh no, it's cool if you're them, right. They
Speaker 3: may it sound cool, but it's not cool. I don't
Speaker 3: think it's cool.
Speaker 2: Well, they had they had a pretty bad. They get
Speaker 2: a pretty bad record, I think so. Yeah, I'm not scared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm the only one who will say, you know,
Speaker 3: everyone else's everyone else either it doesn't know about it
Speaker 3: or bassing it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, yeah, you guys, kind of it was pretty bad.
Speaker 2: It was not a good time.
Speaker 1: No, it was pretty I mean they just kind of
Speaker 1: wiped out everybody who was there, wiped out.
Speaker 3: Never never formed a symbiosis Indigenous, not that anyone really did,
Speaker 3: but you know, at least at least uh the Maori's
Speaker 3: I think they had a treaty. Yes, you know, and
Speaker 3: you can when you go to New Zealand, Maori's on
Speaker 3: the money. Yeah, you know Mari language, you come in
Speaker 3: to greet you in MARII. You know, the the Mari
Speaker 3: art is kind of embedded into society New Zealand.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Australia, they not so much. They didn't do a good
Speaker 3: job of I wouldn't think.
Speaker 1: I would when I was in Australian I've never been
Speaker 1: in Australia sober so I haven't been there.
Speaker 2: I've been in a long time.
Speaker 1: But I worked with an Australian comedian called Ernie Dango.
Speaker 2: Do you know Erny danger.
Speaker 1: I heard of Erny Dingo. Yeah, Erny Dango is cool.
Speaker 1: He's an Aboriginal comedian.
Speaker 2: Please continue.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm just saying I worked with him, but you
Speaker 1: didn't know them. So no, I've heard of him, but
Speaker 1: you're not. I'm not trying different generation. I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to dick here. You've got a couple of generations on me.
Speaker 1: I came on this podcast to talk to you, honestly
Speaker 1: because I want to hear about these stories.
Speaker 2: Well, when when were you? When did you hear anything time?
Speaker 2: The kaiser was a massive his arms on the border.
Speaker 1: When did you mean Ernie did Dingo circumstances we were?
Speaker 1: I was at the Melbourne Comedy first, Yes, my home festival.
Speaker 1: Really yes, And I don't think I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about right, Okay, So I was at Melbourne
Speaker 1: Comedy Festival and an area called Fitzroy. Yes, what year
Speaker 1: is this? Roughly got it would be about nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: eighty eight. It's freaking that's too crazy, right, it's too long.
Speaker 1: I know, that's way too nuts. He worked with another
Speaker 1: Australian Communian called Anthony Morgan.
Speaker 2: You know Anthony.
Speaker 3: I know him very well. You know I talked to
Speaker 3: him all the time. I make his website. He's a
Speaker 3: great he's a great comedian, great guy. He exited the
Speaker 3: game a little bit. He moved to Tasmania. Lives kind
Speaker 3: of off the grid, but he okay, she's kind of
Speaker 3: an off the grid sort of a guy. Even in
Speaker 3: the eighties he was that was but I know that
Speaker 3: he was a legendary. He was probably the original modern
Speaker 3: Australian folk hero.
Speaker 1: Well, Anthony Morgan and I we used to play this
Speaker 1: because we had we had this drinking game we used
Speaker 1: to do and it was a place called the Last Laugh.
Speaker 2: Yes, Roy's still there.
Speaker 3: No, the Last Laugh moved to Collins Street, okay, at
Speaker 3: the Athenaeum, right, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and remember the Athnyum. Doug Anthony ol stars used
Speaker 1: to play there. I know Doug was a right and
Speaker 1: and and then unfortunate. So it was a comedy club
Speaker 1: in Collins Street when I started, right and then unfortunately
Speaker 1: closed down, But it had Australia at that time. I
Speaker 1: had a certainly in the eighties, which is you were
Speaker 1: probably being born.
Speaker 2: Then I was born. I was just born. You born.
Speaker 2: You were a tiny little beeB fucked up with yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: well that's great. Please I don't interrupt you.
Speaker 1: But no, no, please interrupt me because I can do
Speaker 1: this podcast.
Speaker 2: So I gotta do this one with you without you. No.
Speaker 3: Because So I started doing comedy in Australia in two
Speaker 3: thousand and nine, right, so I was too late.
Speaker 2: It felt pretty late to me.
Speaker 3: I started when I was twenty four, right, Yeah, I
Speaker 3: stot twenty four.
Speaker 2: I think I was a good age to start.
Speaker 3: You know. I wasn't ahead of the curve, but I
Speaker 3: wasn't behind it, I think. And I because I'm a
Speaker 3: fan of comedy. I just love comedy history. And because
Speaker 3: I started in Australia, I have a fondness for Australian
Speaker 3: comedy history. That's why when you say these names, it's like,
Speaker 3: I know, to use not even history to you, that's
Speaker 3: just your cure.
Speaker 2: But I am not a liv history.
Speaker 1: I'm like Colonial Williams, but as a person. But the
Speaker 1: thing is, Anthony Morgan and I used to have this
Speaker 1: but there was upstairs at the Prince pat and we
Speaker 1: had this deal. We had to drink and you weren't
Speaker 1: allowed to have anything in your head when you go
Speaker 1: to the microphone, and you.
Speaker 2: Had to do it ten minutes. Yeah, you guys are
Speaker 2: crazy that it was.
Speaker 1: I don't know that it was good, but it was
Speaker 1: well Morgan, Anthony Morgan comes from this very prolific type
Speaker 1: of comic.
Speaker 2: That category.
Speaker 3: There's there's some geniuses in the world who are just
Speaker 3: they just go on stage and you know, for me,
Speaker 3: comedy takes so much work and it's scary and I
Speaker 3: have to work at it for months and months and
Speaker 3: months and hopefully I'll have five minutes that's good or decent.
Speaker 3: But for some people it's just like they're so prolific
Speaker 3: that it just comes and goes. And part of that tradition,
Speaker 3: I think is like an Edinburgh thing. Yeah, that's you know,
Speaker 3: because I've been to Edinburgh for festival.
Speaker 1: I've done it a few times, right, and so you know,
Speaker 1: and Anthony went there and that it is so because
Speaker 1: I was touched with him after Australia. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I like, because I'm still drinking then and I got
Speaker 1: so I'm so glad. I can you give me a
Speaker 1: reason to message him again? I'll just be like, he's maybe,
Speaker 1: I would say, maybe the best stand up I've ever
Speaker 1: seen see.
Speaker 3: I hear legends of this, I hear legends of this,
Speaker 3: and unfortunately it was a time before you know, writing
Speaker 3: was invented, so there's no record of any of this.
Speaker 1: There's some high hieroglyphics, there's some hieroglyphic, but there's no
Speaker 1: record of this.
Speaker 3: But this is all I hear because he was to
Speaker 3: ground this in a bit of facts. He I think
Speaker 3: the is fair to say the biggest comedy management company
Speaker 3: in Australia is Token Token Management, and the guy who
Speaker 3: founded is Kevin White. And Kevin White, so he imagined
Speaker 3: this guy who founded the most successful comedy management company
Speaker 3: in the country. He when he was eighteen, he managed
Speaker 3: Anthony Morgan.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: So meaning this wasn't this is not just a case
Speaker 3: of comic saying someone's good. This guy was commercially he
Speaker 3: was considered the best. You know he was he was.
Speaker 2: But he was he was.
Speaker 1: I remember we had a couple of nights and and
Speaker 1: you know he he was pretty pretty wild.
Speaker 3: Oh he was when I met him. He was in
Speaker 3: my sitcom. He was in my sitcom. Yeah, so I
Speaker 3: knew of him before, but I wrote this sitcom about
Speaker 3: being a student intersral student. Yeah, and I wrote him
Speaker 3: a part. I mean it kind of came organically. Wasn't
Speaker 3: like I was out looking to write him a part,
Speaker 3: but of the kind of weary, bitter law lecturer and
Speaker 3: my co writer Declan Faye, also Australian, he suggests Anthony
Speaker 3: Morgan for this. I was like, yeah, that's that's great.
Speaker 3: So we had him in and I was a bit
Speaker 3: worried because I never met him before. I thought maybe
Speaker 3: he'd be like, don't come at me with your stupid
Speaker 3: you know, whatever your new ideas are.
Speaker 2: I don't care about this. You know who I was
Speaker 2: at all. He came very collaborative, he got it. He
Speaker 2: was down.
Speaker 3: He played with us, very very down to earth, you know.
Speaker 2: But he but he in.
Speaker 3: Essentially he lives off the green Tasmania. I'm pretty sure built. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not not pretty sure. I know for a fact
Speaker 3: he built his own house with his own hands. And
Speaker 3: then he'll go and do the local pub gig every
Speaker 3: few months, and I'll kind of harass him to like
Speaker 3: record it, or I'll harass him to digitalize cassette that
Speaker 3: he's recorded from years.
Speaker 1: A funny because he's kind of like, you know, like
Speaker 1: in the movies where they have to go and get
Speaker 1: the detective, you know, and he's retired, but he works
Speaker 1: on his boat and they say, you're the only guy
Speaker 1: that Morgan's kind of like that as a comedian is
Speaker 1: like I didn't give up on comedy.
Speaker 2: Comedy gave up on me. It's a bit of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he I think he tried to come to
Speaker 3: America and he I think he toured a bit in America.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a there's sun comics who know
Speaker 3: him very well, you know, And so I'm so surprised
Speaker 3: that you mentioned him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, like I say, I think he may
Speaker 1: be the I mean, look in my memory, he's the
Speaker 1: He's the best I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It's the fate of all legends to be forgot.
Speaker 3: Yes, but he's Yeah, he's still in Australia and I'll
Speaker 3: put you guys to touch it.
Speaker 1: But how did you become a fan of comedy? Like
Speaker 1: you grew up in Singapore?
Speaker 2: Right, yes? So is there a big scene of comedy there?
Speaker 2: Uh no, there was like a TV thing.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Singapore, but they had they have
Speaker 3: their own type of comedy, you know, where it's not
Speaker 3: stand up, it's kind of TV sketch, a little slapsticky,
Speaker 3: there was one stand up comic in Australia, but.
Speaker 2: Uh, it wasn't. It's not a known thing.
Speaker 3: Sou Comedy is not a known tradition in Singapore right
Speaker 3: the way it is in the UK or Scotland, Australia.
Speaker 3: You know, where it's very established. You know what you're
Speaker 3: supposed to do. You go to the pub, you watch
Speaker 3: a comic, right, you know how you're supposed to behave.
Speaker 3: But we don't have that.
Speaker 2: We don't have those norms. But when I started there,
Speaker 2: there wasn't. There was Billy.
Speaker 3: Conley and oh okay, well then maybe we're not so different. Yeah,
Speaker 3: maybe not so different.
Speaker 1: When I started in Scotland there was Billy Connley who
Speaker 1: was huge, like Billy's twenty years old toy. Absolutely, and
Speaker 1: then there was there were no comedy clubs. There was
Speaker 1: no places to go, so you would go to like
Speaker 1: a it would be like a music club or a
Speaker 1: discord or something. For yo, is this that would be
Speaker 1: like mid eighties mid eighties still okay?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: In America they were the you know, they had the
Speaker 1: all the comedity clubs, the guys with the piano key
Speaker 1: ties and all that.
Speaker 2: But we didn't have any of that, you know, you
Speaker 2: know what's interesting.
Speaker 3: I was, I'm very lucky to meet Jerry Seinfeld and
Speaker 3: I got to ask him. I asked him about this,
Speaker 3: and he said the same thing as you did. He
Speaker 3: said when he started, there was nothing that's right. I
Speaker 3: think he I think he's he said he said, and
Speaker 3: he wasn't he you know, I don't think he was
Speaker 3: saying he definitely wasn't saying this to just be arrogant.
Speaker 3: He was just saying like we were the ones who
Speaker 3: started it. He's not in the rooms. Him and Lano
Speaker 3: at the time as well. I mean, these guys, Uh,
Speaker 3: do you ever meet Lano?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: No, man, Lano's an interesting guy. Not many people know
Speaker 1: how good a stand up.
Speaker 2: Yes he is. I believe that. I believe he's a
Speaker 2: great stand up. He really is.
Speaker 3: Robinson at the Seller will always tell me how good.
Speaker 2: I did some dates with Jay this summer. We did
Speaker 2: this like old dudes of late night thing that's funny, funny.
Speaker 1: It was great funny Me and Jay in our senior hall.
Speaker 2: Jackie Mason was great. I met.
Speaker 1: He's lovely, lovely and another great stand up. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like but it's not I think stand up is
Speaker 1: a little bit like like playing electric guitar. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who are good at it, but you've
Speaker 1: got to have something that's maybe just a little different.
Speaker 2: I mean, make you stand out. Yeah, that's all. That's
Speaker 2: all I think.
Speaker 1: I know what.
Speaker 2: You're right, So what was it with you?
Speaker 1: You think that they made you because you have to
Speaker 1: do this thing. I think all stand ups have to
Speaker 1: do this. You go on stage and you dine it
Speaker 1: doesn't work. And that's the when you do that, like
Speaker 1: a real stand up laughs when you say that, because
Speaker 1: that's what Because I remember the first time that happened
Speaker 1: to me, and when I was terrible, and when I
Speaker 1: came over when people were going on, I'm sorry that happened,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh.
Speaker 2: No, I got to do that. I can't. I got
Speaker 2: to do it again.
Speaker 1: And I think there's something about stand up comedians that
Speaker 1: male female doesn't matter. It's like you're drawn to that
Speaker 1: weird kind of love of Yes, failure is a failure.
Speaker 2: What is it? I don't know if that's ours. I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's a level failure.
Speaker 3: I do think that I do think if I'm looking
Speaker 3: for a common thread there, I would say that it's
Speaker 3: probably that all the great comics I know don't think
Speaker 3: that they're good at comedy, right, and so you naturally
Speaker 3: think that you're bad shit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so when you bomb, if you feel like, oh yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm supposed to bomb, I'm not good at it, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you validate right, right, And then that's kind of how
Speaker 3: you quote unquote be a good comic.
Speaker 2: That's a sign of being a good comic.
Speaker 3: Because when you not that you enjoy bombing, but you're
Speaker 3: able to process in a way where of like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not good.
Speaker 1: The Craig Ferguson Fancy Rascals Stand Up Tour continues throughout
Speaker 1: the United States in twenty twenty four. For a full
Speaker 1: list of dates and tickets, go to the Craig Ferguson
Speaker 1: show dot com slash tour. So you are there, My
Speaker 1: wife has this theory that all stand up comedians have
Speaker 1: the same type of mother. Oh interesting, it's cold with
Speaker 1: bad boundaries.
Speaker 2: That's what she says, bad boundaries. That's pretty close. That's
Speaker 2: pretty close.
Speaker 1: Did it to Lewis Black and he was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, that's like that, that's great, that's funny. He
Speaker 1: said that he only Lewis said that he he only
Speaker 1: made eye contact with his mom on or deathbed, but
Speaker 1: she was one hundred.
Speaker 2: And four men.
Speaker 1: Oh man, But do you know it's kind of it
Speaker 1: resonates a little bit.
Speaker 2: I mean, she met obviously my mom's past, but she
Speaker 2: met my mom. She's like Jesus.
Speaker 3: And for the record, my mom is very warm, but
Speaker 3: there is some no boundaries in there and can be
Speaker 3: very harsh.
Speaker 1: My mom can be very harsh. So yeah, so you know,
Speaker 1: a different world for cold. Yeah, but it's that kind
Speaker 1: of thing. It's like whenever whenever I see a good
Speaker 1: stand up.
Speaker 2: Like their mom must be very tough. Yeah, very tough. Mom.
Speaker 2: My mom is tough. That's fair.
Speaker 1: Was she upset that you went in a stand up
Speaker 1: because obviously, if you're going to law, that's one say
Speaker 1: of expectations.
Speaker 2: You just say not to practice.
Speaker 3: Well, I had a few things to answer a question.
Speaker 3: She was not as upset as I thought she'd be.
Speaker 3: Wasn't It wasn't thrilled, but not upset. But one of
Speaker 3: the few reasons for that was that we actually I
Speaker 3: went to university in a different country, so she wasn't
Speaker 3: even did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't tell her. I didn't make a big
Speaker 2: deal about it.
Speaker 3: I just went to go do it because I kind
Speaker 3: of instinctively knew like, hey, if this is going to
Speaker 3: work for me, I kind of have to do it
Speaker 3: on my own. I can't be you know, asking friends
Speaker 3: to come. I can't be like, you know, making like.
Speaker 1: You never have friends. It's hilarious now now even now,
Speaker 1: I don't want friends now. I don't like, I don't
Speaker 1: even like my wife coming to that. Yeah, it's like,
Speaker 1: please don't because you know then for you, yeah, it'll
Speaker 1: be in my hand. Yeah, yeah, it be in my
Speaker 1: head that you're out there gone.
Speaker 3: And also comedy is like it's different to music in
Speaker 3: that you have to be you have to want to
Speaker 3: be there. You can't just be background. So if you
Speaker 3: don't want to be there, just don't you know what
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: Have you done any corporate of course, yeah, because that's
Speaker 1: when that's the taste.
Speaker 2: They don't want They don't really want you, but they
Speaker 2: have anyway.
Speaker 3: Because it's corporates are so weird that they want you,
Speaker 3: but they don't. They sought you to come and p
Speaker 3: they will pay you and they'll pay you money, but
Speaker 3: they don't want you to be there. I know, it's
Speaker 3: the weirdest gig. It's horrible, nobody wants she'll be there.
Speaker 3: I talked to a musician, very famous.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you what that you know, Josh
Speaker 1: Homie from Queensland Stone Age, Right, Okay, they don't corporate
Speaker 1: gigs anymore. He said the last time he did it,
Speaker 1: he was like playing down the front and there was
Speaker 1: a natural cheese fountain and there was a woman taking
Speaker 1: that and he was like, yeah, we can't do this. It's
Speaker 1: not a rock and roll it's not it's.
Speaker 2: Not rock and roll.
Speaker 3: And you know, comedy and rock and roll are very
Speaker 3: kind of countercultural. That's why it's it's at the Edinburgh
Speaker 3: Fringe Festival. It's at the Fringe Festival, not the Edinburgh Festival.
Speaker 3: It's a fringe thing. Where did you Where did you
Speaker 3: play in Edinburgh?
Speaker 2: Underbelly?
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I don't know where that is. Oh that's I
Speaker 1: don't even know where that is. The Caves, the Caves.
Speaker 1: We started in Edinburgh in the eighty four, right, right,
Speaker 1: and I did it for I guess until about early nineties.
Speaker 2: I guess Edinburgh boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I'm from Glasgow, but I started stand doing
Speaker 1: I had a show that started at two o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning above a bar called the Kaffee Royal in Edinburgh.
Speaker 2: And it was and what was that?
Speaker 3: That's not when you say you had the show, doesn't
Speaker 3: mean that's a weekly show.
Speaker 1: No, it was every night, every night you be two
Speaker 1: am at this Yeah, every night two am at this
Speaker 1: bar during the.
Speaker 3: Endber Festival during the festival. Yeah yeah, no no, like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's cool.
Speaker 1: But I didn't have anywhere to left because I'm glad,
Speaker 1: so I used to sleep in the photo booth at
Speaker 1: Waverley Station.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's fucking gnarly. And did you was it
Speaker 2: one hour? Yeah, well I guess I know.
Speaker 1: I would just do stand up for one hour at
Speaker 1: two am, about half an hour, I don't know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say.
Speaker 2: And was it like paid by donation? Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: yeah it was.
Speaker 1: So who were the comedians that you were drawn to
Speaker 1: when you when you were starting out, you thought I
Speaker 1: want to be like there or that.
Speaker 2: So the person makes me laugh. Yeah.
Speaker 3: The truth is when when I was four and a
Speaker 3: half years old, I was watching Seinfeld the TV show,
Speaker 3: and he would do his stand up in the interstitials.
Speaker 3: I remember, yeah, yeah, and then I told my mom like, hey,
Speaker 3: I want to do that one day.
Speaker 2: And she didn't.
Speaker 3: She was like, okay, whatever, you know, And that was
Speaker 3: the first time I saw someone doing that, Like, oh,
Speaker 3: I didn't know that was a way to express yourself.
Speaker 2: But I didn't do anything about that.
Speaker 1: At four years older, you don't want to be doing clubs.
Speaker 3: I was in New Hampshire at that time, Manchester, New Hampshire.
Speaker 3: Oh really, yeah, yeah, I was, so my parents went
Speaker 3: there for college and they went to college very late
Speaker 3: after that, two kids. I was in Manchester, New Hampshire
Speaker 3: for a bit and that's why I saw Seinfeld.
Speaker 1: And my wife is from oh really, Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: she's from Hanover, Hanover, Oka. But it's but there's a
Speaker 1: place where they are cold.
Speaker 3: My memories of it was always very I liked that,
Speaker 3: but I was like four, you know, I go back
Speaker 3: there now. I went back there after I moved back
Speaker 3: to America after about twenty years. Twenty five years. Actually
Speaker 3: took me twenty five years to move back to America,
Speaker 3: and I went back there as an adult and I
Speaker 3: was like, oh, I guess this is a very random
Speaker 3: town to be in.
Speaker 2: Now. Now you live in New York, I live in
Speaker 2: New York. Yeah, do you do you socialize?
Speaker 1: You part of the scene with with like you socialize
Speaker 1: with E colonomics.
Speaker 2: Do you go to the comedy club? I hit it hard.
Speaker 3: I don't hang as much because I guess I'm older
Speaker 3: or whatever. But like, dude, you're not even forty. I'm
Speaker 3: I'm on in this scene. And but I do hit
Speaker 3: the clubs hot in Manhattan, in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do you try try trying new stuff?
Speaker 2: Yeah, trying new stuff.
Speaker 3: I try to get a new line every time I
Speaker 3: get on, at least one new line.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, old joke, even just get a
Speaker 2: new line. Do you do you do that?
Speaker 1: Like when you're putting together like an hour, which I'm
Speaker 1: doing right now, right, do you do you learn it
Speaker 1: or do you write it piece by piece? Are you
Speaker 1: methodical about it?
Speaker 3: My method has my mythology has changed over the years,
Speaker 3: I think so right now. I come from Australia, so
Speaker 3: we used we we're used to the Edinburgh.
Speaker 2: Right, that vibe, that vibe. So you do like an hour?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you do an hour?
Speaker 3: Sometimes people do an hour before they even have fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as weird as that is, ye, Yeah, because they're
Speaker 1: doing crwd work and they're doing.
Speaker 3: Personal stories, and they're a bit more indulgent, and the
Speaker 3: crowd gives them a bit more rope because it's so
Speaker 3: I come from that school, but I think I was
Speaker 3: always considered a more I don't want pay myself on
Speaker 3: the back, but I think I was more of a
Speaker 3: US style comic doing like an hour, So I'll never
Speaker 3: have a great pathos. So then I never had a
Speaker 3: grete One Men's show like some you know, someone died
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My my shows were always like kind of fifteen minutes
Speaker 3: of material, fifteen minutes of material, fifteen minutes maturre and then.
Speaker 2: Some Do you think that'll change as you get older kids? Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, enough kids, No, you know, I come from that,
Speaker 3: so it's hard for me to differentiate that One Men
Speaker 3: show and you know, quote unquote pure stand up, So
Speaker 3: I you know.
Speaker 2: What is pure stand up? Though I don't really understand.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, good, I mean is it one liners? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I mean maybe it's okay. So here's where I am
Speaker 3: right now with this new hour I've been doing. I've
Speaker 3: done two tours in America now this is my third tour,
Speaker 3: and my goal was I wanted every fifteen minutes of
Speaker 3: this next hour to be something I could just do
Speaker 3: in a comedy club, right, So that was my goal,
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of what I've been working towards,
Speaker 3: meaning I'll work at fifteen minutes and then I'll work
Speaker 3: the next fifteen versus you know, sometimes you just have
Speaker 3: that club fifteen and then you have like forty minutes
Speaker 3: of stuff that will work after you have convinced audience
Speaker 3: that you're not terrible.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, yeah, you can butter them up and then
Speaker 1: you can do it right, right, right.
Speaker 3: So now that's kind of my goal was to do
Speaker 3: that fifteen minutes. So in that sense, it's more of
Speaker 3: a stadt quote unquote stand but I've always been kind
Speaker 3: of a longer joke teller, you know. I think that
Speaker 3: again that comes from coming from Australia.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 1: So I think also to me that that feels more
Speaker 1: like if you go to the real kind of storytelling
Speaker 1: roots of what this thing is. Yeah, when I'm putting
Speaker 1: together an hour, I put together like, maybe I don't know,
Speaker 1: twenty minutes of stuff that I know I'm going to
Speaker 1: say yes, But I know when I I always start
Speaker 1: pretty much the same time place I will start in Denver.
Speaker 2: The comedy works in Denver, all the best clubs in
Speaker 2: the country for some reason. Yeah, it's crazy good.
Speaker 1: So I go there with what I it's twenty minutes
Speaker 1: in my head and invariably it's an hour by the
Speaker 1: time I get it out in the club.
Speaker 3: Or you come from that tradition, right, you come from that,
Speaker 3: you know Connorley tradition.
Speaker 2: You can come up twenty minutes of ideas and make
Speaker 2: it come of an hour. Well, but I think you
Speaker 2: it feels to me like you have that too. I
Speaker 2: don't think. So. Do you think I'm that good at it?
Speaker 1: Well, I don't know, because we like when I want
Speaker 1: you to do stand up. It feels to me like
Speaker 1: you're someone who like that. Maybe I'm wrong, Maybe you're
Speaker 1: really good at when I would speak easy when you
Speaker 1: were doing that thing about everybody, you know, say the
Speaker 1: race that you but there was like the thing with
Speaker 1: the glass and all that kind of looked really kind
Speaker 1: of off the cuff to me?
Speaker 2: Was that really?
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been touring that for a while before
Speaker 3: filming it, and so so builds Yeah, building over to
Speaker 3: get it. But I definitely to go back to what
Speaker 3: you're saying about turning twenty into an hour. If you
Speaker 3: have twenty, I think you can get to forty five,
Speaker 3: which is basically an hour, right, But if you have five,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you can get to I don't
Speaker 3: I can't get to it.
Speaker 1: I forget every upstairs, and you just you're up on
Speaker 1: stage and you just fucking forget everything. Yeah, yeah, you
Speaker 1: know what Lano said. I said that to Lanta, was
Speaker 1: talking to Lanto about it goes. Just keep talking, just
Speaker 1: keep talking. They don't know this, right, just keep tucking.
Speaker 3: But that's also a product of being able to play
Speaker 3: to your own crowd in a very friendly environmentally, you
Speaker 3: know what I mean. And I think sometimes you know,
Speaker 3: New York comedy clubs can kick you in the ass
Speaker 3: a little bit. So that's and that's why I moved
Speaker 3: here because not like Australia, they probably give you some
Speaker 3: rope you know, where you're like, oh, yeah, okay, you forgot.
Speaker 3: You can mess around. You can be like, ah there's
Speaker 3: nothing here, you know, like you go through your whole
Speaker 3: setup and you're like, ah, this was funny in my head,
Speaker 3: and then people are ahaha, they go along with it,
Speaker 3: especially if you call your show, you know, testing material,
Speaker 3: track focused on this testing material.
Speaker 2: Whatever I do, I don't test here. You just go
Speaker 2: for it again.
Speaker 1: We come from well, I mean also the thing is
Speaker 1: as well, is that if it doesn't work, that's also funny.
Speaker 2: Yes, well that's my point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that you're, you know, friend of the environment where
Speaker 3: if something doesn't work, it's also funny and you honestly
Speaker 3: you have the chops to pull it off anyway.
Speaker 1: All right, So I don't I don't have nothing. I
Speaker 1: disagree with that, but I think what I think what
Speaker 1: it is is that what happens when you get what
Speaker 1: you want from stand up? What do you want from it?
Speaker 1: Apart from the like you want to succeed every show. Yes,
Speaker 1: but a lot of stand ups, I know, they want
Speaker 1: to be actors, or they want to be writers, or
Speaker 1: they want to be philosophers, or they want to be.
Speaker 3: If I can do a gig where my old stuff killed,
Speaker 3: I had a good crowd interaction and my new stuff killed, then.
Speaker 2: That's when I'm fire the three things.
Speaker 3: If one of those three things doesn't happen, I means
Speaker 3: I'm just a fraud.
Speaker 1: I'm like and the stand the stand up occupy all
Speaker 1: of your frontal lobes or is it is like do
Speaker 1: you want to like, do you play a musical instrument?
Speaker 2: Do you have no do anything else?
Speaker 3: I I enjoy acting, you know, acting like when you
Speaker 3: were in Crazy Right Asians.
Speaker 1: I think for for like Asian actors. That was like
Speaker 1: Braveheart was for Scottish actors. Yeah, you know when I
Speaker 1: wasn't and Brave Heart I always feel like such a.
Speaker 2: That's so funn Did you audition?
Speaker 1: Did you audition audition for the The Guy Who Kills Edition?
Speaker 2: Do you remember the movie? A little bit?
Speaker 1: Audition for the part that was played by an Irish guy,
Speaker 1: And I like, but here's the thing as well. When
Speaker 1: the movie came out, I was in Hollywood and after
Speaker 1: and I was kind of, oh man, it was awful
Speaker 1: and I didn't have any work, And I went to
Speaker 1: audition for the part of reading the audiobook adaptation That's
Speaker 1: funny of Braveheart. I didn't get it. The cast and
Speaker 1: director said to me, we don't fail. Your accent is
Speaker 1: a than Wow. I know that's so funny. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: there was a time when you know everything Scottish fucking thing.
Speaker 1: I was like, do you ever look at parts and think,
Speaker 1: you know what, fuck you.
Speaker 2: No, I'm not doing it just because I'm Asian or because.
Speaker 3: I get that with Scottish, because I like, yeah, I
Speaker 3: mean when when it was when it's kind of very
Speaker 3: stereotypically written, then I want to do this. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: I auditioned for everything on principle because I feel like I,
Speaker 3: as someone who didn't go to acting school, I need
Speaker 3: the reps. I need the repetitions soever comes in an
Speaker 3: audition for it. But that stuff I'll tell my agents like, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm sending you in an audition because i.
Speaker 2: Need the practice. But I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna
Speaker 2: do this one.
Speaker 3: There was one unfortunate one that was so it was
Speaker 3: Clifford The Big Red Dog, and I.
Speaker 2: Was like, oh, this is cool. You were going to
Speaker 2: be the dog.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I was like, this is a cool movie.
Speaker 3: I know this prop is I g I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you know, fun, sounds fun. And they had me play
Speaker 3: the big the Big Bad Guy, which I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm down.
Speaker 2: Love being bad guy.
Speaker 3: And in the movie, unfortunately the Big Bad Guy he
Speaker 3: is a genetic biologist, scientist and he's trying to end
Speaker 3: world hunger, and he's trying to grow food bigger and bigger,
Speaker 3: and everything he grows, all his his whole company keeps failing,
Speaker 3: all his underlying scientists keeps failing at growing big foods.
Speaker 3: And then he sees Clifford the Big Red Dog on
Speaker 3: TV and he's like, get me the fucking dog, because
Speaker 3: we need to figure out how this.
Speaker 2: Thing I wasn't I'm totally absorbed a great story. But
Speaker 2: then now it looks like fucking Asian people try eat dogs.
Speaker 2: So I never even thought that.
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I'm sure they didn't think about that. No,
Speaker 3: one's because everyone's not a fucking idiot. So they want
Speaker 3: racist bad so they want thinking that. But me, I'm like,
Speaker 3: I told my agents, like, hey, even if I get this,
Speaker 3: I can't do this.
Speaker 2: It's not a good look. No, it's not a good look.
Speaker 3: And so.
Speaker 2: But have you ever done stuff? And you went, oh, no,
Speaker 2: I shouldn't have done that.
Speaker 3: Okay, yes, there's one, there's one. Okay, no, this is
Speaker 3: still another audition. They all love this one. So this
Speaker 3: was a bad Henchman. I get the audition in Henchmen
Speaker 3: for I won't say which movie. Uh, and it's it's
Speaker 3: called the Henchman's name is the Scotsman, and I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: maybe that's just his name. Maybe the joke is that
Speaker 3: I have my accent, but my name is the Scotsman,
Speaker 3: right and and but the very first direction is this
Speaker 3: henchman has a very thick Scottish accent. Please try to
Speaker 3: do your scars accent. The joke is that no one
Speaker 3: can understand his stick scars accent. So somewhere on some
Speaker 3: cloud somewhere exists an audition of me doing a Scottish accent,
Speaker 3: and just just I.
Speaker 2: Wish I could hear. I know, I wish.
Speaker 3: I and my friend recorded it and he was reading
Speaker 3: it with me, and we would and I had my
Speaker 3: my friend actually had to do the Scottish accent, and
Speaker 3: then I would like impersonate him and it's.
Speaker 2: Your friend's got oh fuck man, come on. So no,
Speaker 2: But the whole joke was that nobody could understand.
Speaker 3: And then I'm like, well, do I want to be
Speaker 3: the Asian who people can understand because of an accent,
Speaker 3: even if it's Scottish.
Speaker 2: It's very you know, it's a fucking minefield.
Speaker 1: I auditioned one. I went for a edition. Once I
Speaker 1: got this. I really needed a job in Hollywood, and
Speaker 1: I got this. Addition to there was a sitcom called
Speaker 1: Suddenly Susan with Brookshields, Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, remember that, Yeah, it was right.
Speaker 1: In that show, there was a character a Hispanic photographer.
Speaker 1: He was I think he was a photographer for Mexico
Speaker 1: or something like that. And for some reason, I was
Speaker 1: on the audition call in the thing and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh oh, and it's written like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, It's written for exactly, Oh my god, jezu exactly.
Speaker 1: And this is the nineties, and I need a job.
Speaker 1: So I go in and I go in and there's
Speaker 1: a whole line of guys in the audition. They all
Speaker 1: look like Antonio Banderis. Nobody looks like me at all.
Speaker 1: And I go in and and I go in and
Speaker 1: I do the audition. I do the accent in the
Speaker 1: audition like Speedy Gonzalez or something that was bad.
Speaker 3: It is so funny because all these auditions somewhere.
Speaker 2: Will probably just, I mean it terrifying, but what but what? What?
Speaker 1: Yo is that I'm would have been nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 1: because I tell you what happened is when I got
Speaker 1: done or ninety six, when I got done with the audition,
Speaker 1: they said to me, that's the worst accent we've ever heard.
Speaker 2: And went thanks.
Speaker 1: He said, but we are doing a show where we're
Speaker 1: looking for a guy to play the English boss on
Speaker 1: the Drew Carey shows. Can you can you do an
Speaker 1: English accent? And I said, see, Senor Jasey, And I
Speaker 1: got the I got apart from it was the part
Speaker 1: of audition for but because I think you should always
Speaker 1: go if you're a young performer, I always go.
Speaker 2: That's why I.
Speaker 3: Always audition audition because because so there's been three projects
Speaker 3: now where they've given me something else all right, or
Speaker 3: they're still writing the script and they write characters out
Speaker 3: the audition.
Speaker 2: Like you, and they changed the part to make you
Speaker 2: the y. I think that's right. You can't. But it's
Speaker 2: it's so I don't know how I would be now
Speaker 2: starting now.
Speaker 1: Because you guys have a look, you've got to have
Speaker 1: followers on your tickety talk.
Speaker 3: I think yes and no, I think yes and no.
Speaker 3: I think like I've met some people who was shoved
Speaker 3: into a project that I was on because of their followers.
Speaker 3: And I've also and I've met ones who come on
Speaker 3: because of their followers but they're great anyway, right, right, sure,
Speaker 3: And then I've met people who don't have any social
Speaker 3: media and they go cast from now, do you.
Speaker 2: You have a ton of social media? I don't have.
Speaker 2: You don't. I don't have Instagram. That's about it.
Speaker 3: Facebook, That's that's about it. I'm off Twitter now and it.
Speaker 1: Doesn't really exist anymore, doesn't think so kind of falling apart. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it used to be like super powerful.
Speaker 3: But I'm I guess I'm a little old school in
Speaker 3: the sense that when I when I started in nine,
Speaker 3: YouTube just was getting its legs and there was no
Speaker 3: one had figured out how to do stand up on
Speaker 3: YouTube yet. In fact, stand up clips on the internet
Speaker 3: is a last five six years thing. Right before that,
Speaker 3: it was YouTube comedy, right, it was YouTube style sketches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people would do them. Yes, Yes, they would do
Speaker 2: their little things. Yeah, they do things.
Speaker 3: And then the idea at that time was that if
Speaker 3: you were a stand up or live performer, you would
Speaker 3: do your YouTube comedy, cell tickets and people coming to
Speaker 3: you life, and you do essentially a different show live, right,
Speaker 3: because there are different skill sets. But in the last
Speaker 3: six years people have figured out, you know, I got
Speaker 3: to give credit that probably Andrew Schultz is the one
Speaker 3: who figured out how to put stand up clips on
Speaker 3: Instagram in short bursts for better or for worse, and
Speaker 3: put subtitles and find a following, and also educate the
Speaker 3: crowd in stand up comedy, because before that you will
Speaker 3: watch YouTube style comedy which was very physical, it was
Speaker 3: very exaggerated, a little slapsticky right right, and you could
Speaker 3: digest that in like twenty seconds. If you saw a
Speaker 3: stand up clip at that time, you wouldn't even give
Speaker 3: it five seconds. You just what, I gotta listen to
Speaker 3: a setup and then you just swipe. Whereas now I
Speaker 3: think people have because.
Speaker 2: The subtitles, the period subtitles and educating the crowd.
Speaker 1: But I noticed that with my my own late night show,
Speaker 1: it's all over that shit. Yes, I don't get any
Speaker 1: of that. There's nothing to do with me. I don't
Speaker 1: touch it, I don't edit it, I don't put the
Speaker 1: words on it. And then people are clearly putting it
Speaker 1: out Yeah, and they. I guess the hunger that the
Speaker 1: Beast has is just for content. I mean, I mean
Speaker 1: like two thousand hours or two and fifty hours of content.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's nostalgia. There's also Jesus Christ, I'm nostalgic.
Speaker 3: I suppose I Yeah, I mean when you did the
Speaker 3: Britney Spears thing, you know, and that stuff like that.
Speaker 3: It's kind of socially relevant if I had to analyze it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a bit of that.
Speaker 3: Also just good comedy, right, that's not well, Yeah, they
Speaker 3: put it on a unfortunately for better for wordsn't a
Speaker 3: more digestible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they cut everything up and splicely. Well, let me
Speaker 1: ask you this. Have you ever have you ever fallen
Speaker 1: foul of the of the pitfalls of our game? The
Speaker 1: drugs and alcohol the just not a thing that.
Speaker 2: I just it was not a thing because I grew
Speaker 2: up in Singapore. It's just a very very strict in
Speaker 2: my head, is very strict. It's super strict. You can't
Speaker 2: have gum or something. No gum, no drugs, no, no
Speaker 2: freaking yeah you no hats.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, yeah, you can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So they're very they're very strict. So I just grew
Speaker 3: up in an environment where it's like, oh, there's no drugs,
Speaker 3: and I don't know. I just and I I'm physically
Speaker 3: allergic to drinking, so I'll have like one drink and
Speaker 3: then I can stop, which in Australia was like crazy.
Speaker 3: All the comics were always like, oh, they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: you don't drink, right. I was known as a guy
Speaker 3: who doesn't drink, and I was like, I do drink,
Speaker 3: I just don't.
Speaker 2: I stopped at like one, I need to go. They
Speaker 2: wouldn't understand that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was always very I was kind of known
Speaker 3: as the comic who doesn't drink, you know, like, Alronnie,
Speaker 3: you don't drink.
Speaker 2: Right, Ronie doesn't drink. You don't drink basically. But I
Speaker 2: mean I also never felt the urge to.
Speaker 1: So I just you know, I just you ever see
Speaker 1: any of them fucking giant spiders they've got there in Australia.
Speaker 3: No, the ones that's scary isn't the fucking giant ones.
Speaker 3: It's the fuck red the red backs, red back Yeah,
Speaker 3: the most vendomous I saw one of those ones.
Speaker 2: Was it on the toilet?
Speaker 3: No, it was it was in a shoe on the balcony,
Speaker 3: and someone killed it immediately because they because that's that's
Speaker 3: the thing that's a problem, to kill you that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but ten years in Australia, I've only seen one
Speaker 3: of those, right.
Speaker 1: But you know that's that's all you need. That's only
Speaker 1: just one. See my wife, I'm like, we should go
Speaker 1: to Australia. She's like, I'm not kind, Like it's these
Speaker 1: fucking spiders. And I was talking to her today and
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going to talk to Ronnie Chang and
Speaker 1: he's like, spent a lot of time in Australia. And
Speaker 1: she said, and ask him about those those birds that
Speaker 1: can kill you with one kick. I'm like, you're making
Speaker 1: that up, just mem no, no, no, I think it's
Speaker 1: like it's called akasamori or something or yeah, I never
Speaker 1: heard of it. And then she looked it up on
Speaker 1: the internet and apparently she showed me a picture of
Speaker 1: some giant chicken that will kick the ship.
Speaker 2: What the hell? I never saw it in Australia. I
Speaker 2: saw koala bears and ship.
Speaker 3: But yeah, friendly, my my wife is Australian as well.
Speaker 2: What will you ask her about the giant cake and bird? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I was there.
Speaker 3: I gotta find this giant kicking bird. But this isn't
Speaker 3: my joke. This is the great Will Anderson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know Will Anderson, I don't.
Speaker 2: Very funny comed. He's also a legend.
Speaker 3: And uh he's almost I would say almost like an
Speaker 3: Australian Dave Chappelle in how prolific he is.
Speaker 2: But this is his joke, not mine. I'm going to
Speaker 2: butcher it.
Speaker 3: But he was always like man, Americans always scared about
Speaker 3: Australian animal.
Speaker 2: You guys have guns, Yeah, that's true, like everyone.
Speaker 3: Always spiders anything, like you guys have freaking machine guns.
Speaker 1: Well you need a gun though, if you go spiders
Speaker 1: and chickens, they can.
Speaker 2: Kick the ship.
Speaker 3: I've never I gotta find this bird that can kick
Speaker 3: the beat. No, thangaroos can beat the ship off, fucking me. Yeah,
Speaker 3: kangaroos can beat the ship off. The giant red kangaroos. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they can jump like thirteen meters high. They got claws,
Speaker 3: can rip your dick off. They rip your deck off,
Speaker 3: Yeah they can because they.
Speaker 1: And what they will do if you wrap your deck
Speaker 1: off is they put your deck into their collected and
Speaker 1: then they make a little necklace of them. That's right, necklace.
Speaker 1: Did you ever play out in the like the boonies
Speaker 1: in Australia? Do you ever got like yes, like you
Speaker 1: know West of Adelaide and stuff like I went.
Speaker 3: To Alice Springs, which is Darwin, you know, which is
Speaker 3: our back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I didn't get to like super outback, but I got
Speaker 3: like moderate outback.
Speaker 1: So you know, because for most Americans obviously have recently
Speaker 1: priced family, but they have back.
Speaker 2: In Australia, it's like people don't know, there's just nothing there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is the whole desert, desert that miles
Speaker 3: and miles of desert. The middle of Australia is all desert.
Speaker 3: So people only live on the edge.
Speaker 2: And there are the comedy clubs like in the middle
Speaker 2: next everybody.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Captain Bryant's Off the Hook comedy club. No, there
Speaker 3: is comedy clubs in Okay. So Australia comes from that
Speaker 3: Edinburgh comedy festival culture.
Speaker 2: So we have clubs.
Speaker 3: Every city has like maybe one club, but really the
Speaker 3: way comedy is consumed there is comedy festivals. So every
Speaker 3: city and state will have its own comedy festival kind
Speaker 3: of thing. So it's like a Darwin festival and then
Speaker 3: you'll go there and do comedy there.
Speaker 2: So and with all the local comedians right oh no, no, no.
Speaker 3: They'll fly people in so be the same people. You know,
Speaker 3: you see the same people all the time, all the time. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then and then you go and you'll be performing
Speaker 3: in like small theaters in the country. So one thing
Speaker 3: Australia I didn't realize this is until I got here,
Speaker 3: but Americans will consider Australia extremely socialists.
Speaker 2: So they have a lot of arts funding. The government
Speaker 2: funds a lot of arts for the country. Rural Australia
Speaker 2: has a lot of arts. America has that too.
Speaker 1: They have that these theaters out there and like where
Speaker 1: you play an arts theater and it's like, how can
Speaker 1: they afford to pay me this to be here? And
Speaker 1: then you see who else is playing it and stuff.
Speaker 1: All right, you're gonna make it, ok.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, that's what they do.
Speaker 3: So I've done the Melbourn Comy Festival road show twice
Speaker 3: and that, you know, all around Australia. So I would
Speaker 3: go to country Australian towns and just perform there. So
Speaker 3: I've seen like country theaters. You know, do you consider
Speaker 3: yourself an Australian.
Speaker 2: No, No, a Malaysian. You're you're a Malaysian.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about Malaysian Chinese because I know nothing
Speaker 1: about it, because I know it's a little a little
Speaker 1: tricky right politically, So can you explain for me, just
Speaker 1: like imagine, I know nothing which is enough, is exactly
Speaker 1: the truth, because there's some tension right between Malaysia and China.
Speaker 3: Basically, I'm third generation Chinese Malaysian, so my grandparents came
Speaker 3: from China and they settled in My grandparents' parents came
Speaker 3: from China and they settled in Malaysia. So Malaysia has
Speaker 3: a large Chinese diaspora, right, So yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 3: the best way I can explain is that there's like
Speaker 3: Chinese people in Malaysia. I think that's some The racial tension,
Speaker 3: if there is any, is never on the ground.
Speaker 2: Everyone in Malaysia is more friendly face to face.
Speaker 3: It's always like the government is always trying to protect
Speaker 3: its majority Malay population from like minority like China. So
Speaker 3: we'll give certain tax breaks and this is official government policy,
Speaker 3: give tax breaks to the majority of Malay, raise to
Speaker 3: give school places to the majority of Malay race. And
Speaker 3: they always play up those tensions, you know. So that's
Speaker 3: that's the count problem.
Speaker 1: So that the idea of people in the administration playing
Speaker 1: up racial tension and whether their own agenda.
Speaker 3: Is Exfortunately the United States unfortunately universal Yeah, and very
Speaker 3: clear along racial lines, and yeah, so and it becomes
Speaker 3: a whole you know language.
Speaker 2: Do you speak Mandarin Chinese? Yeah? So Mandarin Chinese are Cantonese.
Speaker 1: Gusepoth Wow, that's that's because my son speaks Mandarin. Wow,
Speaker 1: my oldest son speaks Mandarin, which I'm that's it's amazing
Speaker 1: because the language is so phonetically different, it's hard for
Speaker 1: me to I'm usually I got pretty good ear for things,
Speaker 1: but Chinese is hard for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it should be. It's a completely different language. Family.
Speaker 2: Do you make it hard for me and for you? Yeah?
Speaker 3: We all make sure discars. People can't say yeah, but
Speaker 3: I learned Chinese late.
Speaker 2: I learned.
Speaker 3: I learned Chinese from scratch when I was when I
Speaker 3: was eight years old.
Speaker 2: So I know what it's like to learn Chinese. Not
Speaker 2: so I know how hard it is. Can you stand up?
Speaker 3: I've done it before, but I'm not good at it.
Speaker 3: I can do like five ten minutes in it, And said,
Speaker 3: you know Des Bishop, Yeah, yeah, Des Bishop can't be Chinese.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Irish queensborn Irish comedian Des Bishop. So he went to
Speaker 3: Ireland when he was a teenager and he started doing
Speaker 3: stand up comedy in Ireland and one of the things
Speaker 3: he did as an Edinburgh show was he learned Gaelic.
Speaker 2: Is it Gaelic? Yeah, Irish nobody speaks Gaelic though, yeah.
Speaker 3: He so he learned it from scratch and he did
Speaker 3: comedy in it and so that was his show, right,
Speaker 3: And then maybe five or eight years later he said,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm going to learn Chinese from scratch and
Speaker 3: do comedy in Chinese. So he moved to Baiting for
Speaker 3: two years he learned Chinese from scratch.
Speaker 2: The guy speaks. I speak to chine them all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, against read and write, which is not easy because
Speaker 3: reading and right there's no there's no phonetical.
Speaker 2: Reaction, there's no connection.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he does comedy in Chinese. He has a
Speaker 3: special on YouTube in Chinese. And I'm like, man, crazy,
Speaker 3: it's crazy. I mean it's very impressive.
Speaker 2: Yes, it is. He doesn't get enough credit for. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: that is a friend of mine, Eddie is. Yes, Eddie.
Speaker 2: I was on his gala. Oh you were, that's how Yes,
Speaker 2: this is certainly.
Speaker 1: I've known Eddie for a very long time. She learned
Speaker 1: her act in a language that she didn't speak. Yes,
Speaker 1: And then when I did it without knowing really.
Speaker 2: Not just that Eddie did it in like five languages.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right, Spanish, Italian, French, Yep, German.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it was It's a crazy thing that he did.
Speaker 1: I mean, and then he read like marathons and then
Speaker 1: he went twenty five marathons in three weeks and stuff.
Speaker 1: Run a marathon, then do a comedy shot. Her language
Speaker 1: was crazy, It was crazy. It was absolutely you know
Speaker 1: what though, here's what I think his mother's probably.
Speaker 2: You know, his mom died when he was three. Actually
Speaker 2: I didn't know. Yeah, his mom died when he was
Speaker 2: very young. And you know, all these guys from back
Speaker 2: in the day, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody was Edinburgh, Yes, everybody was Edinburgh, Edinburgh, right,
Speaker 1: but you were Edinburgh. I was already doing Late Night
Speaker 1: by the time you were in Edinburgh. But but Edinburgh
Speaker 1: in the eighties. It was an interesting thing because I
Speaker 1: wonder it was such a backing alien. It was such
Speaker 1: a it was such a heavy drinking, heavy lateness thing.
Speaker 1: But it sounds like Australia when you were coming up
Speaker 1: pretty much the same deal.
Speaker 2: Edinburgh is different.
Speaker 3: Australia was a steady drunk Edinburgh was intense for three weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 3: atomic bomb drunk, which, like again I didn't drink, so
Speaker 3: I was just observing it. But man, it was physically
Speaker 3: a mentally, I don't know what it was like back
Speaker 3: in the day.
Speaker 2: But when I it was, I mean I ended rehappen.
Speaker 2: So but what about how commercial it was?
Speaker 3: That's this is what I really want to ask you about,
Speaker 3: because when I went it was.
Speaker 2: It's just so you have something to contrast with.
Speaker 3: When I went was twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen,
Speaker 3: and at that time it was already Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh Fringe.
Speaker 3: And then in response to the commercial quote unquote commercialization
Speaker 3: of the of the Edinboral Fringe, that had the Free
Speaker 3: Fringe that was already going on. So there was essentially
Speaker 3: three festivals happening in this one city, and so it
Speaker 3: was all a competition to get into the big six
Speaker 3: venues whatever that was.
Speaker 2: So it was an assembly room, assembly on.
Speaker 3: The belly, something else, something else. And and then in
Speaker 3: response to that they started the Free Fringe to start
Speaker 3: this idea.
Speaker 1: So was it like that when you started? Yeah, it's similar.
Speaker 1: I mean there were venues that were established the Gildiballin.
Speaker 1: I don't think that was there when I started, but
Speaker 1: the assembly rooms was the big one and everyone tried
Speaker 1: to get in that, and there was there was this
Speaker 1: idea I remember because I was Scottish and there was
Speaker 1: all these English comedians used to come up, and I
Speaker 1: fucking hated them.
Speaker 2: Because they weren't really comedians.
Speaker 1: They were like rich kids that went to Oxford and
Speaker 1: Cambridge and they would come up. Some of them were talented,
Speaker 1: but most of them were just fucking, you know, playing
Speaker 1: at it. And they would come up and I would
Speaker 1: get if I got a big audience to say yes,
Speaker 1: but it's a local audience, isn't it.
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, isn't every fucking audience a local audience.
Speaker 3: That's so funny that even you had your gripes with
Speaker 3: the festal Oh my god, as you should, because I
Speaker 3: have my gripes. But I don't know whether I'm just
Speaker 3: being a bitter you know, no.
Speaker 2: No, no, you got to be better. You can't.
Speaker 1: You have to have a certain amount of betterness. It's
Speaker 1: an essential part of the rest. Michael Michael jordan'ship on
Speaker 1: your should Yeah, I think you have to have a
Speaker 1: little bit of it. It's it's part of the savory.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't have all edge. Gives you a bit
Speaker 1: of edge, yes, I think so, I agree, And what
Speaker 1: makes you better?
Speaker 2: Then? I don't know if it makes me better? I got,
Speaker 2: I just got.
Speaker 3: So. The joke is which I did in Speak Easy,
Speaker 3: was that the joke for me, which is true, is
Speaker 3: that I would go to Edinburgh and try to get
Speaker 3: them to like me, and then they will always give
Speaker 3: me shitty reviews and I always they would give you
Speaker 3: the worst reviews. And I think part of it is,
Speaker 3: you know, main reason is me I wasn't very good
Speaker 3: and I was still getting better starting out in comedy.
Speaker 3: And two I think there's something too in Edinburgh. You
Speaker 3: know that in the UK there's not a lot of
Speaker 3: context for what they would say East Asian storytelling. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of context for Asian storytelling, for Indian subcontinents
Speaker 3: like that kind of even I would say the British
Speaker 3: Muslim experience contxt. I think the East Asian experience in
Speaker 3: the UK is very it's still very unclear, you know.
Speaker 2: Do you know what my theory is? But then refestival
Speaker 2: of bad reviews, here's what it is. Because I've gone
Speaker 2: through that and I feel exactly the saying. But here's
Speaker 2: what happens. So Edinburgh is a small sleepy town.
Speaker 1: It has one fucking local newspaper, right, one fucking newspaper,
Speaker 1: and there's one guy on that newspaper that is even
Speaker 1: interested in comedy, right, that's it.
Speaker 2: But during the Edinburgh Festival there's like twenty.
Speaker 1: Thousand fucking stand up stores, so they have to draft
Speaker 1: in every fucking journalist. They have, anybody they know that
Speaker 1: you can write, and they all go out and write
Speaker 1: reviews of comedy. So if you get the guy who
Speaker 1: normally writes about ousts, right and he's reviewing you, and
Speaker 1: he goes Craig Ferguson's show was very disappointing. There were
Speaker 1: no owl yes, and they bring their fucking agenda to
Speaker 1: the review, just like people on the internet, you know.
Speaker 1: And I and I think that that what was great
Speaker 1: training for me for the Internet was how shitty the
Speaker 1: reviews were in Edinburgh.
Speaker 2: People.
Speaker 1: I remember getting a bout reviewing and I've met the
Speaker 1: journalist in the bar and I was like, the fuck would.
Speaker 2: You ma with it?
Speaker 4: Because he was like he was like I was like,
Speaker 4: with the fucking review There was fucking terrible.
Speaker 2: He was like he didn't like my hair. He died,
Speaker 2: what the is my hair got to do with that?
Speaker 2: And all that shit?
Speaker 1: And and he said to me, I'll never forget this.
Speaker 1: He said, if you put your head above the parapet,
Speaker 1: you should be ready to get shot at.
Speaker 4: I said, it's not fucking war. It's not a fucking parapet.
Speaker 4: It's just a fucking guy telling joke, trying to trying
Speaker 4: to like, why do you make everything conflict?
Speaker 1: And I still think that about like the internet now,
Speaker 1: Like whenever I like the Internet, I think it's just
Speaker 1: like show business. It's only dangerous if you take it seriously.
Speaker 2: But but if you do it seriously, you can kill you. Yes,
Speaker 2: I agree, And so that's a great way to put it.
Speaker 2: So what happens when what would happen to you?
Speaker 1: Like, say it's twenty years from now, where do you
Speaker 1: want to be? Do you have a I want to be?
Speaker 1: Do you want to have kids? Do you want to
Speaker 1: do you want to get out of time? Do you
Speaker 1: want to have a farm with maybe kangaroos.
Speaker 3: I'm kind of really living the dream right now. So
Speaker 3: I sa so every day every night when I can
Speaker 3: do stand up. I'm just like, Damn, I'm still I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm living in a dream world, like when
Speaker 3: I met the Seller, when I'm at Gothlam, when I'm
Speaker 3: when I'm taking the subway to West Westside Comic clubs
Speaker 3: now New York.
Speaker 2: The real man you're you're living at That's right, that's right,
Speaker 2: that's right. And I remember when I visited New York,
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: Like, damn, how great would be to be able to
Speaker 3: take a subway and do multiple spots a night, you know,
Speaker 3: and and let's have have stage time and all that.
Speaker 3: And now, like you know, in a rare position where
Speaker 3: you can get that, you know, it's it's actually not that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Listen, there's already twenty eight year old kids that you
Speaker 1: can win at the club and they're like, fuck that guy,
Speaker 1: that was spot.
Speaker 2: I'm fucking. I never know. I never bumped that.
Speaker 3: I never buy you don't know, but the club, No, No,
Speaker 3: I never bump. I always book in what you're doing,
Speaker 3: book Yeah, I don't. I don't bump. I hate it
Speaker 3: when you bump me, so I would never bump people.
Speaker 2: Did you ever did you ever get bumped? Yeah?
Speaker 3: One time at the Seller, I got bumped by and
Speaker 3: this lineup was incredible. First of all, when I say
Speaker 3: I hate getting bumped, I didn't mind, because whoever bumps me,
Speaker 3: I'm a fan of this.
Speaker 2: This one night, I.
Speaker 3: Was a seller and man, first it was I'm gonna
Speaker 3: get the order wrong, but I'll get all the names right.
Speaker 3: It was a zizz came in and bumped and I
Speaker 3: was on the lineup right, so they bumped, so, meaning okay,
Speaker 3: everyone's go get later. And then John Stewart came in
Speaker 3: and bumped, and and then Louis c. K came in,
Speaker 3: and then Amy Schumer came in, Richard came back from
Speaker 3: No No, and.
Speaker 2: Then Madonna came in up Madonna came in.
Speaker 3: Then they did a double at Madonna Amy Schumer and
Speaker 3: the lineup made the news. It was like a multi
Speaker 3: million dollar lineup, but you know, money whatever. But it
Speaker 3: was just cool to see that the whole show, the
Speaker 3: whole show crazy. I think Chris met Chris Rock may
Speaker 3: have jumped in, but definitely those names I said, and
Speaker 3: so and that was fun. That's part being New York.
Speaker 3: You can't see that. You can't see anyone else. Literally,
Speaker 3: the best commedy see in the world. You know, there's
Speaker 3: so many there's so much stage time, so much energy,
Speaker 3: there's a very ready audience that's usually very good and
Speaker 3: they understand yeah, or at the very least that, you know,
Speaker 3: the tourists who are here to experience what they think
Speaker 3: is a New York cultural thing.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's man, it's a it's a dream.
Speaker 2: It's a dream.
Speaker 3: But man, when you're going to that's what I really
Speaker 3: love about your show. By the way, with Edinburgh was
Speaker 3: when I watched your show, I remember thinking, this has
Speaker 3: Edinburgh all over it.
Speaker 1: I just stole everything from there, the horse, the robut
Speaker 1: and you're going up close to the camera.
Speaker 3: But to me Edinburgh fringe, which I didn't appreciate at
Speaker 3: the time, but now I do more now. It's such
Speaker 3: a response to whatever people think the mainstream should be,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean, And so whatever mainstream is
Speaker 3: just something different.
Speaker 2: It was punk and that's what it was.
Speaker 3: It was right, and that's I could see a sensibility
Speaker 3: in the show, you know, and I think that's something
Speaker 3: that like I think Americans didn't they understood they're watching
Speaker 3: something a little alternative, but like I.
Speaker 2: Knew the roots of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it do all the time I need a talk
Speaker 3: showing number where someone pierced the mouth with a needle
Speaker 3: and made up with someone in the like you know,
Speaker 3: and I don't come from that. So for me, it
Speaker 3: was because Singapore is as straight laced as you can get.
Speaker 2: Do you do you enjoy gum? Now? Do you do you?
Speaker 2: Do you take a lot? Do you have a lot
Speaker 2: of gum? Yeah? Every moment get itches. I wish you well.
Speaker 2: I'm so glad you can talk to me. I am
Speaker 2: a fan of yours.
Speaker 1: I think you're a great stand up and you're just
Speaker 1: going to get better and better and better by the
Speaker 1: way you're saying. Although I'm just watching you, I'm like,
Speaker 1: you look to me like someone at the peak of
Speaker 1: the powers, and it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you, thank you. Hopefully get better. I'm trying
Speaker 2: to get better, to try and get.
Speaker 1: Better, because really it's it's a little per no, it's
Speaker 1: it's terrific. And I wish you well and speak.
Speaker 2: To you so yeah, thanks so much, very nice to me.
Speaker 3: Not not all before