Melinda Buttle, Backstage Room, Melbourne Town Hall

One of the best things about the Melbourne International Comedy Festival is that it goes someway to redressing the balance with the mostly awful comedy on Australian television. For three-and-a-bit weeks we get to do our own bit of people power programming from a list of acts that we’d otherwise never see; acts like Brisbane’s Melinda Buttle who only emphasise the gap between what we are served on our screens and who’s really out there for us.

Touted as ‘possibly Australia's only juvenile delinquent-teaching, rap-battling gourmand to ever don a vintage frock on the comedy stage’ Mel is performing her show Sista Got Flow far from any TV cameras, tucked away in the cosy Backstage Room at Melbourne Town Hall. I’m pleased to report Mel is all the things she claims to be, plus one vital ingredient; she can tell a damn good story (though her vintage frock was very nice too). Sista indeed do got flow – neither loudly-cackling late arrivals nor my friend’s phone going off towards the show’s crescendo could knock her off stride.


The evening had three acts; one concerning her nonsensical relationship with her no-nonsense dad, another about taking on teenagers in her charge by channelling her inner Eminem; and the last on the rather delicate matter of her readily available but still allegedly un-popped cherry. True or not this last issue is handled beautifully, including me being reacquainted with the delights of the word ‘fingered’ and Mel’s aw-bless observation that her milkshake has been known to scare away boys who have shown interest in her yard…

Whether commiserating with her attempts to educate her parents on the 21st century, marvelling at her genuinely impressive rhyming skills (though I admit to finding something slightly comical about Aussie hip-hop anyway) or coming over all sisterly at her failed attempts to get boys to touch her naughty bits, watching Melinda Buttle do her thing was a real pleasure – and especially so because she seems like a genuinely nice person. I recommend catching her soon before she gets her wish and someone (or Channel 10) comes along and corrupts her.

Sista Got Flow is showing at the Backstage Room, Melbourne Town Hall (Tue-Sat 9.30pm, Sun 8.30pm) until April 18. Tickets are advertised as $17 but when we booked we were told they were $15 for everyone… Go figure.

Visit Mel’s website here or her MySpace here

Pretty begonias, irises, freesias, chrysanthem-min-umimuns

Plunging headfirst into Melbourne’s busiest ever weekend I spent a few hours yesterday at the Melbourne International Flower and Garden Show in Carlton Gardens.

Whilst the Exhibition Buildings were lovely, I learnt my liking for growing vegetables (with deference to Uncle Monty, I think the carrot infinitely more fascinating than the geranium) was not quite enough to make garden shows interesting. Perhaps in 30 years when my fingers are too chubby to use the internet...

I did buy a bag of posh peanuts, some Russian garlic and a pair of gardening / murderer’s gloves fashioned from black rubber, but otherwise I was a bit bored. Still, I’m glad I went – firstly because I saw this damning verdict on free copies of the Herald Scum given away with the Flower and Garden Show program…

… and secondly because I got the giggles watching a beautifully dressed Japanese woman provide a gentle demonstration of ikebana to a packed conference hall and thinking how much fun it would be to go up on stage next to her with a handkerchief on my head to provide an impromptu guide to Gumby flower arranging…

Josie Long, Be Honourable, Bosco Tent

As the papers have been reminding us all week, Melbourne is buzzing. This is not just the sound of Formula 1 cars wasting good petrol pointlessly circling Albert Park, the generators powering the floodlights at the MCG for the first round of the AFL, or groups of holidaying bees who've flown in especially for the flower and garden festival. It could just be that I don't get out much, but it does seem the Melbourne International Comedy Festival's opening weekend has brought the city crackling and fizzing to life.

All over the city pubs are trying to cajole unsuspecting wanderers into sitting in the dark to hear people try and make them laugh. The normally deserted Town Hall has been turned into a condensed Las Vegas strip, with strangely attired and over-friendly spruikers stalking anyone who looks slightly unsure of what to do with their evening with coloured bits of comedy-related advertising. Fortunately I know that tonight I want to eat my Lord of the Fries soggy chips as quickly as possible and then run across town so I don't miss any of the lovely Josie Long performing her new show Be Honourable at the Bosco Tent in Swanston Street.

This was my first time seeing Josie in action, and something I'd been waiting for. I failed to see her last year when I ran out of money, and I was a bit grumpy because I kept hearing how great she was and how she was just my cup of tea and that if you like Daniel Kitson you should definitely see Josie Long, Custard old chap. So anyway, thanks for that timely and salt-rubbing-in-wound advice unhelpful people; here I am 12 months late.

And I'm very happy to be here in this hexagonal (or perhaps octagonal) wooden big top that just about covers the sound of passing trams but doesn't quite cover the clippy-clop of passing horses. Firstly because Josie's show is indeed very much my cup-of-Tetleys, being as it is about making the world a better place by not being dicks to each other, cheering for people who are doing just that and and not just sitting on our bottoms drinking chai-lattes. And secondly because its wonderfully refreshing to know that regardless of my own micro-sleep of sympathy for an old lady last year there are people (yes, Josie again) who will stand up in front of a crowd - a paying crowd at that - and call the Tories cunts. Even in Australia where people don't care. Hooray.

Josie punctuates Be Honourable's other main subjects (trying to befriend a man who posts photographs of his daily breakfast online, intentionally talking to strangers, sweet sweet porridge) with conversations with an A3 sketch book. This is filled with her hand drawn illustrations (some endearingly naff) of people from the show, including 1940's Welsh politician Nye Bevan and folk troubadour/Red Wedger Billy Bragg, both of whom she'd like to be adopted by (though she confesses to already being a bit sick of going on anti-fascist marches with Billy on his parental weekends).

Kitson comparisons may be lazy but they are fair and, I'm assuming, meant as a compliment. He is after all just about the best around. His declared weltanschauung is closely aligned with Josie's search for a team she belongs to - people who at least try and put others first and not succumb to 21st century me me me-ism. However she is a practiced enough performer to bring her own angle to the mission and a unique way of sharing it. It's hard to imagine Daniel wandering the stage in a halo handmade from an aluminium baking tray.

No doubt a great many of you will already be aware that these are Josie's charms, given this is her fourth Melbourne Comedy Festival, and she has been a regular around the UK for half a decade. You'll probably know already that you have to go to the Bosco Tent in the next three weeks. However if you're as slow on the uptake as me and have an hour to spare, I'd heartily recommend heading over to your nearest Town Hall spruiker and asking for one of those little little cards marked Josie Long.

Josie Long's Be Honourable is showing daily (except Mondays) until April 18 at the Bosco at the Corner of Swanston and Collins Streets (where the Melbourne christmas tree lives). Follow her Comedy Festival blog here.

She is also hosting Josie Long's Supper Club Bake-off ('a special pie-based event offering a unique chance to eat, laugh, eat again and maybe even take home a blue ribbon') at the same venue on Saturday 10 April from 3.30pm. Yum.

Rich Fulcher, Victoria Hotel, Melbourne

Watching a befrocked and luxuriantly-wigged Rich Fulcher bump and grind his way across the stage to a pumping strip-club techno beat last night, I realised that there is a third way between funny peculiar and funny ha ha; a “funny huh?” if you will, where you’re laughing your bottom off but you’re not sure why or if you should be. Fulcher's new show, An Evening with Eleanor: the Tour Whore, which opened last night at the Victoria Hotel is almost defiantly funny huh? 'til it hurts.

That Fulcher would be any kind of funny tonight was never really in doubt. His stall was well set out during his first memorable appearance as Bob Fossil in the Mighty Boosh explaining why he doesn’t like cricket. His Snuffbox partnership with Matt Berry, an equally deranged brandisher of non-sequiturs, did nothing to dissuade that Fulcher is the best kind of loony.

My principle worry was that on paper Eleanor the Tour Whore - damaged buxom serial groupie - is a slightly tired idea. A forty-something man in slap, frock and tights acting out his inner comedy slag is not really new. Eleanor is the American Pauline Calf, Lily Savage via LA; a foul mouthed, loose-knickered tart with a heart looking to shag every rock star on the bus. Even Joanna Lumley’s best efforts to out-drag every queen on the planet in Ab-Fab couldn’t hide the fact that this is an idea past its prime.

Fortunately there is more to Eleanor than post-modern drag. Several layers of Maybelline can’t hide Fulcher’s innate absurdity which shines through the pan stick even when he’s not saying a word (it’s in the eyes!) And when he does say words they are describing things like teenage mutual masturbation with Susan Boyle and a box of kitchen implements, proudly discovering tuna inside a Frisbee or haranguing audience members for attempted rape.

Boosh fans (and there were many) used to seeing their heroes on the small screen would have enjoyed the television-show feel of the evening. It’s An Audience With … style featured mock satellite feeds, pre-recorded fake adverts and lovely use of the audience in a purposely sabotaged Ask Eleanor Q&A section. Some ideas were undermined by a few first night technical gremlins, but Eleanor’s slightly increasingly drunk and slightly deranged glares (the eyes! the eyes!) and bitchy barracking of Dave the sound guy ensured people didn’t care for long.

Still for all his inspired silliness (listen out for a pearl about Eleanor's sea-fearing father) the joke had run out of steam by the time the hour was up. Whilst there’s clearly a bright and deliciously odd future ahead of Rich Fulcher, it’s hard to see Eleanor having a long shelf life. If you’d like to share the company of her particular pleasure best get yourself in line at the Victoria Hotel quick smart. She’ll be waiting….

Rich Fulcher is performing An Evening with Eleanor: the Tour Whore in the Banquet Room, Victoria Hotel, 215 Little Collins Street until 25 April. Shows Tue-Sat 9.30pm, Sun 8.30pm

Rich will be a guest on 3RRR's Lime Champions on Monday 29 March

I Wave My Bottom in Your General Direction

As a foot soldier in the early-nineties indie wars - before Dadrock took over Britpop in the same way Stalin took over East Berlin – I couldn’t help but have an interest in the news that skinny bum-slappers Suede have reformed (albeit in their post-Bernard Butler line-up). Ostensibly this was a one-off for the Teenage Cancer Trust but I think we all know how these things pan out if the reunion show goes well, which this one apparently did (see Alex Petridis’ Guardian review of their Albert Hall gig here).

Despite Brett Anderson’s undeniable occasional thumpability I always had a soft spot for Suede. Unconvinced by grunge I was quite taken with their nylon shirts, floppy fringes, fragile cheekbones and Quentin Crisp-posturing. I still vividly recall Brett’s first live mainstream self-flagellation with a microphone at the 1993 Brit Awards where Annie Lennox and Simply Red were the major winners.

Never quite what they should have been due to internal disintegrations I don’t think they ever made a truly classic album. Suede is half-filler and Brett’s voice a little too whiny, Dog Man Star has awesome ambition but even my tone-deaf ears know it’s really badly produced and ripe for a Let It Be-type reworking; and Coming Up was refreshingly POP! though a bit repetitive. Still they were a cracking singles band and their b-sides were pretty good too as the compilations Singles and Sci-Fi Lullabies can attest.

Anyway, Petridis’ review reminded me of the obituary I wrote about Suede when they spilt in 2003 for a Sydney community radio indie show I used to co-host. Shameless recycling it may be, but for the 6,799,999,998 of you who didn’t hear it at the time here it is again…

It’s hard to imagine the importance of Suede’s appearance on the UK music scene at the arse end of 1992. At a time when indie style meant a choice between long sleeved t-shirts and short trousers or lumberjack shirts and faded jeans, the sight of Brett Anderson poncing around in his mum’s silk blouse, whipping his bottom with his microphone lead and saying “oh-ooooowww” every two minutes was quite refreshing.

Not only that, but they had Bernard Butler who helped Anderson fulfill his David Bowie fantasies by nicking all of the Spiders from Mars’ stompiest bits, feeding them through a Smiths tribute band machine and hammering out the results through a hundred guitar pedals.

For a while they were ace – they sang songs about car parks and maybe being gay, and cigarettes, and taxis, and tower blocks, and smoking, and dogs and pigs and heroin and smoking cigarettes in taxis… Brett appeared on the front cover of Select magazine in 1993 with a Union Jack backdrop with the anti-grunge headline ‘Yanks Go Home’ and, for better or worse, Britpop was born.

But then they released the sublimely ridiculous dark pomp-rock album Dog Man Star and Bernard walked out in a huff over the production. Rumours abounded that Brett was addicted to heroin and that maybe Simon the drummer didn’t like smoking and their next album was definitely gonna be dark and more importantly, crap.

To replace Bernard they brought in Richard Oakes, who was about 13½ and had to leave school to join the band. Even weirder they recruited Neil Codling, a man whose job seemed to be to sit behind a big keyboard looking bored and - bless - a bit tired whilst distracted girls and a few boys lusted after him.

And their next album wasn’t crap – 1996’s Coming Up was a pefect pop record of shimmering sexy, glittery and not-dark-at-all songs about, well, cigarettes and taxis and car parks, but also bangles and hair dye. Songs like Beautiful Ones, Lazy and Trash still bring out a spot of arse slapping in discos across the land.

In truth it’s been downhill since then – Headmusic and A New Morning had some good songs but by then Brett had a big belly, Codling had fallen asleep once too often and left and in a post Britpop world people just didn’t care enough about Suede anymore.

Except their fans. And there are lots of them. So, for those who shed a silent tear with the news of their split this week, or for anyone who has ever worn their mum’s blouse, slapped their own bottom, or indeed smoked a cigarette in a taxi outside a council estate – here’s Suede.…

That Brit Awards performance… note Phil Oakey fringe and charity shop blouse. Oh so 1993…

MICF: Interview with Russell McGilton

Russell McGilton is a Melbourne-based comedian, author and cyclist appearing at the MICF for the second time. His first show was Bombay to Beijing on a Bicycle based on his (mostly) true adventures on two wheels riding across Asia which also spawned a book and a run at the Edinburgh Fringe.

He’s back with more tales of travel in his 2010 show Accidents are Prohibited on this Road which includes tales of machete wielding maniacs, African cougars (of the older lady variety) and cultural cringe. Russell kindly took time out from preparing for his first show to answer some of my questions...

Hi Russell – thanks for talking to Mint Custard. Where are you right now? I’m sitting in front of ‘Tim’ my MacBook.

You’ve got almost a full month of shows ahead - have you been doing any Team America-style training montages to prepare? Ah, now there’s an idea. I’ve mostly been practicing the vomiting scene, though I do yoga everyday.

What in a word is your show about? Stories

What in a foreign word is your show about? Recorrido! [Travel]

Is your backstage area anything like Wayne’s World 2 with lots of alcohol, exotic fruit, mysterious hangers-on and Alice Cooper pontificating about North American native culture? The backstage is actually…well [non-existent]. I have to duck behind a pool table and introduce myself. Quite professional really. It’s good for your quads though. You have to think of these things as a man over 40.

Do you have any good luck charms or pre-show superstitious rituals? I used to slaughter a goat outside but now I just get slaughtered afterwards… No, I just make sure I get a good night’s sleep, have no coffee, run through the show at home. Then I play with my five-month old daughter which reminds me that all of this doesn’t matter.

Did you really travel from Bombay to Beijing on a bicycle? You know that there are aeroplanes and things for that? I didn’t cycle all the way…I cheated! I did take a plane…and buses…trains. Hmmm…. maybe I should’ve it called it something else and made a movie about it. Oh, that’s right Steve Martin and John Candy have already done that.

Did you deliberately choose Bombay and Beijing because of nice alliteration possibilities? Have you thought of going from Fitzroy to Footscray on foot? Bentleigh to Bayswater by bicycle was one idea and Peking to Paris by pogo stick. Actually I read about another cyclist called Dervla Murphy who went from Dublin to Delhi in 1963. I was inspired by that really.

I heard that you rode your bike naked through the streets of Edinburgh to promote your Fringe show there. Any similar plans for Accidents are Prohibited on this Road? I might try and throw myself in front of a bus with my pants down…comedians will do anything for a laff.

All travellers seem to take pride in having embarrassingly awkward or difficult poos. You must have had a few in your time? It’s too early for that kind of conversation.

What international act would you bring out to perform at the Melbourne Comedy Festival if you had the chance? Dylan Moran…but that would be scary because he’d probably bite me to pieces with his acerbic wit. The man is a genius.

Are there any shows that you’d recommend at this year’s festival or ones that you’re looking forward to seeing? To be honest I haven’t even had a look through the program! That’s fatherhood for you. Maybe Reginald [D Hunter] who I saw eating at a restaurant in Hardware Lane; I believe he’s very funny. And of course Rich Hall…if he’s out here this year? [Mint Custard’s note: he’s not…]

You’ve travelled a fair bit in your time. Is Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz right when she says there no place like home? Let’s not forget that Dorothy was high on poppies. There’s many places that you can make home with the right drugs. Besides, who can accept aphorisms from a woman whose career is now dependent on The Wiggles?

Russell McGilton’s Accidents are Prohibited on this Road is showing at the Softbelly Bar, 367 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne – 7pm Sunday to Thursday from 24 March to 18 April 2010.

Some Animals are More Equal Than Others

Snapshot of a sign at the entrance of a Melbourne store. Nice waste of sixteen letters and a comma, store dude.