I think we can all agree that Mother Nature is not a fan of Danny Bhoy.
“I think we can all agree that Mother Nature is not a fan of Danny Bhoy. She does not want to see my comedy anywhere on her planet,” the Scottish stand-up laughs down the phone from Canberra. But he’s got a response for her: “Tough shit, Mother Nature! I will fight you with a wall of mirth!”
He’s joking about the fact that in recent times his show tours have become a little bit more like “an unofficial tour of world disasters”. He says, “I was here in 2009 for the bushfires, doing regional Victoria, and I come back this time and fucking floods and then I’m going to New Zealand, where the theatre has just collapsed,” he says, referring to the Christchurch earthquake. “So I don’t know what’s going on!” he says of Mother Nature, a woman he describes as being “simply not fit to be a mother”.
Having also toured regional Queensland in 2009, when he arrived in Australia at the start of this year, planning on spending a couple of months here working up his new show, he was moved by the devastation of the floods.
Inspired by this, he staged his own flood relief fundraiser shows at the time in Sydney.
“I just thought it would be a good thing to do,” he says now. “So we raised like nine grand in the end, which was quite good. We did five or six fundraisers,” he says. It also meant he could warm up his new showm Messenger (Please Do Not Shoot.)
Since Melbourne audiences saw Bhoy last in 2009, he’s been busy touring the world. Last year, he spent time in Northern America, touring Canada, appearing on Letterman and also in an hour long Comedy Central Special. He also gigged a lot around the US. “My show this year is a lot about my time in the States and really how badly it went,” he says.
The problem for comedians in the US, he says, is that a big TV profile is required to tour. “And I went there with no profile at all and I was just doing gigs. Proper gigs, just going back to the floor, it was strange. I literally finished a big tour here in 2009, with six sold out shows at the Enmore, and two weeks later I was doing five minute open spots in LA clubs.”
The Comedy Central special and Letterman appearance kept being pushed back, so there was no immediate benefit from those. “It probably would have made a fascinating documentary but it was quite painful at the time,” he admits. Looking back, however, he’s grateful for the experience and how it tested him. It wasn’t all just short open spots, which he says over there are more like auditions for your own sitcom, anyway. He headlined comedy clubs in places like New York, Chicago and Texas. “But it was still a comedy club,” he points out. “People weren’t there necessarily to see me, which was interesting, because that’s when I got a chance to spread my wings a bit”.
Those are the gigs he’ll never forget, he says. “I was sometimes going on after two or three brazen, black, in-your-face comics talking about pussy. Literally, I was walking on and telling them stories about the Vikings,” he laughs. “I’m telling you, it was the strangest thing but it tests you, it really tests your mettle as a comedian. The gigs that I won them over with were probably some of my favourite gigs that I’ve ever done,” he says. “When I took a crowd that was so pumped up with horrible, vicious, misogynistic comedy and then over 40 minutess, I said, ‘No, no, this is comedy’ – that was amazing”.
Danny Bhoy performs Messenger (Please Do Not Shoot) at The Arts Centre Playhouse from April 1 – April 17. It’s at 8.45pm Monday – Sunday. Tickets are $39/34 and available through Ticketmaster online, 1300 660 013, 1300 182 183, theartscentre.com.au and at the door.
