As soon as he walked onstage, Peter Helliar looked a little down. Admittedly he said he’d had a bad week, although he admitted this was for various trivial reasons before saying witnessing Collingwood lose in an embarrassing fashion to St Kilda just an hour earlier had been the last straw.
His voice sounded a little hoarse, but he managed to lift his spirits by feeding off the reactions of the crowd. A crowd that was littered with channel 10 celebrities, even Sam Frost (not the Melbourne Demons player) and the guy she chose who didn’t claim to be a soccer player were there.
Peter’s material was surprisingly more toilet-humour based than you might anticipate. Yes, often comedians who have to try and be funny in PG timeslots on TV get a little excited when they perform live, but Helliar was a little overzealous with his wording and some of his subject matter.
That might sound prudish, but it’s not meant that way. Source matter can be utterly disgusting as long as it’s really funny. The dirtier the subject the funnier it has to be, a kind of trade off if you will. This early fodder was amusing but just not quite funny enough.
Around 20 minutes into the show Helliar started to hit his stride and the performance felt more effortless and the laughs came more freely. Much of his material centred around married life and his kids. This resonated with a fairly high percentage of the audience.
While the wife and kids shtick might be very common among older comedians, it felt quite fresh as Helliar brought some original opinions and jokes to a familiar topic.
While thoroughly enjoyable, you couldn’t help but feel like Helliar would be a little better in the third or fourth show.
BY ALEXANDER CROWDEN
