So how do you then decide on the style of the music for the lyrics?
Umm.. Good segway! Um, um, it's like he's got leaves! I'm trying to draw a moose, but his antlers look like leaves.. Um, look you! I don't know, I could probably write an essay on that, but uh, I think you either support - it's all about creating a um, an element of surprise in the punchline, so if you're going to get you laugh out of treating a serious subject lightly, there's two things you can do; you can either do what I do in Pigs, and start up like a classic piece then break into the silliness, so you've got this huge lead up of sobriety leading into jauntiness, or you can do what I do in Some People Have it Worse Then Me, which is just go, 'dum da dum da dum da dum da', and then suddenly you come in and go, "oh well I wake up in the morning", and then it goes, whatever of "another fucking day", um, "the horror of another fucking day", and the surprise comes out of it that way round. Something like Canvas Bags, the joke's in the audacity of the music, compared to the simplicity of the lyrics, and in other cases, kind of the other way round.
What about in Hello when you stop to allow people to turn off their mobile phones? And then you make them repeat what you say to them, causing them to seemingly heckle you to just 'get on with the fucking show'?
Yeah! Um, fuck I don't know what that is? I guess it's more musical theatre-y that song, it's like digression but it's an interesting sort of thing. One of the best things I did was stop using musos, because I now have complete control over my tempos and pace; I never play the same song exactly the same twice, I just sort of play the chords and see what happens. So sometimes I might get more out of something by playing it slightly more dramatically, or I decide how long I'm going to play an intro for or if I think the room needs to calm right down, or whatever.
Ali: More spontaneous.
Yeah, it's good. It means I have room to move and change pace, and room to leave pauses and stuff.
What's the strangest thing that's ever happened to you on stage?
Someone threw a condom on stage last night, someone threw money on the stage last night, that was pretty weird too. Oh look, I don't remember um... I had a huge, twenty, fifteen minute improvised bit about a girls labia in Britain somewhere recently! That was weird. Um, people bring me presents and leave them on stage. They all blend into one really because... yeah, it's always fun. But I really like shows where shit goes awry, and people yell shit out and it goes well.
So you can play off what they say?
Yeah, but my show's quite structured so there's not always a lot a room for it but, if it's there I'll go with it and sometimes, it's the best part of the show. But I'm not Ross Noble you know.
Ross Noble is fantastic.
Yeah he's a really good, lovely man!
Where do you feel more at home? In a geographical sense.
Umm, don't know where I'm at home. I love being by the beach in Perth, all my friends are in Melbourne, and my bed is in London. It's a weird one.
Do you ever get muddled with the English and Australian terminologies?
I don't think so?
Like lollies/sweets, toilet/loo, pants/trousers and stuff like that? I still do.
Yeah, really! You'll get used to it, but they'll always laugh when you say trousers instead of pants, or pants instead of trousers.