Sydney comic Andrew Hamilton is quick to point out that Spleen Bar — his barely-lit habitat for the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF) — is the kind of place you can count on for a jaffle and beer at 5am.
On this school night (Wednesday, namely), the city has just flushed its crush of office ants, and, well… now other people are here. Hamilton, who, in black normcore t-shirt, looks every bit the everyman on Spleen’s miniature stage, wants to know who shows up to a bar as dingey as this to see comedy like this on a school night like this? In his estimates, degenerates. Degenerate, he adds, is his kind of crowd. In fact, we learn, his shows regularly attract stakeholders from the criminal justice system, including lawyers, their clients, and everyone in between (bikies included).
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Maybe the almost-sell-out room (more than 90% available tickets sold) is a stable of degenerates. Maybe that’s why it’s so gung-ho with its belly-giggles about it all.
Hamilton is here to perform Shit Bloke. Shit Bloke is the follow-up to 2023’s Jokes About the Time I Went to Prison. That one, his debut, earned him a festival nomination for Best Newcomer.
Hamilton doesn’t want to be typecast as a prison-joke comedian. He did a lot of prison jokes as soon as he was released from prison – but the origins of Shit Bloke live in the realisation Hamilton had in 2021, while he was in Long Bay Jail for selling and supplying enough psychedelic and party-time drugs to secure a four-month reservation in maximum-security accommodation.
It was during his time in Long Bay Jail that Hamilton looked in the metaphorical mirror and realised he didn’t like what he saw. Namely, there was a “shit bloke” staring back at him. A shit bloke who was probably shaking his head. A shit bloke who was probably lamenting, in prison greens, with comments like, “You’ve even disappointed me this time!”
Hamilton doesn’t want to be a self-proclaimed shit bloke – he’s a highly likeable performer, for any that’s worth. But you don’t just re-birth yourself to sainthood in the flash of an epiphany. Hamilton’s redemptive road is pimpled with potholes, roadkill, and meth-toothed tailgaters with hungry bullbars and hot hunting lights. But by all his accounts, he’s headed in the right direction. And he attributes his U-turn to his romance with standup comedy performance. Since 2021, he has performed more than 500 shows, regularly gigging four-to-five nights a week.
Tonight, he peppers his show with jokes referencing “blow darts” (just Google it – or, actually, just don’t). He ruminates about what to say when a partner announces they want breast implants (never say this). He reveals why he wants to ban single mothers on dating apps (the penis joke in the punchline is to avoid).
At the same time, one of Hamilton’s many lucid insights illuminates the dissociation he experiences from thoughts he manifests. How much do they really have to do with what the true version of himself really thinks? His receding inner-shit bloke probably recognises the merit in their affect, but this is a sneaky-poignant moment of identity framing with residual resonance.
Hamilton’s show is crude. It’s crass. It hinges on taboo at times. Some comedians might have found themselves in pretty hot-to-hot water for less. At the same time, his punchlines are savvy, and his paths to them crafted tightly.
Intentional or otherwise (you’d need to ask him), Hamilton’s minimalist performance style amplifies his bluest material by adjacency.
People who have a voracious predilection for dick jokes and bro jokes will find lots to love. People who don’t, might surprise themselves in spite of themselves, anyway. As for the degenerates in the room, he had them before they sat down.
Find Andrew Hamilton gig dates here. Listen to his podcasts here and here.
