One day last month I headed to 'Comedy on the Edge HQ' - (the house of Mark Williamson, who runs Comedy on the Edge) - for a taping of episodes of Comedy on Edge - The Podcast. Mark hosted Episode 1, which featured Peter Meisel and Daniel Townes. Josh Cohenand I helped out with technical stuff. And I coughed a lot. I managed to edit out most of my coughing. (Actually, I'm quite adept at sound editing - as you can hear for yourself. Just saying. Y'know - if you ever needed to pay someone to edit your sounds together...)
So anyway, here's the podcast. If episode one has a title, I reckon it should be 'Knew Amsterdam'.
There's a whole other meta-thing going on with the musical accompaniment that I'll blog about later - but tell you what: if you can list all the tracks and explain their significance, you'll win a brief cessation of my perpetual disdain.
Indeed it does. Jim Jefferies and Eddie Ifft are among my favourite comics. Iâm hoping they say nice things. Maybe point people to interviews Iâve done with them. Talk up this blog. Iâm already imagining my Twitter followers increasing by a good ten percent in a couple of days, like the time Stephen Fry gave me some link love way back when. (I made him LOL. Iâm going to keep bragging about it. I donât care whether you deal with it.)
But itâs better than that.
I go straight to their podcast homepage to access their latest episode, no. 133. It features Nick Thune. I begin listening.
I begin to get worried when they start talking about fat people. Well, not when they start. When they get to the bit about âfat people who donât see themselves as fatâ. Iâm pretty sure thatâs not me, Iâm just hoping I donât fit into (so to speak) that category without knowing it. I donât want to be talked about on their podcast in that context. Even though, truth be told, Iâm not that way about my weight. Iâm aware of it. However, I am that way about my age. Iâm an old person with no idea how old I actually am, or appear. There are people younger than me who seem so much older than me. Mostly because they do grown up things like work hard, earn good money, own houses, drive cars, have kids, submit their Business Activity Statements on time, that sort of thing.
But the fat discussion comes and goesâ¦
There are one or two other moments where the podcast goes to places I hope donât actually involve me.
Towards the end, Nick mentions heâs coming to Australia in August. Iâm guessing, in the last 30 seconds, theyâre going to suggest he lets me interview him for this blog.
Nope. That doesnât happen. Thatâs not it. And the episodeâs over.
I go to iTunes to look at other recent episodes. I see Orny Adams was their guest in the previous episode. And I shudder.
See, I interviewed Orny Adams way back in 2006. Back when I was producing a podcast â a groundbreaking podcast called Radio Ha Ha, dissecting comedy with comedians much as all the great podcasts do now. And not necessarily doing it any better than anyone does it now. But in a time when practically nobody was podcasting, it was important and groundbreaking.
We had an awesome conversation, Orny ânâ me. It went for ages, we covered so much ground, we got on brilliantly. And then, when it was over, I realised Iâd stuffed something up technically, and hadnât actually secured a recording I could use. That hurt.
Not long after, I interviewed Eddie Ifft for the first time. I was aware of, and overcame, the technical difficulty early in that interiew, cause I was being extra careful so as not to repeat the heartbreak of an excellent conversation resulting in nothing. Once, with Orny, was all the times I ever wanted it to happen in my life.
So seeing that Orny was the guest of Episode 132, I knew then and there precisely how I was going to feature in Jim & Eddie TalkS hit. Here is an excerpt, and transcript of the relevant part.
EDDIE IFFT: I do an interview in Australia, when I was there a long time ago. Iâm doing my run through and, you know, you go do your series of interviews before the festival⦠Iâm going to all these interviews. I go to this guy, and he interviews me: Dom Romeo. Heâs the nicest guy in the world.
JIM JEFFERIES: That was the first interview I ever had in my whole career.
EDDIE IFFT: He interviews me for like two hours, and heâs such a good guy, and we had had some technical problems that he fixed. And he goes, âthanks man; I just interviewed Orny Adams a couple of months ago â I interviewed him for two hours and then found out that the recorder didnât work.
ORNY ADAMS: Yeah, yeah, so the whole thing sounded like⦠[makes unintelligible whispering sound] Iâm pouring my heart out⦠Why do you think Iâm not trying today? Done!
Okay, so Iâm quite happy at the moment â my enhanced comedy podcast - Stand & Deliver! - currently sits at number 29 in the iTunes top 100 comedy podcasts.
I know itâs the quiet time of year when I donât have new episodes from Tony Martin, Ricky Gervais, Nonstopical or even Radio Ha Ha to contend with â but Iâm still proud. I mean, after all, Radio Ha Ha never got up that highâ¦
Pretty soon I'm going to burst through my bandwidth. If anyone would like to get on board before that time and buy some advertising, convince a rich and powerful friend to sponsor the show or just donate wads of cash, I'd be ever-so-grateful (you'd only be contributing to the greater good of the Australian comedy scene, after all).
