Jeremy Dooley started comedy. And then a couple of decades later, he started again.
What did he do in between? He became a multi-level champion martial artist, quite literally throwing himself into everything from full-contact karate to MMA. “I was very good at blocking punches with my face. Which is not a great way to do it, not the way I would recommend,” he quips about his past pursuits.
While successful in the ring, and parlaying that experience into commentary and announcing after retiring from competition, that’s probably not what his family meant when they told him to “get a real job” after his first foray into comedy.
Jeremy Dooley – No Time For Games
- March 29 – April 21
- The Collection Bar, 328 Bridge Rd, Richmond
- Tickets here
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Back in 2002, Dooley began dabbling with stand-up and was a Class Clowns winner. “I was really lucky in high school that Damian Callinan, a very established comedian, was my drama teacher at the start of high school. He came back and coached me and my friend, who I did Class Clowns with, on a routine,” he says of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s national comedy competition for high school students.
“I didn’t really think that comedy was ever really a thing that you could do,” Dooley says of his teenage self, yet that early success inspired him to stage a show during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival the following year.
“We did the whole month and it was a terrible show,” he says emphatically, laughing at the memory. “It was so bad! Like, we were 17, we didn’t know that it was bad. We were just like, ‘This is great. This is the life’. And then, you know, I’m Maltese background, my friend Mario is Italian background, and so after that 2003 festival, we got the ‘you’ve got to get a real job now, you’ve had your fun’ from the parents,” he recalls.
It was not until lockdown that the thought “I wonder if I can do this” returned. Mario wasn’t interested in getting the band back together, so to speak, so Dooley gave it a crack solo. “And one gig has turned into lots and lots and lots of gigs. I’ve done a couple of comedy festival runs over the last few years and have been lucky that they’ve all gone really well. They’ve all sold out, which has been great and I’ve had great responses and been able to travel around the country and to parts of Europe and do shows. So yeah, it’s been great,” he says.
While his time kicking and punching others, who kicked and punched him right back (“I’ve had knee injuries, elbow injuries, neck injuries, sometimes breathing through my nose can be a little bit of an issue…”), would be the obvious choice for material Dooley he says he barely talks about that on stage, as he’s also worked as a youth worker for Reach, speaking to high school students across the country, worked in business, sports and now runs workshops on leadership development.
“I’ve just been exposed to so many different parts of society and different things that I see. There’s so many ridiculous things that I want to talk about first, before I start to talk about myself,” he says of the observational ground he’ll be covering in his Melbourne International Comedy Festival show No Time For Games.
As a Midnight Oil fan, the show title is a nod to one of their songs, but also a reference to the fact Dooley is on his second go and feels he has some lost time to make up for. In what he calls his “chaotic brand of storytelling” Dooley says “No Time For Games is catching me at a time where everybody around me is hustling really hard trying to ‘make it’, and I am trying to stop and smell the roses a bit more and laugh at all the ridiculous things happening around it all”.
Performing Wednesdays through to Sunday for each week of the festival at The Collection Bar on Bridge Road in Richmond, Dooley is not only delivering his high-energy set but carving out opportunities for others, by having two support acts each show.
“I’ve been really lucky, since coming back to comedy, to get opportunities from more experienced acts, and that’s really helped me be able to get some of the gigs that I’ve been getting, considering how little time I’ve been doing comedy. So I just wanted to be able to do that for as many people as I possibly could,” he explains of booking (in order of appearance across the festival) Lily Geddes and Tyson Chappel; Steven Bradshaw and Hamish Deo; former RAW Comedy State Finalist Jacinta Jaye and Michael Haber; and Eli Pascoe and Max Zadnik. “I wanted like a nice diverse mix of people,” he says of those acts.
Not content with writing, performing and producing his own show, Comedy Collective (Dooley and Jarryd Goundrey) are also producing other shows at The Collection Bar. Tales of Colour, from Nqabutho ‘Naza’ Ncube & Kurt Sterling; neurodiverse performer Ainslie Rose in Ainslie’s To Do List, which explores her hyperfixations and special interests; and All Downhill From Here, a triple bill featuring Jarryd Goundrey, Ginny Hollands and Zach Riley.
“I’ve put a lot of work into it, and I’ve put a lot of kilometres into it,” says Dooley of his show, noting that the week before his chat with Beat he was headlining in Brisbane, and will be touring this show. “I think it’s a good chance to see a whole bunch of acts at a good price before every act becomes expensive”.
In a world with an intense new cycle and pressure to post a ‘best life’ to social media, Dooley says he wants No Time For Games to “give people an hour where they don’t have to think about that and where they can just have a laugh”. Who doesn’t have time for that?
Get tickets here.
This article was made in partnership with Jeremy Dooley.
