by Joel Creasey
I promise you, I cannot remember a single line of that material. It’s so awkward to think back on it that I’ve wiped it from memory, kind of like your first time having sex. There’s a video of it somewhere (Glenn Suave – not my first time having sex) but I just cannot bring myself to watch it. I know I didn’t quite commit to the character. Instead of dressing in a flight attendant’s uniform, I dressed normally. Well, sort of: I wore torn jeans, white slip-on sneakers and a ‘comical’ shirt. (Mega cringe.) I thought this was edgy and urban and ‘comedy’.
Side note: it really irks me when comedians walk on stage in a sloppy shirt or a hoodie. It shows a lack of effort and a lack of respect for your audience. Unless of course they’re playing a character. A T-shirt and jeans is fine but at least iron the shirt! So often I hear comedians complaining about not getting ahead in the industry. I usually say, ‘Buy a nice fucking shirt then!’
I can’t remember much of that first night on stage. It was all such a blur. I just remember standing backstage at this dirty old pub. I don’t think I was even nervous, I was so numb and blind with determination. Once again, much like my first time having sex.
But my RAW performance went well and I made it through to the semi-final. I think a lot of my success was based on my age, because I was extremely green – and probably the fact that half the audience were there to see me. I then made it to the state final at His Majesty’s Theatre. This meant my third time ever performing stand-up was in front of a sold-out audience of fifteen hundred people. I didn’t win – nor come close, to be fair – but I was hooked at that point and knew stand-up comedy was my calling.
A few days after making the state final of the RAW Comedy Competition, I sat in the car park of Curtin University, where I was studying Political Science and Foreign Affairs, knowing that I was destined for a life of fame and fortune. I’d done three gigs. I was basically Chris Rock. Now, you might be surprised to hear I was going to uni. I hadn’t gotten the required mark for my first preference (Law), because I hadn’t bothered to study. I only wrote Political Science and Foreign Affairs down on my university application because I was so in love with Ms De San Miguel and figured that if I couldn’t be a stand-up comedian, I’d be cool like her.
Sitting there in the carpark, I couldn’t stomach the idea of getting through another day of mind-numbing politics, so I rang Mum. I Meryl Streeped the shit out of it, put on the water works, begging her to let me drop out. I knew she wanted me to study and get a degree, but I also knew she wanted me to be happy and follow my heart (she, like Celine Dion, knew it would go on).
Mum said I could take a year off from uni and pretty much left it at that.
Sweet. Hollywood, here I come! I thought and hung up the phone, wiped away the tears and went to find best friend Ashleigh to help me celebrate with a coffee and a game of Wheel of Goon. Hollywood would have to wait until tomorrow.
And after I’d been doing stand-up for a few months, Mum never brought university up with me ever again. In fact, my parents have been nothing but supportive of my stand-up career, which I’m not sure every comedian can say, sadly. They’ve often been a little too supportive. They’ve flown all over the world to see me perform and, like a recently evicted Bachelor contestant, will accept any and every after-party invite they can get their hands on. Terry and Jenny Creasey: the ultimate groupies. They do genuinely just love the lifestyle and being around other comedians. Every year during the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, my dad generously puts on a drinks function after my show one night and I invite a bunch of comedians along. Mum and Dad love holding court, surrounded by professional funny people. And they totally hold their own.
After making the RAW final, I did little open-mic gigs around Perth. I decided to drop the Glenn Suave character and started forming the early stages of the stand-up I do today: observational and pop-culture driven. My first paid gig was about a month after the RAW heat. I performed at the Charles Hotel, where the heats had been held. This was probably the first time I got nervous. That numb first-timer feeling had worn off and now I was getting paid! That’s pressure! A lovely man called John McAllister runs the Comedy Lounge. John has always been a huge supporter of mine and handed me my first pay cheque. An actual cheque – that’s how long ago it was. Fifty bucks for a five-minute spot. Mum told me I should keep the cheque and not cash it in. I told her I would and then immediately went down to the bank, cashed it in and spent it on a night out with friends. Now that I was a superstar I could only drink fancy cocktails, right?
For the record, in Perth, fifty bucks can buy you approximately one and a half fancy cocktails.
Not long after, I decided to take myself on a little stand-up tour of Australia. Hilarious, thinking about it! A stand-up tour! I only had fifteen minutes of material – if that! And by ‘tour’ I mean I did a couple of open-mic gigs in Melbourne and Sydney and stayed in backpacker joints. I think you’re meant to earn money on a tour? I didn’t. I spent money I’d saved up working at Nova on flights and trains across town to the shows and got paid in beers and laughs. As you can imagine, backpacking wasn’t quite my thing, and I kept telling myself I had to get successful so I could be flown around the world. Or at least successful enough that I didn’t have to share a bathroom with twenty German men. (Look, there’s a joke there . . . but it’s too easy, surely.)
I accidentally double-booked myself for one of my gigs in Sydney. I called the lady booking the second gig to apologise and she screamed at me down the phone, saying, ‘You’ll never work in this town again!’ I was mortified and felt so ashamed. I do sometimes wonder if she remembers this. I clearly do. I’ll ask her, if she ever serves me at a Starbucks.
The following year, I competed again in the RAW Comedy Competition and made the final but didn’t advance beyond that. In 2010, after working up enough material from two years of gigging wherever anybody would possibly have me, I applied to do my first show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. A lot of comics rough it the first year but I’m impatient. I’m like the Veruca Salt of comedy. I know what I want and I want it now . . . or yesterday, in fact. I decided to go all out and make a huge impact.
I ended up saving up around fifteen thousand dollars by handing out ice-cold cans of Coke with Nova during the day and then squeezing in the odd shift at Macca’s where I could at night (when I wasn’t gigging). I also approached my dad’s friends to sponsor me in exchange for a logo on my poster. I knew, having all been so supportive of me my entire life, they would’ve given me the money and not asked for a logo on the poster of a no-name comedian doing his first show at the Comedy Festival that nobody would attend. But PsychYAdelic had certainly taught me a thing or two – business was business and I proudly stuck the logos on my poster.
Using the money I’d saved up, I hired some friends to produce my show. Once again, most people self-produce their first year, but not me – I knew I didn’t have the skills to maximise my debut outing on the national festival circuit. I even splurged on a publicist, a fabulous Melbourne PR expert whose business card I’d kept when I met her on my mini tour. I also spent money on advertising. I didn’t realise that you kinda have to be known for advertising to work, but I also knew that it was important for perception within the industry.
I rented a tiny two-bedroom apartment in the city with my Perth friends Laura, Bonnie and Natalie. Nat and I shared a bed and Bonnie slept on a mattress in the lounge room.
My show was at a cocktail bar on Little Collins Street called the Kitten Club, which wasn’t an official festival venue but I was stoked to be there due to its proximity to the centre of the festival. Every day around 4 pm we’d get huge pieces of chalk and draw arrows from the Melbourne Town Hall (the main hub of the comedy festival) to the venue: ‘JOEL CREASEY’S SHOW THIS WAY’. It’s a tactic I’ve seen so many new comics use since and it always makes me smile. I remember being on my hands and knees in the middle of Melbourne CBD with a piece of chalk, looking like a crazy person while
people left work for the day. We handed out popcorn to the audience each night and the bartenders mixed a specially designed Joel Creasey cocktail.
The show was titled Slumber Party and was essentially all about celebrities. (See how much I’ve evolved?) At each show I would make the audience play Pass the Parcel and when the music stopped the audience member holding the parcel had to unwrap it to reveal a picture of a celebrity, like Christina Aguilera or Justin Timberlake, who I’d then tell a story about. For example: I once interviewed Christina Aguilera and was genuinely asked to not look her in the eyes during the interview. I asked her manager, ‘Are you serious?’ And her manager was like ‘Yes! Do not look her in the eyes!’ I was like, what is she? The fucking basilisk from Harry Potter?
As for Justin Timberlake: I met him at a meet and greet when I was eighteen with about fifty other people. As I was leaving the room I realised I hadn’t made much of an impression so I decided I should make a joke. I turned around and yelled, ‘Justin! Justin! Just so you know . . . I actually brought sexy back!’ Then I realised how lame the joke was, panicked and immediately exited the room. Essentially, I hit-and-ran Justin Timberlake with a shithouse joke he probably hears every day.
I did twenty-four shows of Slumber Party and sold maybe fifty tickets across the whole season. We would give away free tickets to anybody we could, because we knew it was more important to get people in to see the show and create some buzz. This meant my audiences were relatively full every night, even if I was haemorrhaging money like crazy (I guess it was good practice for future relationships). Plus it also meant you would have the odd night where you’d accidentally given all your free tickets to fifty Swedish backpackers who don’t understand a word of English. That makes for a tricky show, albeit a very attractive one.
One day during the third week, a manager named Andrew Taylor came to see my show, bringing with him two of his clients: Jeff Green and one of my biggest comic idols, Fiona O’Loughlin. I knew Andrew was coming along to check out the show but had no idea about the other two.
During Slumber Party I would stand at the door to greet people, saying things like ‘Welcome to my party’ and handing them popcorn. Andrew, a very tall and imposing man, walked up the stairs to my little theatre. He looked just like you’d imagine a manager to look, so I knew it was him. Then I saw Jeff and Fiona enter the room behind him and I almost fainted. They were the last people to arrive and stood up the back of the full room (we made sure there wasn’t a spare seat that night to leave a good impression) while I waited to walk on stage. I’ll never forget that moment. Fiona didn’t say anything but gave me a really reassuring smile and a cheeky wink and then I walked on stage to do my thing. I can still remember standing on stage and hearing Fiona’s laugh. I was elated. Fiona O’Loughlin thought I was funny? Then I must be!
It was an awesome show, and the next day Andrew signed me to his books. I now had a fucking agent. I was a signed comedian – I could finally start saying things like ‘You’ll have to contact my agent’!
Andrew ended up being my manager for the next seven years and became one of my best friends.
Although I lost fifteen grand on that first comedy festival season, I gained a career. And a nomination for the ‘Best Newcomer’ award. The day I was nominated, my friend and producer Bonnie put on ‘Defying Gravity’ from Wicked and we ran around our apartment screaming and laughing.
At nineteen years old I was pretty stoked and it meant, with the help of Andrew and his agency, work started coming in.
A few months later I relocated to Melbourne at Andrew’s insistence. He said, ‘It’s gotta be Melbourne or Sydney.’ Given that I knew a little more about Melbourne – and that it seemed to have more musicals more frequently – I decided that had to be it. It’s how I base most decisions, to be honest. I was nervous, however, as it meant moving away from all my friends and, of course, my family. I’d had a pretty sweet life at home, plus a great job at Nova, and now I was throwing it all to the wind to move to Melbourne and become a famous comedian. Scary shit.
I mean, that’s something you hear Reese Witherspoon–type actors say in movies as they flee their small town, guitar in hand: ‘I’m moving away to become famous!’ It’s not something anyone actually did. I never second-guessed my decision, though; I knew this had to be done. So in mid-2010 I packed my very limited belongings and off I went.
In Melbourne I started gigging solidly for little to no money. For that first two years I survived off the money I’d made selling my car in Perth and whatever money I could get from telling jokes. I spent a lot of time eating baked beans and recall putting on weight because I couldn’t afford to eat healthy food. Healthy eating is fucking expensive, okay, Jamie Oliver? So go fucka your pukka tukka.
I also spent a lot of time taking long tram and train trips to suburbs and towns you’ve never heard of, performing in dingy pubs for people who had never heard of me. I’ve performed on stages that aren’t stages. I’ve performed on pool tables, bales of hay and in the middle of a field at a rum distillery in far north Western Australia. And I’ve spent too much time convincing the person running the room that ‘Yes, I’m the comedian!’ A young, blond, gay kid isn’t exactly your stereotype of an Australian comedian. I still say that to this day – I’m not what you picture when you think ‘stand-up comedy’. I’m more what you picture when you think ‘sassy retail assistant’.
In my first year signed to Andrew, he got me my first televised stand-up performance: on the Comedy Channel in The Breast Darn Show in Town, which was a comedy gala raising funds for breast cancer. I wore a blue leather jacket and unloaded about three cans of hairspray in my hair. It really is a sight to behold. But I’ll never forget that gig because I was finally on TV. The clip is still floating around YouTube somewhere.
My second year at the comedy festival I performed a show called Political Animal. My management suggested I try to veer away from the celebrity-based stuff to show I could do more than that, plus it would highlight my interest in politics. The show wasn’t great, however – I definitely had ‘second-album syndrome’. If I were Lady Gaga – this was my Artpop. The show was poorly researched because my heart wasn’t in it and the venue I played in Melbourne was a thirty-seat room in the Forum Theatre, which, outside of the festival, they use for storage. I was essentially the Harry Potter of comedy. The room had such terrible ventilation, an audience member even fainted one night. Another night someone in the second row spent the entire show farting, gassing everyone behind him (admittedly the audience was so small there were only about four people).
After that show I swore I would stick to my guns and not let anyone try to influence how I should perform stand-up. To Andrew’s credit, he agreed.
I really felt like I had set myself back with that show and halted the momentum from my first, very successful, year at the festival. So, in 2012, I decided to go all out with my third show. Andrew had also managed to secure me a venue in the Melbourne Town Hall, the official hub of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I knew I wanted to make a splash and titled my show Naked. The poster featured me, completely nude, with a sign saying ‘Naked’ covering my junk. You know, subtle. Sex sells, right? At that point I didn’t care why people were coming along . . . I just needed an audience to show them what I could do. I knew word of mouth was my most powerful tool at this point.
I went back to my strength and focused the show on myself and pop culture. It featured one of my favourite stories, which I still tell in stand-up shows to this day, about the time I went to the Celine Dion concert in Las Vegas.
So I might as well tell you here, right?
The night I went to the Celine concert (on a $345 ticket by the way) Celine decided to dedicate ‘My Heart Will Go On’ to an audience member. A special fan. At that ticket price, we’re clearly all special fans, Celine. Anyway, instead of performing ‘My Heart Will Go On’ with the full, epic, Titanic-esque staging, she sang it a cappella and stood beside the audience me
mber. But because I was seated in the balcony, I couldn’t see her. And the fan was so overwhelmed by Celine’s gesture that he screamed the entire time, thus drowning out Celine’s voice. It was a gay man’s Vietnam.
I was furious. The only reason anybody goes to see Celine Dion is to hear ‘My Heart Will Go On’. And she knows it too, that’s why she does it at the end of the concert. If she sang it at the start people would get up and walk out after it, leaving Celine on her own in her six-thousand–seat Celine Dion-atorium.
This story might seem trivial, but I managed to mine that experience for gold . . . and got a fifteen-minute stand-up set out of it that I still regularly perform.
Going back to irreverent, celebrity-focused stand-up worked. My show sold out every night and it was the first time I was making money out of performing a festival show, albeit not a lot. But I was no longer eating baked beans morning, noon and night. Now I was throwing the odd bit of parmesan cheese on top. This show also toured to Adelaide, Sydney and Perth. I finally felt like I was a performer and could officially call myself a full-time professional comedian.
That show also got TV producers interested in me. The second ‘sold out’ stickers start appearing beside your name, the more people want tickets. Off the back of Naked I was offered my very first stand-up special on ABC2. It was filmed in a warehouse in Fitzroy, aired on the ABC and released as a DVD. With three shows now up my sleeve, I performed a ‘best of’. Celine Dion of course made the cut. As someone who doesn’t get particularly nervous, I was shitting myself (that’s an industry term) for the taping of the DVD. The enormity of the situation had set in. Never before had I had a crew of twenty or so working on something solely for me. I remember being on stage for the first fifteen minutes of the special and telling myself to just concentrate on my breathing and to slow the fuck down.
