After a decade playing the field, American stand up Eddie Ifft decided to “go cold turkey” and get himself a girlfriend.
After a decade playing the field, American stand up Eddie Ifft decided to “go cold turkey” and get himself a girlfriend. “When you get a girlfriend,” he explains down the phone line from Bondi Beach, “especially because I was single for ten years, when get a girlfriend you have to go cold turkey; it’s not like cigarettes where you wean off them. That’s not easy! You go right away from being single to in a relationship, boom, it’s over,” he says.
So the gloves are off. He’s dishing dirt and spilling secrets. His latest show for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is called “What Women Don’t Want To Hear”.
“In Australia I’m considered quite offensive and people tend to like the offensive, pushing-the-boundaries comedy. Last year, my show was called Things I Shouldn’t Have Said and it was all about how I have foot-in-mouth disease and always say the wrong thing,” he says. This new show is in a similar vein. “But more like things I’ve said to women and bad dating experiences and my take on marriage and monogamy and divorce and being single.”
So what is this retired player’s take on things like marriage? “Every aspect of it is different and I’m one of these people that can vacillate back and forth. I’ll go ‘Marriage works because it’s good, it keeps the family together’ and then I’ll go, ‘Marriage sucks, look at my friends at bachelor parties that are married – they’re the ones tackling the stripper’. So I go back and froth, but those are the kinds of things I talk about, things that go on. I’ve said before I’m kind of like a magician that’s breaking the code, I’m telling a lot of guy’s secrets that I probably shouldn’t have but I’ve retired so…” he trails off.
Whilst he may have retired from the dating scene, he’s a long way off retiring from comedy. Born in Pittsburgh and now based in LA, this stand-up spends “most of my time in a suitcase”. This year alone, he has headlined not only all over the United States and the UK, but in 15 other countries including South Africa, China and the United Arab Emirates. He has released two CDS and recently recorded a DVD in front of a sold-out crowd at the Sydney Opera House, hosted a pilot for Comedy Central entitled Strap-On and had a role in a Steven King film. Plus there’s also his podcasts, Wingmen that he co-hosts with comedian Bryan Callen and Talking Shit With Jim Jeffries.
He’ll be heading back Stateside as soon as the festival finishes, but first there’s What Women Don’t Want To Hear. “Ultimately, I want people walking out after an hour having laughed for an hour straight. I’m a comedian, I’m not going to teach you anything,” he says. Ifft jokes that now he has a girlfriend it’s a sure sign the apocalypse is coming but he says he’s happy in his new relationship.
Eddie Ifft performs What Women Don’t Want To Hear at The Hi-Fi from March 31 – April 24. It’s at 8.15pm Tuesday – Saturday and 7.15pm on Sundays. Tickets are $25 – $32 and available through Ticketmaster online, 1300 066 013 and at the door.
