This is a piece I was asked to write for the literary magazine The Lifted Brow in 2011. I was asked to write something about the world of comedy and stuff.

I hope you enjoy digesting it, dear reader.

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What makes a good comedian?

This age-old, caveat-riddled question is surely more complicated than the immediate conclusion that comes to mind (i.e. “Not being Jordan Paris”). It’s a question that haunts every soul who has ever dared venture upon the turbulent seas of light entertainment in the rickety vessels of subtle satire and witty observation, armed only with the buoy of self-awareness and the billowing wind of assumed superiority in one’s sails.[1] It is the big question for those who work in the industry of LOLs. It rests above such piffle as “What is the meaning of life?”, and “Is it okay to like the new Coldplay single?” Moreover, it’s pretty easy to see that the greatest of respect goes to those select few in the world of comedy who seem to have figured out some vague sense of an answer, either by bravely persevering, gig after gig, festival after festival, media appearance after media appearance over thirty hard, back-breaking years; or by drinking from the holy fountain of The Great Kart’uk, which lies hidden deep in the darkest of crags in the blackened depths of Mordor.

At least, I assume that’s what happened with Russell Gilbert.

I guarantee you, dear reader, that no matter how famous, critically acclaimed or financially swollen your favourite comedian in the world may be, not a day goes by in which at least a skerrick of concern doesn’t scurry through their mind, causing them to ponder, if only for a terrifying millisecond, that fundamental question: Am I funny?

*

Pretty much anyone can be “funny”.[2] Being “funny” involves farting, falling over in public, drinking alcohol, wearing Crocs or observing that Fred Bassett cartoons are comically lacklustre. But being funny—intrinsically, undeniably, fundamentally funny, the Shaun Micallef, Groucho Marx, Zach Galifianakis, John Cleese, Maria Bamford, Stephen Colbert, Bill Cosby, Dame Edna Everage, Tina Fey kind of funny—that’s a whole different kettle of comedy fish. To be funny is the ultimate goal and crippling addiction of every comedian. We don’t just want to be people who tell jokes: we want to be people who breed jokes. We want to be wellsprings of humour from which a unique, interesting and fucking hilarious worldview flows, flooding the world with goodness and truth, brutally drowning all traces of mediocrity in its path.

We comedians desperately want this, and, on the whole, pretty much nothing else matters.

But how to know? How does one determine whether one has reached this goal? What if you think you’re operating on a Patton Oswalt level of funny, when in reality you’re just squeezing out slimy, derivative, Martin Lawrence-esque turds into the undiscerning ears of the public?

What if—what if Mum was right?

To me, these are very curly questions that will take years and years of perspective and a shitload of experience to be able to answer satisfactorily. But other people seem to quite firmly believe they have the definitive answers.

And those people are on Twitter.

Popping “Tom Ballard” into Twitter’s search function or doing a quick once-over of triple j’s official Facebook page results quite quickly in the discovery of punters who not only don’t like me and my “work”,[3] but who challenge my very adoption of the title of “comedian”. “Tom Ballard’s a comedian?” an anonymous avatar or forum poster will incredulously posit. “Um…aren’t comedians supposed to be funny???”[4]

When discussing my appearances on television, my stand-up comedy or my radio show, these detractors place the word “joke” within quotations (“I haven’t laughed once at any of his ‘jokes’…”), as if its proximity to my name is in itself a fertile ground for humour. I have been accused of being boring, try-hard, too commercial, amateur, lacking in life experience, rude, immature, condescending, ignorant, misogynist and, in some instances, excessively homosexual.

To me, such criticisms are like water off a duck’s back, in that they are bone-chilling and constantly present. Since taking over co-hosting duties on the triple j breakfast show and subsequently procuring the occasional spot on national TV, a massive learning curve in my life has caused me to accept that attempts at funniness inevitably inspire a variety of reactions, from the desired (laughter) to the less-than-palatable (“GET DA FUCK OFF ME RADIO, FAG-DICK!!!”).

When such responses first came to my attention, they genuinely threw me. The frequency and the strength of the vitriol that infected my Twitter feed, my Facebook and the comments sections of other websites shredded my confidence like a hairy Greek man collecting hot meat from a spit. The barbs of the keyboard warriors pierced my brittle armour of self-esteem as they questioned my comedic nouse, highlighted the chubbier and oilier elements of my physique and called for my removal from the public sphere, effective immediately.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me: I am not here upon this page to bitch. I’m well aware there’s nothing more grating than hearing those in privileged positions complain of the slings and arrows they must endure as if somehow their fortunate existence, when put in perspective, is anything less than Fate giving them a generous, slobbery blowjob.

I don’t wish to bemoan the criticism of my work. Rather, I wish to celebrate it.

*

Award-winning comedic artist and willful mullet-grower Sam Simmons is not necessarily the kind of person that I would describe as “factually reliable”. My relations with Mr Simmons are littered with betrayal, pranks, homophobic graffiti and downright lies. Sam will quite happily fill your inbox with a series of sternly-worded emails about how displeased he is with your recent performance, asking you all sorts of sticky personal questions, cc’ing in senior management figures and employing curt and forward language.

Then, days later, he will walk right up to you, look you directly in the eyes and proudly inform you that the whole exercise was a joke.

Then he’ll go wear some bread shoes or talk about lazer monkey sandwiches or some shit.[5]

But Sam can, on rare occasions, be a fount of quality wisdom. The first time he ever acted as a radio mentor to myself and my co-host Alex Dyson, we remarked on the potent anger of approximately 50% of the audience who were texting in to the show or posting in forums on the triple j website. Mr Simmons, the bald absurdist, just shrugged. “50% of people hate me. 50% of people love me. If no one hates or loves you—if everything just likes you—you’re boring.”

He then answered a flashing phone line and convinced the caller that in fact they hadn’t called a radio station, but the residence of a man named Ian. He then hung up and informed us that “Ian” was a funny name.

*

“H8tas gonna h8”—so goes the saying. What with a sense of humour being pretty much the most subjective thing around, comedy has always split opinions, but now the information superhighway has given 21st Century performers the ability to find out exactly how shithouse their detractors think they are. As my musical hero Ben Folds sings in his song Working Day,

Some guy on the net thinks I suck

And he should know;

He’s got his own blog…

When your goal in life is to be funny, some people are inevitably not going to like what you do, because their funny could well be your “funny”, and vice versa. I’ve accepted this. But it still gives me the shits.

Because comedians want to be liked. I don’t know all the fancy-schmancy psychology behind it—I’m not a Scientologist, I’m just a Muggle trying to get by. But I find that, generally, comedians will obsess over a crowd’s reaction and whether or not other people in the industry like them and will invariably be able to describe to you in detail the handful of people in an audience who were merely chuckling when, in the opinion of the rest of the room, we’ve been killing it. We get worked up about reviews and cringe when we watch ourselves performing[6] and get paranoid about the future and sometimes the past and regularly about the present.

That’s because we need to be liked in the right way. It’s relatively easy to get up on a stage and make an audience laugh—once you know the basic tricks, you can work in a switcheroo or two, a few pull-back-and-reveals and a couple of callbacks and you’ll be accepted as a perfectly serviceable comic. Those with ambitions to be funny, however, aspire to make audiences laugh in ways they’ve never laughed before, with original ideas and different stories and unexpected punchlines, kicking the very notion of being hack in its hacky dick. The highly-principled comedian is terrified of selling out or being perceived to have done so; perhaps relatedly, there is no greater reward than meeting one’s comic hero and making them laugh. That trumps every paycheck, every undeserved sexual encounter, every illicit drug, every VIP event, hands down.

…

Probably doesn’t trump getting paid to be sucked off at a VIP event whilst tripping balls, though.[7]

This is why comedy awards can seem so redundant to me: the people who want comedy awards so much are really the people who should need them the least. The sweet taste of validation should actually flow from the guffaws, smiles and atmosphere of a comedy room, as opposed to the “outcome” of a slapped-together panel that’s subject to personal vendettas, the giddy politics of the comedy industry and, well… just… not really finding something funny.

Having said that, I have won a comedy award and received a five star review, so whatever opinion you’re now forming in your no-doubt-award-less head is highly likely to be wrong.

*

So what makes a good comedian?

I really have no fucking idea. But I’m trying to figure it out as best as I can, no matter what @bitchy_vampire86 has to say about it. I can only hope to maintain my sunny disposition, trust my comedy instincts and focus on those who appear to think I’m on to a good thing.

Please – wish me luck.

If you like.

If not…I’ll deal.

In 2009, my nice friends who formed the Anarchist Guild Social Committee, a very funny sketch outfit, asked me to contribute a sketch to one of their monthly shows. Because I am a narcissist, I wrote the below.

I think it’s still funny, even if you don’t know what the people look like. 

Thanks to Nick Caddaye, Andrew McClelland, Celia Pacquola, Tegan Higgenbotham and Ben McKenzie. 

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(A bare stage. As NICK reads the following from a piece of paper [somewhat reluctantly], ACTORS bring on a simple table and two chairs.) 

NICK:

The next sketch you’re about to experience has been written and directed by a very special guest. We here at the Anarchist Guild Social Committee feel privileged – nay, honoured – to have this man involved in our humble little sketch show for a fee which is significantly less than that which he usually accepts. It truly is the pinnacle of our careers to be working alongside both the most respected and most underrated theatre directors in the world today. Tom Ballard’s work is often compared to that of theatre geniuses such as Orson Welles and Trevor Nunn and is regularly found to shit all over it. He is truly a maverick and revolutionary figure when it comes to theatre-making; he is famously quoted as saying “Stanislavski can suck my dick and his method can eat my hole”.

Ballard has been working in the industry for over 18 months now and has toured all over the state with his challenging productions, including his 12-act play Cunt, his movement piece I Love A Sunburnt Cunt and the smash-hit musical Chitty Chitty Bang Cunt.

In directing tonight’s sketch for the Anarchist Guild, Tom Ballard has made a conscious decision to try and achieve something more than the usual cock-a-mimmy shit-fest we churn out. He has sworn to make the Anarchist Guild Social Committee socially relevant for once and has endeavoured to make it truly mean something.

Tom has specifically asked that at no point during the sketch do you laugh or applaud out of respect for the traditional owners of the land.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great pleasure that we present to you: A Sketch as directed by Tom Ballard.

(Audience will applaud. NICK to stare them down until they stop)

NICK

Thank you.

A Sketch.

(NICK exits. TEGAN sits at the table with BEN. ANDREW stands away from the other two. All three stare out into the middle distance and deliver their lines slowly and painfully.)

TEGAN

‘Tis winter again.

BEN

Yes.

TEGAN

Oh, the seasons are so cruel.

BEN

No. (Looks directly at Tegan) The seasons just are.

(ANDREW sings a short phrase from an Arabic-sounding tune. TEGAN, looking BEN directly in the eye, picks up a squeaky toy and gives it a solitary squeak. BEN looks away, shattered. ANDREW sings another phrase. CELIA enters from one side of the stage, walks to the centre, faces the audience, gives one solitary clap and says, “Hope”. She then exits. BEN and TEGAN look at each other for a long time, then suddenly throw the table to the side and collapse into each other’s arms. They are both close to tears.)

BEN

Oh God, how I wish we could be as we once were!

TEGAN

(staring out into the horizon) I can see the old orchard from my childhood!

BEN

How the years have worn us down to the bone and destroyed our love and life!

TEGAN

I can see my mother and my father and our little dog, Freddie!

BEN

Oh Lord above, we are all such fools in awe of you!

TEGAN

Run to me, Freddie! Run to me!

BEN

NO!!! Don’t you see, Elizabeth? Freddie’s not coming back!

(BEN and TEGAN freeze. CELIA enters again, walks to centre stage, gives one solitary clap and says, “Despair”. ANDREW sings a line from an Italian opera. BEN and TEGAN unfreeze.)

TEGAN

You fucking bastard!

BEN

Fuck you, you whore, you never understood me!

TEGAN

Oh God, is that what you really think, you fucking cunt?

BEN

(starts to cry) You know, Elizabeth…I just don’t know where we went wrong…

(CELIA enters again, walks to centre stage, gives a solitary clap and says “Cunt”. A pause. ANDREW shrieks. CELIA curls up into a ball in the centre of the stage. Suddenly TOM enters, annoyed.)

TOM

Right, stop right there, fuck this, this is awful. I’m sorry, I’m really sorry to have to come out here and stop the sketch and everything but this is genuinely terrible and I refuse to have my name associated with this wretched, horrible, awful, awful shit.

(Awkward silence.)

Seriously, this is just tripe; you’ve all lost focus, you don’t know what you’re doing – you’re not believable; I don’t believe any of you. Seriously. This performance was so terrible it forced me to come out here in front of everyone and fucking break the fourth wall like a hack, like a fucking chump; a Brechtian chump, for shit’s sake. I can’t believe you let this happen.

BEN

Alright, settle down…

TOM

No fuck you! Fuck you, Ben! If you want to work with the best, you’ve got to give me the best! The fucking best, Ben! If you don’t like it, you can walk, man. I cast you in this role because I think you’ve got something, man, but at the moment all you’re giving me is crap and shit wrapped in fuck.

BEN

I’m sorry…

TOM

“Sorry” isn’t good enough, mate! Four words, Ben: Chitty Chitty Bang Cunt.

(CELIA gets up and storms off.)

TOM

Yeah you better walk, Pacquola! My arse can clap better than you and it doesn’t even have shitting goddamn hands!

ANDREW

Okay, Tom, I think you should maybe just settle down…

TOM

Don’t poison this stage with your homophobia, McClelland!

ANDREW

What?

TOM

Oh, you think I should just “settle down”, is that what you said? Do you think I’m overreacting or something? Do you think I’m “over the top”? Like I’m camping it up a bit, or something? Like a drama queen? Like some dirty little faggot, Andy? Like a dirty homosexual poofta who’s destined to burn in hell?????!

ANDREW

….no.

TOM

I never liked you, McClelland!

(ANDREW leaves.)

TOM

Right; at least now we see who’s really dedicated to making some shitting art. Okay, this is going to be alright, we’ll start again. We need to focus, okay? Has everyone forgotten our animal exercise? I think so. Okay animal positions, guys!

(TEGAN and BEN take on the persona of an animal each. BEN is a bird and TEGAN looks like a wombat.)

TOM

Tegan, what the fuck is that?

TEGAN

Um…I’m a wombat?

TOM

Numbat, Tegan, you’re a fucking numbat! Jesus Christ, can I work with fucking professionals for once in my life! I expect this kind of bullshit with the Glenrowan Amateur Players, but with you guys…

(TOM storms off. A long pause.)

BEN

What a cunt.

(BEN and TEGAN exit. TOM returns to the stage and bows. If the audience clap, he glares them down, then walks off again)

This is a story I wrote for Kaldor Public Art Projects‘ Acts Of Kindness session at the 2011 Jurassic Lounge winter season. It was inspired by Michael Landy’s CBD installation Acts Of Kindness and the speakers were asked to write a story around the theme “an act of kindness”. 

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When I was in Grade 5, I wanted to start a small business.

I don’t know exactly what inspired this desire to enter the Australian economy. I like to think it was my tenacious work ethic, my passion to contribute to my local community and my willingness to grapple with the mighty waves of capitalist market forces.

In actual fact, it was because at school they were teaching us how to use Microsoft Word, and they’d shown us how to use Microsoft Word to make business cards, and I thought it would be cool to have a business card that I could make for myself by using Microsoft Word.

I was a pretty popular kid.

After a failed attempt at both an actual lemonade stand and a series of business cards promoting that lemonade stand, I decided to have a crack at a dog-walking business. I designed an appropriate card, awarding myself the somewhat pompous title of “Lord Of The Leash”, distributed the cards to neighbours’ letterboxes and then just waited for the Benjamins to roll in.

After a week of silence, I finally got a call from Janet Godfrey.

Now Janet Godfrey was not in the best of health. She was in her 70s. No one in their 70s is particularly agile, but not only was Janet Godfrey in her 70s, she also had a gangrenous foot that was quite swollen and required her to move about on a wheeled walker.

Oh – and also she was morbidly obese.

She was a morbidly obese 70-year-old lady with a gangrenous foot. Basically, she would be like the worst Golden Girl ever.

But she was lovely. She was a lovely, sweet old lady with a dog who needed walking that she couldn’t provide.

Now if you had to guess what kind of dog a 70 year old morbidly obese lady with a gangrenous foot might own, you might think something small, something low maintenance, like a beagle or a little fat sausage dog or a Jack Russell or something like that. You probably wouldn’t guess a fully-grown long-haired German Shepherd, but it turns out, in the case of Janet Godfrey, you’d be wrong.

Despite the fact that she was incapacitated, Mrs. Godfrey was the proud owner of the massive beast that she’d named Thumper. She’d owned German Shepherds all her life and she wasn’t going to stop just because she was in her golden years.

Thumper didn’t get out of Mrs. Godfrey’s flat much, so when I nervously turned up one afternoon and made it clear that my arrival meant that someone was going for walkies, that dog went apeshit and proceeded to essentially walk me around the block, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, only stopping occasionally to shit on the footpath and humiliate me with the subsequent plastic-bag-based-cleanup.

Don’t worry, though, I was making some serious money; yeah that’s right, I was on the princely sum of $1 per walk. I would say to myself: Come on, Tom – only 5000 more years of this and you can afford a down-payment on a house.

For the next seven years, throughout high school, I walked that goddamn dog every week. But that wasn’t the entirety of my relationship with Mrs. Godfrey. You see, Mrs. Godfrey didn’t just need help with Thumper; it was clear she needed help with almost every part of her life. She had a nurse come to look after her foot and her family visited regularly, but there were always little jobs that needed doing. She was skilled in the art of the leading question. As I’d return from a walk – or a drag, as I like to think of them – she’d casually mention:

“Oh…I’ll have to bring the washing in soon, I suppose…”

I’d be bound to ask: “Oh. Would you like me to do it for you?”

She offered to throw in an extra 50 cents, but I told her not to worry about it, because I’m that kind of guy.

Over the years, I brought in Mrs. Godfrey’s washing, unpacked her shopping, drew her blinds, took out her bins, extracted burrs from Thumper’s coat, played game after game of backgammon with her, helped her with the crossword and even watched Wheel Of Fortune with her, and that show is excruciating when you know the popular phrase and the contestant can’t figure it out because they’re the stupidest person who has EVER WALKED THE EARTH.

It’s clearly “A STITCH IN TIME SAVES NINE”!

Eventually my fee disappeared altogether as I got older, found part-time employment with a slightly higher minimum wage, and realized that I did these things for Mrs. Godfrey not as an employee, but, kind of weirdly, as a friend. As someone who could help. These acts of kindness were very rarely much fun and I could certainly think of other ways I’d rather be spending my time, but I also knew that it was right for me to be doing them. I couldn’t just announce that I was unable to visit Mrs. Godfrey anymore; that wouldn’t be true and it just wouldn’t be right.

Thumper died during my Year 12 year from a tumour. Mrs. Godfrey followed him the following year, though not before buying a new GERMAN SHEPHARD PUPPY.

She really loved those dogs.

I’m always suspicious when I hear about how easy it is to do the right thing. I don’t think it’s easy to do the right thing; it’s easy to be an arsehole. We’re all fundamentally arseholes, all trying to move as far away from our inherent arseholery as possible. Partaking in acts of kindness can be boring and smelly and frustrating and time-consuming and can sometimes mean you have to spend quite a lot of time with a 70 year-old morbidly obese woman with a gangrenous foot.

But that’s okay. It’s the least I could do, what with me being the official Lord of the Leash.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk4QlyJz6Y4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYZqCaiaj70

hello! welcome to the blog area page section. this is where you’ll be able to read the written product of the firing of certain synapses in my brain, which is situated in my head. stay tuned for hilarity and/or mediocrity; for the meantime you can check out some other blogs i’ve written for the warrnambool standard website here www.standard.net.au/blogs/tom-ballard/