Gill first knew he was going to be a comedian from a young age. “I was 13-years-old and I used to do speeches at school,” he says. “There was an opportunity once a year and I was kind of known for it. I’d work on it all year for a five minute round. I got to roast teachers, kids, talk about what had happened. Then I started doing debating which kind of turned into more telling jokes than debating topics. When triple j had that RAW comedy competition, I just thought – I’m doing it.”
One particularly hilarious attribute of Gill’s stand-up shows are his brutally personal anecdotes. Sometimes these can prove a little awkward, when it comes to talking about his parents. “I don’t invite her,” says Gill of his mum. “But then her friends come along. My mum does Botox on people so it’s those inner-city types who are all like, ‘Oh, we heard your son talking about your vagina.’ It’s super uncomfortable. My whole stand-up show is grim personal stories. Someone once told me you should write comedy like your parents are dead, and unfortunately for them they’re alive.”
With his unique brand of humour Gill has not ceased gaining momentum, recently being picked up as a breakfast host for breakfast radio, which has resulted in him becoming somewhat of a recognisable figure about town.
“I have really bad hair,” laughs Gill. “I genuinely look like Jon Snow if he had 25 kilos extra on him. You think when people recognise you they want to have a chat, but usually they just yell out ‘Amos!’ It’s a bit like bird watching.
“For radio, you get to work at 5am. It’s hard to get your head around wanting to be funny at that time. Every other job I’ve had when you start that early you don’t talk to anybody, you hate everybody, you drink a coffee and hunch over. Every day in radio feels like I’m taking a weird early morning flight with Tiger. I’ve got a great co-host, but obviously you can’t swear. So you can’t talk about your mum’s vagina, it’s frowned upon.”
Working for radio has also proved to offer up some material which Gill talks about in his new show. “A lot of it is about commercial radio, taking the piss out of elements of that which are crazy. Some of the weird things you encounter”, says Gill. “Then some of the terrible sexual encounters in my life. Bizarrely a lot of it is about the Reclaim Australia movement, the NRL dog sex scandal and Australian culture at the moment, politics and nuclear waste. I’ll do thirty minutes about sex, and then say, ‘Here’s a story about a hand-job and by the way, what’s going on with nuclear waste?’
“There are so many sex stories in my show,” he adds. “My dad was like, ‘Reckon nan can come along? I’m thinking of taking her out for a roast and then going.’ I don’t think she needs the heart scare.”
BY BEL RYAN
