“Yeah, there’s a fair portion of the show that’s quite critical of Tony Abbott,” he agrees. “But I feel like I got on the ground floor with that. At first, it was pretty lonely. The first gig I did this year was in Mandurah, which is on the outskirts of Perth, and I suspect that the majority of the audience had voted for Tony Abbott and they were not as open to my views as people have become as time has worn on. I feel like a bit of consensus has been built now.”
We understand rallying against Abbott we understand and we know that Gleeson’s the dad of a two-year old, which is no walk in the park, but where does the booze fit in? “A lot of new parents seem to drink a lot, although people don’t talk about it. I’ve noticed it from talking to my friends who are new parents – once the child’s in bed, there’s about a two hour party before the adults go to bed too. I feel like I spent a lot of that last year doing that – putting my two-year old to bed, cracking open a bottle of wine, drinking a little bit too much and yelling at the TV because Tony Abbott was on it.”
Gleeson says that he flies the flag for angry guys. Has fatherhood knocked off any of his edges? “It has taught me a lot more empathy,” Gleeson reflects. “It’s easy when you see people to think straight out, ‘oh they’re an idiot’, but when you become a father you realise that people have come from somewhere and have been shaped – there are reasons they are the way that they are – even Tony Abbott. So, I’ve either got a little more empathy, or I’m more critical in far more detail.”
We disagree, but Gleeson also claims to be unlikeable. Angry and unlikeable – is that an uncomfortable place to be? “A lot of stand-up comedians tap dance around on stage, wanting people to like them and it’s really quite overt,” he observes. “Even if they’re going to talk about politics, it’s like ‘I’m not very happy with Tony Abbott, I know some of you voted for him, but I’m just saying that I’m not quite happy,’ and they feel like they need to start backtracking and get everyone on board, whereas I prefer to throw out opinions and let the audience cope.
“Also, there’s a desperation in trying to be liked and I realise that I’m a bit of a prickly person anyway. I’m better off just being and letting people who are interested in that form of deep, deep cynicism gravitate towards me and the people who don’t like it will just move on. I just know that I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. Not everyone’s as cynical as me. I’m hardwired that way – I just can’t pretend that everything’s OK.”
From which dark recess does this cynicism come? “I don’t know exactly, but even when I was a kid my mother called me Doubting Thomas,” he laughs. “He was the biblical figure who, once he found out that Jesus had come back from the dead, had to stick his fingers in the holes in the hands and feet to check that it was actually Jesus and he’d actually been crucified. I’ve always felt like that. I’ve always needed proof. Even when I was really little, when mum would ask me to do something, I’d say, ‘why’ and unless she told me and there was a reasonable reason, I wouldn’t do it.”
Interestingly, Gleeson didn’t need to chuck a day job in order to pursue comedy. “I’ve got a friend who started stand-up in his late 20s and he had to take a redundancy package to concentrate on stand-up full-time and not long after that he had children – I’m not like that,” he reflects. “I’ve had lots of friends who had jobs that were paying really well that they had to turn their backs on to start. I had a much easier road, because I was at university doing fuck all anyway and I started doing stand-up while I was in a band – and a band if anything is a cry for help – that’s someone who’s definitely not wanting to do a regular job or who enjoys large amounts of work for little return. So, when I graduated, I just didn’t get a job, I just kept doing stand-up. So I went from being a maths tutor, on Austudy getting a little bit of money, to getting a supplemented income from gigs, while it was slowly growing into a career. There was never any question that I wasn’t going to do it, it’s just more that I never quit. And by never stopping, I end up doing a show at the Hawthorn Arts Centre. ”
BY MEG CRAWFORD
