MICF: Interview with Josh Earl

Has it really only been a year? After what seems forever the 2010 Melbourne International Comedy Festival finally kicks off proper next week. Here at Mint Custard we’ll be trying to bring you a bit of a taste of what’s happening at the festival, as well as sharing our twopenceworth on shows to see and how to see them.

To kick off the coverage I’m chuffed to bits to be able to share with you an interview with Mr Josh Earl, one quarter of 3RRR’s top light entertainment comedy troupe, the Lime Champions. Josh is performing solo at this year’s festival with his new show Josh Earl vs. the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book. I’ll leave it up to Josh to tell you what it’s about. Here’s what he had to say...

Hi Josh – thanks for talking to Mint Custard. Where are you right now? I’m currently at home looking at a big pile washing up to do but procrastinating and watching American College basketball. It is ridiculous.

You’ve got almost a full month of shows ahead - have you been doing any Rocky/Team America-style training montages to prepare? Totally, I’ve been punching dead animal carcasses with a marionette, but this isn’t any different to how I normally roll. Seriously though I have just performed the show at the Adelaide Fringe and the Brisbane Comedy Festival so Melbourne should be a lot less nerve-wracking than normal as the show is already tested and complete.

What in a word is your show about? Cakes

What in a foreign word is your show about? Le Cakes

How many people are involved in putting on your show each night? Well I’m the only one performing it, but the festival provide me with a tech and a front of house person, I don’t know who these people are though yet.

I’ve always wanted to be a guest on the Muppet Show. I like the way they come to your dressing room to talk about issues in their lives or tell you there’s ‘five minutes to stage’. Is that what it’s like for you backstage before shows? Backstage for me is usually a curtain covering a brick wall in which I hide behind, with no toilet for a pre show wee. Last year I had to wee into a bottle backstage and I was convinced that the audience could smell it for the entire show

Do you have any good luck charms or superstitions? Not to piss into bottles before a show. And to take everything out of my pockets.

As a dessert-based blog your show caught our eye. What’s the best cake anyone ever made for you? My mum made me the dump truck from the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, which is full of lollies - but she also added a trailer to the back with even more lollies. This was good until we realised that a dump truck would never have a trailer on the back. What a bogan.

What is fairy bread about? Fairy bread is wrong, and the name doesn’t even make sense. At least cut the bread into wings or something. It should be called pixelated bread because that’s what it looks like.

Do real men eat cupcakes? Yes, it’s fake men who don’t eat cup cakes because they are mannequins.

Why don’t you see Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver making cakes in the shape of trains or football fields? Surely that’s what the public really want to see. It would be good to see a challenge on Masterchef where they have to make the swimming pool cake. That would be interesting to watch, if only for George [Calombaris] to eat it really quick and get jelly and cake all over him.

As a comedian and musician you must dream of doing a rock opera one day. Who do you think is ripe for a Jesus Christ Superstar-type tribute? I think the beer poet that stands outside of the Rose Street Market would be a good person to pay homage to in a Rock Opera, and he would probably help promote the show by handing out flyers for it.

Both you and Justin have your own separate shows at the festival this year. Have you thought about combining your powers like the magic rocks in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and bringing a Lime Champions spectacular to the stage? We were talking about it but I already had this show idea, Justin was too busy with his writing, and Eva and Damien are both really busy with something they call ‘real life’ - but hopefully one day. Maybe at the Fringe? But we do have an idea to do a show at the Northcote Plaza on the stage they have set up during school holidays...

Can you ever see a version of Lime Champions making it to TV? Maybe. That’s something that would hopefully work, but I don’t think any commercial network would really go for it. I’d love to see our ‘slug-sex’ sketch animated. That would be brilliant.

What international act would you bring out to perform at the Melbourne Comedy Festival if you had the chance? Steven Wright came out a few years ago but was on at the same time as me so I couldn’t see him, so maybe him again but in a timeslot that suited me... and I’d love to see the League of Gentlemen live.

Are there any shows that you’d recommend at this year’s festival or ones that you’re looking forward to seeing? Yes, I think Melinda Buttle’s show Sista Got Flow is really funny. I saw it in Adelaide and can recommend that one. Tim Key is amazing and I can’t wait for his show, Slutcracker. And I really want to see Tig Ontario at the Hi-Fi Bar. Rich Fulcher should also be good – and he’ll be a guest on Lime Champions too on the 29th of March.

Sorry to admit this but I don’t like cake – will I still like your show? I hope so. I don’t force people to eat it or anything, but if you have any memories at all about this book then you should hopefully like the show. I had some overseas people in one night in Brisbane who had never heard of the book before and they said they loved the show. Hopefully they were telling the truth...

Josh Earl vs. the Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book is showing at the Swiss Club, 89 Flinders Lane (btw Russell & Exhibition Sts), Melbourne Tuesday to Sunday from 25 March to 18 April 2010.

Listen to the Lime Champions live every Monday evening from 7-8pm on 3RRR 102.7FM if you’rer in Melbourne or via their online stream for the rest of the world.

We Seem To Be Made To Suffer

I haven’t seen any new robots around Melbourne for a while but I was quite touched last night by the tragic tale of Cheesoid, Mitchell and Webb’s ‘robot that smells.’ If you haven’t seen it yet I’d heartily recommend a few minutes here on You Tube. I take my hat off to them for a story that starts off so cheerfully and yet descends so quickly into Frankenstein-esque existentialist horror. And for bringing together robots and cheese in the name of comedy and pathos (‘Why Cheesoid exist...? Cheesoid hate self…’)

'Petril'

Naturally enough Cheesoid got me thinking about other famous comedy robots, so here’s a list of some of my other favourites, starting with (might as well get him out of the way):

Marvin the Paranoid Android (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) The original and best, Marvin is the Robfather – the don of all crap but lovable robots. He epitomises anthropomorphised boxes-painted silver, covered in crappy LEDs and old oven knobs and bestowed with a voices that are highly unlikely for machines meant to make human life better.

Of course Marvin had life through the Hitchhikers books and radio series long before he first appeared on telly, so its his droning, moaning voice that is his most recognisable and endearing feature (‘The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline.’)

This is just as well because I’m sure if Marvin could have seen the lame-arsed job the BBC props department did with his physical incarnation he would really have had something to moan about. Still, he now has a whole BBC mini-site dedicated to him, which might have made him smile somewhere inside. Maybe.



Talkie Toaster (Red Dwarf) Naturally enough for a show set in the future, cargo vessel the Red Dwarf has more than its fair share of inhabitants with artificial intelligence. This seems to balance out the lack of natural intelligence shown by Lister, Rimmer and the Cat. ‘Service Mechanoid’ Kryten and ship’s computer Holly are the most celebrated, but they are a little too developed for this particular list. Elsewhere there are the Skutters, wandering about the enormous ship undertaking menial cleaning tasks, insulting Rimmer with the middle digit of their three-pronged claws and renacting key scenes from their favourite John Wayne movies.

And yet of all the artificial lifeforms on Red Dwarf, none tickles me more than the Talkie Toaster. Like the best robots he has just one mission (I toast therefore I am) and goes to great lengths to make sure that he carries out his directive. To tell you more would be to spoil his joys, so I suggest just watching his finest moment, trying to persuade a disinterested Lister to partake in some warmed-up bread products.



Alternatively you can look at attempts by real people with real jobs to make a real Talkie Toaster by clicking here.

Dylan (Vic Reeves Big Night Out) It’s interesting how much sympathy can be engendered by a plastic flip-top bin on wheels with flashing lights, deely-bopper eyes and a computerised Middlesbrough accent, but I still feel sad about poor Dylan. When he first rolled onto the Big Night Out stage as the cheery ‘special friend’ of Les, Vic Reves’ silent and oft-abused sidekick, who could have known the sorry existence he would have to endure.

Constantly berated by Vic as Les’ ‘sycophantic little robot’ Dylan responds to Vic’s ongoing cruelty to him and Les with a camp and indignant “ooh you bugger!” Despite his loyalty to Les, he eventually dies an ignominious death at the hands of a 'quite riled' Mr Dennis (a newsagent who doesn’t stock Curly Wurleys because they are far too elaborate). His appearances were fleeting so I’m not sure why Dylan’s memory has stayed with me all these years (apart from saying ‘ooh, you bugger’ makes me laugh) but I’m glad to have the opportunity to commemorate his short-lived life.

Ooh, you bugger!

Medibot (Look Around You) Medibot is the future of medical science according to the Tomorrow’s World-parodying 1979-tastic vision of the world that is Look Around You. Despite resembling a cake tin attached to a police filing cabinet he is able to perform any number of complex surgeries with only minimal assistance from his friend and keeper, Dr Franklin Fu.



His only reward is a serving of his much beloved hundreds and thousands (sugar sprinkles for all you Australians and North Americans out there) which Dr Fu pops in his mouth after a gruelling day at the surgeon’s table. Medibot’s vocabulary may be limited (Meh-di-bhot!) but he makes up with his jaunty style on the mouth organ. Until Cheesoid, Medibot was my favourite 21st century comedy robot. Now they’ll just have to share. Meh-di-bhot!



MaxiPower (the League of Gentlemen): More Transformer than pure robot, MaxiPower is a crime fighting G-reg Fiat Uno whose ride has been well and truly pimped by idiot-savant Neds to impress his young mate Tristan. Although possessed with a slightly larger dictionary than Medibot (“Hello Neds, let’s solve some crime”) she is generally a bit crap, though she does play the Knight Rider theme quite well. For a while.



Her one and only mission (to stop 'some lads who are going to rob some fags from the cash and carry and sell them to their mates at the power station') ends in disaster when Neds reveals that he wasn’t able to find Tristan’s requested machine gun but has fitted a can of silly string and an ejecting box of paper clips (‘It’s meant to be drawing pins but Mrs Ridley’s ran out…’ explains Neds). Tristan’s doomed ‘aw, fook’ as the flames rise around them is worth your admission price alone.

Honourable Mentions

Smash Robots – more robot/food interfacing with cocky Martian robots mocking the stupidity of humans for eating real potatoes. English humans, to be fair.

Techno Trousers (Wallace and Gromit in The Wrong Trousers, 1993) Mechanised remote control pants plus evil penguin plus Peter Sallis equals ace. You do the maths. (‘It’s the wrong trousers Gromit! And they’ve gone wrong!’)

Twiki (Buck Rogers in the 25th Century) ‘bidi-bidi-bidi’

Metal Mickey – ‘boogie-boogie-boogie’

Tim Brooke-Taylor’s Golden Ticket-seeking computer (Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) “I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do with a lifetime’s supply of chocolate”

Ungentlemenly Behaviour

A few overdue words of praise for Psychoville, the recent BBC comedy show starring and written by Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, erstwhile members of the League of Gentlemen. In case you hadn’t noticed, the League are rather popular round our way, so it’s been fantastic to have even 50% of them back together doing what they do best: intelligent, horror-inspired grotesquery with a heavy dose of silliness.

(Fear not, here be no spoilers…)

In essence Psychoville (the name given to the Royston Vasey-based League of Gentlemen series by Japan and Korea) is a comedy-thriller. It takes the stories of five individuals from across England and slowly intertwines them until you see they were mixed together all along. It eschews the sketch-based approach of the first two League of Gentlemen series and has more in common with Vic and Bob’s Catterick (also starring Shearsmith). Reece and Steve play three of the leads each but this time there are more prominent roles for an impressive supporting cast.

The most recognisable is Dawn French as Joy, an obstetrics nurse who treats her creepy demonstration baby like a real child. There are also great turns by Daniel Kaluuya as Tea Leaf, a petty criminal on community service, Alison Lintott and Debbie Chazen as the conjoined-Crabtree sisters, Daisy Haggard as a dim-witted pantomime Snow White, Elizabeth Berrington as Joy’s seemingly more down-to-earth colleague Nicola and Vilma Hollingbery as a pensioner with verbal diarrhoea.

For all these actors bring, Psychoville remains very much the Shearsmith and Pemberton show. The latter is particularly impressive as the serial killer obsessed mummy's boy David Sowerbutts and the mysterious blind recluse Oscar Lomax. As with Tubbs Tattysyrup and Pauline Campbell-Jones, his most infamous League characters, Steve’s performances generate genuine sympathy for two otherwise very unlikeable fellows and you completely forget there is a man behind the mask.

Shearsmith is not far behind, and whilst his Mr Jelly (a depressed, one-handed children’s clown) is a one-part Ollie Plimsolls, two parts Geoff Tipps shandy, he is more potent as David’s Bontempi organ-playing mother Maureen. The Sowerbutts provide the series highlight in episode four - a half hour special which abandons the five story format to provide a note-perfect homage to Hitchcock’s The Rope with a genuinely lovely surprise cameo.




This being one half of the League of Gentlemen, there are some marvellous one-liners and set pieces. Maureen’s organ, Lomax’s Club biscuit, Mr Jelly’s toilet break handcuffed to a diabetic old lady and any reference by Joy’s to her little Freddie Fruitcake are all worth looking out for.

As with the League, Psychoville is not all about big belly laughs. Much of it is about the pathos of sad, lonely and complex characters slowly revealing their tormented souls in increasingly bizarre circumstances (Lomax and David in particular). In that it has to be said that Psychoville did not hit the mark as consistently as I’d hoped. The whodunit element of the show buoys up some of the weaker stories, but as that fell away towards the end some of the joins started to show. The pantomime dwarf story in particular runs out of steam a bit, which was a shame, whilst something just didn’t click with the finale.

This doesn’t detract though from what has been a welcome return for two of Britain’s best comic performers. Personally I’d pay to see Reece and Steve read golf results from the paper, so seven new episodes of them together was wonderful. It’s far from easy to create a likable variation on the sitcom, so after a decade in which reality-based comedy took the lead, Psychoville is a welcome piece of fiction from two very fertile imaginations. More please BBC, more please.

Here Be Bees...

There were scenes of joy in the Custard household this week after we finally got our mitts on a full and complete game of Bizzy Buzzy Bumbles.

For the uninitiated Buzzy Bumbles is a bit like Hungry Hungry Hippos only instead of collecting marbles with a mechanical mouth you have to collect multi-coloured pollen balls from a huge plastic flower using only a cute magnetic bee - which is attached to your head on a bouncy plastic pole.





We first saw the game on a episode of the League of Gentlemen where a sadistic doctor will only treat his patients if they bring him a pizza and a bottle of coke and take him on at various parlour games including a particularly frenetic session of Bizzy Buzzy Bumbles. For a while we thought that it might be something that the League invented because despite several Google searches and a few goes on e-bay, nothing ever showed up. That is until I found this peach on YouTube - and realised that we should have been looking for bizzy and not busy bees... One week later we'd won a full set on e-bay for a pound, and here she is in all her glory...

Needless to say we've already spent many happy minutes attaching the bouncy bees to our heads in pursuit of multi-coloured-pollen-collecting glory. This does make you look like a bit of a pratt so many thanks to our current house guest Mr Flange for modeling the blue bee in the picture below in a style reminiscent of nineties Sega Megadrive hero Earthworm Jim.



Anyway, if you're in the neighbourhood and fancy taking us on for the title of King or Queen Bee drop me a line and we'll set up a bee-off in a suitably dark and sinister alley. You have to bring your own pizza and coke though...