If there was an award for most amusing festival poster image, Peter Helliar would be the eternal carry-over champ. Cast your mind back a whole 12months and you might remember him in an almost sepia-toned seventies homage, complete with skivvy, vinyl jacket and porn moustache. It’s the look on his face, though, that best takes the piss out of the earnestness of both the seventies and current hipsters. The year before, he had a ruffle-fronted baby blue shirt and was perched in front of a debutante ball backdrop, grinning inanely like a socially awkward, yet dementedly optimistic virgin. Comically cringe-worthy stuff.
For this year’s show, he’s borrowing an iconic look from the ’80s. He’s wearing a Michael Jackson Thriller style black and red leather jacket with a blonde afro, or “a tight gentlemen’s perm”, as he describes it. “The haircut and my face has been compared to either Betty White or Doris Roberts from Everybody Loves Raymond, so it works on a number of levels”, he says on the phone from Princess Pictures, where he is currently in pre-production for the next season of his scripted comedy series It’s A Date, which screens on ABC1. Helliar “feels like the busiest I’ve ever been” having to manage his writing and directing duties for his own series with his recent promotion to full-time panellist on Ten’s The Project.
These poster images have created something of a rod for his back. “I definitely felt a little bit of pressure this year,” he laughs. “A lot of comics pump up how good the posters are, and I’ve gotta stop, I’ve gotta change tack, because I have to take the pressure away!” he says, still laughing.
Although Helliar jokes he may “bust out” some moonwalking (“but not moonwalking with any kind of subtext; in case I get bored of walking in a forward motion I might switch it up”) there will be no content in the show that relates to the character on his poster. “I do start to wonder how big a percentage of the audience will be disappointed when I just walk out in civvies, just in jeans and a polo shirt. It’s funny because I’ve only ever done one theme show and everything else has just been an hour of stand up. I probably should just call it Peter Helliar Live but that’s boring and none of us really do that,” he says.
Instead, this show is called Totes Grouseballs. What he will be talking about is things that have happened to him recently. Topics in this year’s show will include taking his wife to Paris for their ten year wedding anniversary, being annoyed with how often he gets told he looks tired and taking a photo of his dick.
“I feel I’ve gone up a level,” he says of the quality of his three most recent shows. He’s been at this almost two decades now, acknowledging that has played its part but he believes it’s the honesty with which he now approaches his writing that has changed things. “I’m not looking outwards, I am looking at my own life, and that sometimes means you’re doing stuff about being a father and all those things which when you put in print can sound pretty mundane potentially, but it’s what’s happening in my life and the biggest thing in my life is being a dad and being married. At the moment, my job involves being on TV, so these are the things I end up talking about,” he says. “But that can manifest itself into the husband and father taking a photo of your dick and worried your kids are in the next room on their iPads seeing it, because of the fucking iCloud.” Well, that is a legitimate concern. “I’m bringing this as a warning! I have proudly boasted over the years you won’t learn a thing coming to my shows but maybe this is one you can take away,” he says.
BY JOANNE BROOKFIELD
Venue: The Comedy Theatre, Cnr Exhibition & Lonsdale St, CBD
Dates: April 12 & 19
Time: 6pm
Tickets: $37.50
