2015 might be the year Greg Fleet is run off his feet. “Things are going along swimmingly. I’ve got a book (Junkyard) coming out, the play (This is Not A Love Song) and the new show. It’s all sort of happening at once, it’s great.”
This festival, Fleet presents a new hour of improvised stand-up comedy, Ad Lib-Oration, partly inspired by his experiences with Setlist. “I’ve been doing (Setlist) in Adelaide, I’ve done it in Melbourne quite a bit and overseas. It’s where comics get up on stage and they get topics of what they have to talk about flashed up on a screen. You have no time to prepare, you just have to go into it,” Fleet explains. “I love it. Having said that, the last time I did it, I died…which is the first time that’s happened, but I knew it was inevitable. It had to come. I had actually gotten away with it far too many times.”
An acclaimed veteran of the Australian comedy scene, Fleet is largely unphased by failure. In fact, it’s an integral part of the fun. “You don’t go out of your way to fail, but you have to embrace the possibility that you will. When it crashes, you’ve almost got to embrace it. You can’t pretend it hasn’t happened,” he explains. “There’s a perverse excitement for the audience, too. They obviously feel comfortable in your hands and that you’re going to do well, but they also know that at any moment, it can be derailed. There’s a car-crash kind of enjoyment in that.”
It’s a funny way to get your kicks, but Fleet prefers to keep things fresh, his new show a deliberate departure from traditional stand-up. “I’ve done that so many times. I actually thought that I was becoming stale with it. I think audiences would probably agree that I was getting locked into this thing,” he suggests. “This time around, I’m really excited by the play, by Ad Lib-Oration, by the book. Hopefully that means they’ll be successful. The advice I always give young comics, is that if you’re having a really good time, the audience will be having a really good time. If you’re stressing out – or, God forbid, bored – the audience will be feeling the same.”
Lately, Fleet has enjoyed putting his own spin on the phrase ‘clean comedy’. “I’m really embracing being able to think really fast and being really funny, the more together I am. I’m quite happy to get completely smashed after the gig, but the more together I am when I’m doing the show, the better it is. I worked that out through trial-and-error. I think one day I forgot to drink and went, ‘Oh my God, I can think about three things at once! This is good!’”
Fleet’s upcoming book, Junkyard, will shed harsh light on his past vices. “There’s a big chapter on meth and there was a couple of heavy heroin things. I was writing a couple of thousand words a day. I would get up early and be done by lunchtime. Usually I would feel great, I’d go “I’ve done my work! Awesome! I can watch documentaries, chill out and whatever!” But occasionally, I’d get up and think, “Ugh, what’s wrong? Why do I feel terrible? Am I hungover?”
The penny dropped in due course. “Oh, I know what’s wrong: I’ve just re-lived one of the bleakest, most extreme things I’ve ever done. Occasionally (writing Junkyard) was pretty gruelling but I’m also really proud of what I did. Well, I’m notproud of what I did,” he laughs.
BY NICK MASON
