I remember seeing Kitty Flanagan at the Harold Park Hotel in the inner city Sydney suburb of Glebe nearly a decade ago, when Stand & Deliver! was a photocopied zine whose copies barely outnumbered issues (Richard Neville speaks of being able to afford to travel back to England after selling issues of Oz along the Rue St Germaine; I occasionally had busfair home to North Manly after selling issues at the Harold Park Hotel!)
Kitty was back on the stand-up circuit after having been a castmember of Full Frontal, the sketch comedy show into which Fast Forward evolved after some cast changes. Then, as now, Kitty was hilarious on stage, and down-to-earth and approachable off, and so the opportunity to feature her as a ‘co-host’ was a pleasure, so much so that it turned into quite a yack-fest; there probably should be one more bit of comedy somewhere in the last fifteen minutes. But Kitty, her work and her attitude to it are all entertaining enough – and besides, you should be going out and seeing live comedy, rather than merely downloading it and enjoying it in the confines of your own headphones.
In addition to Kitty Flanagan, there are just too many quality Aussie comics who have decide to expatriate themselves to the UK, many of whom we don’t see enough of back home. At least Hillsy and Tim Minchin return often enough to make their inclusion in this episode a popular choice, as well as an easy one.
Download the MP3 file of this episode.
Subscribe to the enhanced podcast of this show using iTunesOPENING THEME [1]
Announcer: And now for something somewhat derivative.
Soundbite: The ‘Theme to Radio Ha Ha’ plays ever-so-briefly before the stylus of the record is brought across the vinyl, bringing it to an abrupt end in time for:
Announcer: Stand and deliver!
Song: ‘Theme to No Wucken Forries’ (edited version)
Dom: Hello and welcome to what will be Episode 2 of Stand & Deliver! I consider this ‘The Expat Aussie Comics in London who Come Home for Christmas Episode’, because my co-host is Kitty Flanagan who is back in Sydney for a short time, at the end of year, back from her London existance.
Kitty Flanagan: Yes, I’m home for the summer.
Dom: How are you, Kitty?
Kitty Flanagan: I’m very well, thank you, Dom
Dom: Are you happy to be home for the summer?
Kitty Flanagan: I love it. I’m in love with manly at the moment. I’m living with my parents and I'm having the best time. It’s quite odd. It’s like being eighteen again, except I like my parents this time round. It’s great. I just stay at home and hang around with them. Eat dinner, they let me borrow the car, it’s terrific. I'm such a dag. It’s great. And I can’t get home early enough. I love getting home and hanging out with them, going, ‘let’s have another glass of wine,’ got good food… it’s unreal. Hang out with you’re parents more. That’s my message to the kids.
Dom: Well, we’ll talk about…
Kitty Flanagan: Your parents are good peeps! C’mon!
Look at me speaking the language of the kids.
Dom: We will talk about parents and kids in this episode, as we listen to some of your comedy, Kitty, but…
Kitty Flanagan:Yes.
Dom: We’re also going to hear from Tim Minchin, who is also an expat Aussie currently in the UK, but first, another expat Aussie comic in London who is back for the summer is Adam Hills.
Kitty Flanagan:Oh, Adam Hills? Who’s ever heard of him?!
I’m kidding! He’s so massive.
Dom: Here’s a bit of Adam Hills from his Live in the Suburbs DVD that’s out now through Roadshow.
Soundbite: Adam Hills performs a routine dealing with the way we stereotypically sum up the speech patterns of people of other cultures; taken from his DVD Live in the Suburbs as released by ABC/Roadshow.
Station ID: Stand… stand… stand and deliver! [2]
Dom: That was Adam Hills from his DVD Adam Hills Live in the Suburbs, and he’s in one of the outer suburbs of Melbourne. [3] And that DVD is available now through Roadshow. Adam Hills is one of several favourite expat comics in London who come back for the summer.
Dom: Another favourite is Kitty Flanagan, who is sitting opposite me.
Kitty…
Kitty Flanagan: Yes.
Dom: … Welcome once again.
Kitty Flanagan: Thank you.
Dom: How is it when you come back? Do you go straight into gigs? Or do you need to ‘acclimatise’?
Kitty Flanagan: No, I love it. I love coming home because I’m ‘flavour of the month’ on so many levels. All my friends like seeing me, I get all the good gigs, I get a few extra bits and pieces, and then, just as everyone’s getting sick of me, I leave again. So it’s just the perfect crime to come home for one or two months a year, everyone loves you, and then you get out before everyone hates you again. Before they remember, “Oh yeah, I don’t really like her that much!” So it’s great. I love it!
Dom: So that’s your little scheme!
Kitty Flanagan: Yep.
Dom: That’s how it works!
Look, I saw you the other night at the Comedy Store.
Kitty Flanagan: I had a great week at the Comedy Store. As in, ‘I really enjoyed it’, not, ‘I was great’. Rather than sitting here trying to talk myself up, sitting here going, “Yeah, I was fantastic at the Comedy Store! Thank you!”
Dom: That’ll be my job. “Kitty was fantastic at the Comedy Store!”
Now, one of the bits that you did pretty early in your set on the night I was there was about the Sydney Tunnel. Not the Cross City Tunnel, the original Harbour Tunnel.
Kitty Flanagan: Well it wouldn’t be the Cross City Tunnel, because no one uses the Cross City Tunnel; that’s just sitting there empty.
Dom: I assume you can adapt material like ‘The Tunnel’ to where ever you are in the world that has a tunnel, which has got to be everywhere, these days.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah, you can, to a point, but ordinarily I wouldn’t. I did that bit purely because it happened to me on the way over. I’d completely forgotten about it. I mean, obviously, everybody’s got ‘bits’, but I had actually forgotten that bit because I never actually do it in the UK because it’s quite specific to Sydney, but I was in the tunnel and it actually happened again and I went, “oh, that’s right, this happens in the tunnel…”. I’m now leading into my own bit to tell you “what happened in the tunnel”.
Dom: Let’s bring on the bit.
This is Kitty Flanagan recorded live at Sydney’s Original Comedy Store.
Soundbite: Kitty Flanagan performs her bit about the Sydney Harbour Tunnel, as recorded live at the Comedy Store.
Station ID: Stand… stand… stand and deliver!
Dom: You’re listening to Stand & Deliver! and that was Kitty Flanagan, recorded live at Sydney’s Original Comedy Store. And Kitty Flanagan’s appearing live opposite me as we record this episode of Stand & Deliver.
Kitty Flanagan: I am. I’m so live.
Dom: You are so live!
Kitty, I’m going to do something contentious.
Kitty Flanagan: Okay.
Dom: Are you ready?
“I don’t like women comics apart from Kitty Flanagan and Sarah Kendall and Fiona O’Loughlin ’cause they’re not really funny!”
Kitty Flanagan: Well that’s not contentious because at least you put me in there. It would have been rude if you’d said, “I don’t like women comics except Sarah Kendall and Fiona O’Louglin”. That would have been contentious with me being here live in the studio. I woud have said, “well that’s just plain rude, Dom, to not include me, even out of politeness.”
Dom: I am speaking the truth – people have said that to me. I don’t agree with it…
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah, I think people say it all the time. Not with the, “… except for …”, but I get that a lot after gigs. People come up to me, and they’re saying it as a compliment, but it is a very ‘back-handed’ compliment, to the point of being a slap in the face and then a compliment. They do always say, “Aah, you know, I saw you walk out and I just went, ‘Oh no, a woman!’ But you were funny.” And you just go, “Oh…”. Okay, well that’s nice, they’re telling me that I’m funny, but they’re also saying that, yeah, women comics do have a harder time of it because you come on with that preconception of, “Oh, it’s going to be rubbish; it’s a woman!” So you have to work hard in that opening five minutes to convince them that you’re not rubbish.
Soundbite: Kitty Flanagan performs her opening gambit – addressing the unspoken fears of a typical comedy-going audience regarding their common reaction to women comics, as recorded live at the Comedy Store.
Dom: So does the opinion that you just shouldn’t be as funny as you are – does that just come from people who don’t see enough comedy and don’t know any better?
Kitty Flanagan: I think people are always very passionate about comedy anyway. Whether it’s a sitcom or whether it’s a film, people have such strong opinions when it comes to comedy. They’ll always say, “That’s not funny!” Whereas, if you’re watching a drama or a romance, people don’t say, “That’s not dramatic!” or “That’s not romantic!” When it’s comedy, everybody’s got the opinion. Everyone knows what they think is funny and what isn’t and, in general, I think people have this presumption that women aren’t going to be funny. It can work to your advantage, because then you surprise them, and you pleasantly surprise them…
The other thing is, people don’t remember. If they see a woman comic – I think this is the most important bit: – if they see a woman comic and she’s not funny, they immediately go, “Tchoh! I knew it! Women aren’t funny!” Whereas they will sit through a dozen men not being funny and not at any point will they think, “oh, mean aren’t funny”. That never crosses their mind. But if they see one unfunny woman, it all of a sudden becomes, “Oh! Women aren’t funny!” and they get so, “Tsk! I told you women weren’t funny!”
Dom: I still think that comes down to, if you see enough comedy, you don’t think that way when you see one bad comic.
Kitty Flanagan: Well the other thing is, there’s not as many of us doing it. It is down to numbers as well. I don’t know if these statistics are right, so obviously, I’m pulling them out of the filing cabinet in my arse, but say for example, Dom, there are a hundred comics. Of those hundred comics, only ten will be women.
Sorry, this probably isn’t good radio because I need some charts.
Ten are women; there’ll be ninety men. Now if ten percent of comics are funny, that means that one out of the ten women will be funny, however you’ve got ninety male comics, and ten percent of that is nine. So for every one funny female you’ve got nine funny men.
Dom: And so people will naturally assume, because they see a lot more funny men, that women [are not as funny].
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah. I think so. Or, basically, we should just it back in my arse, where those statistics belong. I think that might be a better place for that.
Dom: I think the final thing is, people ought to see more comedy and get a broader view of things.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah. And maybe just sit there with an open mind when a woman comes on, and go, “Aaah, well this could be funny!” instead of going, “Tsoh! It’s a woman!” which is what most people do.
Soundbite: Kitty Flanagan talks about her UK success as proven by her ownership of stuff she bought herself as opposed to affording on welfare as a single mum, as recorded live at the Comedy Store.
Dom: You talk a lot about children at the moment.
Kitty Flanagan: I don’t know that I do. If you watched me do a forty minute set, there’d be maybe – I don’t know – five to seven minutes on kids.
Dom: You’re right. And that statistic isn’t a lot.
Kitty Flanagan: No, it’s not really. That’s not a massive bit. I probably talk more about travelling than I do about kids. That would be a larger part because that’s what I do. I don’t want people to get the idea that I get up there and bang on about kids, because, for a start, I don’t have any so I’m hardly a great authority on children.
Dom: I think that’s what makes the bit particularly funny.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah. So when you say I’m talking about children, it’s not like I’m up there talking about my own children. I’m merely talking about those really irritating women that bring their kids into a café where I’m trying to enjoy a coffee. “Get out of my café, ladies! You’ve got the joy of children, let me me have the joy of coffee in peace, please.”
Dom: Let’s listen to a bit, because you also talk about teen mums, which, again…
Kitty Flanagan: Teen mums rock! I’m all for them.
Dom: Again, for someone who’s not a teen mum, you’re an awefully good authority from a comedic point of view.
Soundbite: Kitty Flanagan on motherhood as a young woman’s pass time, as recorded live at the Comedy Store.
Station ID: Stand… stand… stand and deliver!
Dom: Kitty Flanagan, again, recorded live at the Comedy Store, talking about teen mums.
Kitty, where do you get your information about teen mums? What inspires that bit of comedy?
Kitty Flanagan: Ummmmm… Going to the Central Coast and doing gigs at Mingara, maybe…
Dom: Can I just slip in a quick plug for your your website, there is a postcard from Mingara.
Kitty Flanagan: There is a postcard from Mingara, and I promise to anyone who looks at my website, if you do go there, I am going to start updating it, because I recently got this thing where you can see if people look at it, and it turns out that people actually do look at my website, whereas, I didn’t think they did, so I never bothered updating it. But now that I know there are people looking at it, I am going to address the fact that the same postcard from Mingara has been on there for over a year. Sorry about that.
Dom: www.kittyflanagan.com.
Kitty Flanagan: That’s it.
Dom: Now Kitty, on top of the…
Kitty Flanagan: Oh, can I tell you something really funny about the postcard from Mingara?
Dom: Please.
Kitty Flanagan: Now, with this new thing that I’ve got where you can look at stats and see who’s been looking at your website, you can also see what people googled to get your website up, and somebody – get this! – somebody was googling “nude teenagers” and up came my website because, in the postcard from Mingara, there is a reference about nude teenagers copulating in the sea. I’m just imagining this poor man’s disappointment: he’s got his pants off, he’s googling ‘nude teenagers’, he gets ‘Kitty Flanagan Gallery – nude teenagers copulating in the sea’, he thinks he’s going to be hittin’ on the jackpot of all these nude kids in the sea, and up comes my face going, “Hi! I’m doing gigs at all these venues and I’ve got my clothes on, and I’m thirty-eight; I’m not a teenager!” That man must have been so disappointed.
I know you’re out there, you pervert. Get off my website. And put your pants on!
Dom: In addition to… I’m sorry, I’m just going to laugh at that a bit longer…
Soundbite: ‘From Beginning To End’, by Psychedelic Spew.
Dom: Now in addition to your Central Coast experience, you’ve also got some insights about the mid-30s mothers.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah, or, basically, all my friends.
Dom: Will they still be your friends when they listen to this?
Kitty Flanagan: Oh, probably not, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t want to be their friend anyway, now that they’ve got noisy kids screaming in my ear.
It’s not true. I love kids. My sister has three of them, and I adore them. I’m going to babysit them after this.
Soundbite: Kitty Flanagan on mature mums, recorded live at the Comedy Store.
Dom: Now Kitty, I’d just like to interrupt with a kind of an ad…
Kitty Flanagan: Yes
Dom: Registration has opened for Raw Comedy, a national competition that’s run by the Comedy Festival in conjunction with Triple J, that unearths new comedy. Young comics… or up-and-coming comics – ‘young’ is the wrong word; they can be of all ages! But they’re fresh comics…
Kitty Flanagan: Yes.
Dom: Now, you never came through with a Raw Comedy, did you.
Kitty Flanagan: What are you saying? I wasn’t enough?
No, I’m just old. There was no competition – no Raw Comedy – when I started. There used to be a fantastic venue in Sydney that you would remember called the Harold Park Hotel.
Dom: I remember it well.
Kitty Flanagan: I don’t know how people start anymore without the benefit of the Harold Park Hotel, which was on a Monday night, and you could get up and do your open mic stuff there. I think the Friend in Hand has probably taken that role. And it seems to be working, because this is the first trip that I’ve had back – I come back every year, and this is the first time I’ve come back – and seen so many good, really promising, new comics, doing the most original and unique material. It’s fantastic. Because it’s been a while: there have been so many young guys just standing up, telling us how they do their girl from behind, or how they love to wank, or blah, blah, blah… all the same old, same old, and this time back there have been so many good new comics, it’s fantastic. Especially coming out of Sydney, which is really good.
Dom: Okay, so back to your early days: Harold Park…
Kitty Flanagan: Speaking of, yes, wanking and taking your girlfriend from behind, back to my early material, yes, I did a lot of that.
Dom: Maybe he was just closing the filing cabinet, Kitty.
Sorry, that was uncalled for.
Kitty Flanagan: I’ve gone all shy!
My early days: yes, I started at the Harold Park. There was actually a competition the first night I started. I didn’t know that when I signed up to do it. I tried to bail, and said, “this is my time and I don’t want to do it,” and they said, “please, please come down, because we don’t ever get any women,” so I went down. And, yeah, I was lucky. It went all right. Because had it not gone well, I probably would never have done it again.
I think that’s the difference with women as well, we take it a lot more personally and we get out of it rather than stick with it and persevere. I think men are much better at persevering. You can see a man who’s unfunny for two years, and then all of a sudden, it clicks over and he’s funny, and he’s stuck with it, and he’s really good. Whereas I think women tend to go, “I’m so humiliated, I’m never doing this again.” We take things so personally.
Dom: That is a pity that that’s the case.
Kitty Flanagan: We don’t have as thick a skin as a lot of men.
Dom: In that case, I’m glad you were really good from day one.
Kitty Flanagan: I wasn’t ‘really good’, I just got lucky. And also, I went over to my sister’s house because I wasn’t going to tell anyone that I was doing it, and I thought, “I’d better just run this material by my sister.” So I performed it to my sister, in the living room, just her. And let me tell you, that is harder than actually doing it in front of an audience. Performing what you think is stand-up, when you’ve never done it before, to one person who just sits there going, “ummmmm… mm-hmm… mm-hmm…” She wasn’t exactly pissing her pants, let me tell you. So that was good, in a way, because I just kept adding bits until she finally laughed. What I’d actually written never made it to the stage at the Harold Park.
Dom: You must have had some spark of brilliance, because, from memory, you made it to television pretty quickly, too.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah, but then again, that’s the advantage of being a woman. I come on stage and people go, “Tsoh, it’s going to be a woman!” but then there’s the other advantage: there’s not as many of us, so you do get picked up a lot faster. There’s not as many of us competing for the jobs… It can be a good thing and a bad thing. That was the bad thing for me, because I only really had a ten minute act and I got to be on television and I wasn’t able to take advantage of being on television by going to do a live tour because who wants to tour Australia with, “Woo! Who wants to come and see my ten minutes? It’s brilliant! It’s me off the telly, and I’ve got ten minutes of GOLD stand-up!” So, yeah. That was the problem. I did two years of television and then went back to stand-up and went, “Oh… I’ve only got a ten-minute act. I’d better start working on that.”
Dom: Of course, in addition to the Full Frontal stuff you did, Kitty, you were also on Shaun Micallef’s Program, or Pogram, or Programme with… [two m’s and an e].
Kitty Flanagan: Yes. Shaun Micallef, one of my faaaavourite performers. He should be back on television here. Start a petition. He’s the funniest man on television. Well, he’s not on television anymore. But he should be!
Soundbite: Sketch from The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) featuring Kitty Flanagan as a psychic called ‘Clair’, from the Granada DVD The Micallef P(r)ogram(me) Series Un distributed by Shock.
Station ID: Stand… stand… stand and deliver!
Dom: That was Kitty Flanagan on The Shaun Micallef P(r)ogram(me) that’s available now, released by Granada in Australia and distributed by Shock.
I’ve spoken to you just after things have been released on DVD, and you’ve kind of been, “Oh, I was just in a shop and I was on the screen, and I don’t know if I felt good about that”. How do you feel now? Can you look at the old stuff?
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah, but the problem I have now, looking at the old stuff, is that I want another chance to do it again. Especially with Full Frontal. It was such a great time… When I was doing it, I was so new, and so raw, and I was always so nervous because I’d never done anything like that before. Everyone else was very experienced. I was always worried that I was gonna be busted and caught out and someone was going to point the finger and go, “Do you know what? I don’t think she knows what she’s doing!” So I was always really nervous. Whereas, now, I’ve got a lot more experience and a lot more confidence. I would love to go and do it again, and I would probably be horrendous because I would just over-act and I’d be way too confident. I would probably really annoy everyone. But I would like the opportunity to do that sort of thing again with the benefit of a bit more experience.
Dom: I would argue that you have been given that opportunity, and it’s called The Sketch Show.
Kitty Flanagan: Yes, that’s very true, and I certainly did enjoy that, but I simply mean, all those people on Full Frontal were such wonderful people to work with, and they all taught me so much – Glenn Butcher, Shaun Micallef – all those people – Eric Bana, obviously – and I would just love the opportunity to work with all those people and enjoy working with them. Because, if you forget to enjoy the experience… That’s what I’ve noticed about myself; I tend to do these things and I’m so uptight about mucking it up that I don’t actually enjoy the experience. But when I got to The Sketch Show, yes, I knew what I was doing, and I wrote a lot more of my material, which was great, but the way that show was made, it wasn’t as fun a way to work as Full Frontal was. Full Frontal was a very fun show. The people were very fun. Whereas The Sketch Show was far more business-like and is about the individuals, and not the team effort.
Dom: Okay. So just for people who aren’t as familiar, who will be soon, because Full Frontal has been issued on DVDom: and The Micallef… stuff that you were in has been issued on DVD…
Kitty Flanagan: Yes.
Dom: … I don’t think we’ve got the second season of The Sketch Show, which is a British show, in this country…
Kitty Flanagan: No, it doesn’t exist on DVD, I don’t think…
Dom: … Which is a pity, because the best of the first season has been issued here…
Kitty Flanagan: Right.
Dom: … and that’s just before you were on the show.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah. I was in… The first season of The Sketch Show starred Ronnie Ancona, who’s an English comic and a very good impressionist, and that series won a BAFTA, which is like an English Logie, and then I joined the second series when she left, and that series got axed! So, I’m not sure what changed, or why there was such a massive difference, but it has become quite the thing to point the finger at me and say that perhaps I was the reason.
Dom: There was no need for you to be so honest there, Kitty, and I don’t believe it for a minute, and the reason I don’t believe it is because the producers of The Sketch Show went on to produce your award winning short film…
Kitty Flanagan: They did.
Dom: … called Dating Ray Fenwick which you don’t seem to appear in. You wrote and directed it…
Kitty Flanagan: I wrote and directed it, and I also gave myself a cameo in it, but then, typical me, didn’t like my own performance so I cut myself out of my own short film.
Dom: Will you be in the director’s cut?
Kitty Flanagan: Well that’s the thing… it is already the director’s cut, and I didn’t make it to my own director’s cut. I’ll be in the extras when I release the extras of the twelve-minute short film.
Dom: I can’t wait to see you bitching about the director who cut your one and only seen!
Now we haven’t seen Dating Ray Fenwick in this country.
Kitty Flanagan: I know. But that’s fine, you know. I don’t mind, because it’s appeared in film festivals around the world. It’s debut screening was in London, which was really exciting. That’s a really big film festival so that was absolutely thrilling to get it on there. It also was on in New York, at the NYC Shorts Festival, where it won a couple of awards, and it’s been on in Canada at a few festivals. It’s quite popular in Canada. Quite a few festivals have picked it up there. It’s been on in LA…
But I’ve submitted it to all the festivals here in Australia and I don’t mind that they rejected it, that’s fine, because I have been rejected by film festivals around the world; that’s just the nature of the business. But do you know what? Australian film festivals don’t even e-mail you back to say, “I’m sorry, we had a lot of entries, and you haven’t been accepted”. Not one of them sends you a rejection letter.
I’ve got piles of rejection letters from much bigger festivals than the Australian ones, and they at least have the courtesy to write to you and go, “Oh, sorry, we enjoyed your film…” – what a lie, they probably didn’t watch it but at least they lie to you and make it pleasant; they go – “sorry, we enjoyed your film, but we’ve got a lot of entries and it didn’t quite fit…” In Australia, nothing! You don’t hear anything. I think they’re rude.
Dom: They are rude.
Kitty Flanagan: So I’m having my own screening.
Dom: When are you screening it?!
Kitty Flanagan: I might reject myself. I might write back to myself and go, “I’m sorry, you’re rejected”.
I’m screening it at my show at the Vanguard in Newtown on 19th December. The one and only Australian screening.
Dom: Is this the ‘Festival of You’?
Kitty Flanagan: It’s ‘A Festival of Me’, Dom, so obviously, if you’re not a big fan of me, it’s not a show that you’re going to enjoy.
Dom: What makes it a ‘festival’?
Kitty Flanagan: Well, it’s pretty much everything I like doing. This is going to be my first one-woman show ever in Sydney. I’ve done a one-woman show in Edinburgh, I’ve done a one-woman show in Melbourne; I didn’t particularly like either of them, and this show – I like all the stuff that’s going in it. I like my short film, I like the stand-up I’ll be doing. And I also like the fact that my support act, in my one-woman show – I’m going to have two women in my one-woman show – my support act will be my sister, who will be doing a few numbers. My sister Penny Flanagan, who was a singer-songwriter; she still is. But she had a bit of success in the 90s, wouldn’t you say…
Dom: I would!
Kitty Flanagan: … in a band called Club Hoy.
Dom: I remember when she was in Club Hoy and I remember when she went solo.
Kitty Flanagan: Well yeah, she’s going to do a few numbers and we’re going to do a big number together at the end which will be entertaining on so many levels, because I’ll be singing.
Dom: I must say, I can’t remember hearing you sing.
Kitty Flanagan: That’s because I haven’t. Ever. Although I did the other night. My sister and I tried out my musical finale at the Comedy Store the other night. We went down and did an impromptu five minutes, so I sang for the first time on stage the other night.
Dom: How’d it go?
Kitty Flanagan: It was terrifying. I had a lot more wine than I would usually have before I appear on stage, but it was great fun. I was so much fun being on stage with someone, and especially with my sister, cos she’s fun, and she’s funny.
Dom: You know what, Kitty? This is the perfect cue to play that song!
Kitty Flanagan: I know, but I don’t have a copy of it because we’ve only played it once.
Dom: So I’m not going to play it. Instead…
Kitty Flanagan: I’m sorry about that. It did feel like a build up: “And now, throw to the song, Dom. Oh, sorry, I haven’t got one.”
Dom: That’s okay, I have Plan B.
Kitty Flanagan: Good.
Dom: I have Tim Minchin.
Kitty Flanagan: Yes. Tim Minchin. A professional funny song man. That’s a much better idea. Play him. Don’t play my amateur efforts that don’t exist on recording anywhere. That is such a much better idea.
Dom: Now I’m going to do something a bit dodgy here. When he appeared on Spicks and Specks, he appeared a song called ‘The Adam Hillsong’. It’s all over the internet…
Kitty Flanagan: Who is Adam Hills? You keep mentioning him. I’ve never heard of the man…
Dom: Like Tim Minchin currently and like you quite often, he’s another expat Aussie comic who spends a lot of time in the UK… Tim Minchin wrote a love song for Adam Hills and performed it on the show. It’s all over the internet. You can find the clip of it on Tim Minchin’s webpage, timminchin.com. Here it is.
Soundbite: ‘The Adam Hillsong’ as performed by Tim Minchin on Spicks & Specks, and found on YouTube and www.timminchin.com
Station ID: Stand… stand… stand and deliver!
Dom: That was Tim Minchin performing ‘The Adam Hillsong’ which you can see the clip of on www.timminchin.com…
Kitty Flanagan: You can also go to another fabulous site called whoisadamhills?neverheardofhim.com… That’s not true. We all know he’s massive…
Dom: And if you’re a massive fan of Spicks & Specks – a show which, Kitty Flanagan, you have been on…
Kitty Flanagan: I have, I got to be on it with Rich Hall, which was such a delight… he’s the funniest man in the world.
Dom: Excellent…
Kitty Flanagan: I also got to be on it with Angry Anderson, who isn’t the funniest man in the world, can I say…
Dom: You can say that.
Kitty Flanagan: He’s quite a creepy man.
Dom: There is a Christmas Special taking place with no Rich Hall, no Kitty Flanagan, no Angry Anderson…
Kitty Flanagan: That’s a good thing! The ‘Angry Anderson’, not the ‘Rich Hall’ thing.
Dom: Or the ‘Kitty Flanagan’. Being broadcast on Sunday 17th, and guests include Ross Noble, Frank Woodley, Deborah Byrne, and Dame Edna Everage!
Kitty Flanagan: Oh, well they’ve amped that up a bit and pulled out the celebs, haven’t they. That’s good news.
Dom: That is good news.
Dom: Kitty.
Kitty Flanagan: Yes.
Dom: We’ve nearly come to an end.
Kitty Flanagan: Have we? All right.
Dom: So I think I’d just better say again, the ‘Festival of You’…
Kitty Flanagan: ‘Kitty Flanagan: A Festival of Me’ is on December 19th at the Vanguard, which I’ve discovered is a lovely venue in Newtown, so I’ve very much looking forward to playing that… um… I’ll just plug it myself!
It’s going to have me; there’s going to be a film; there’s going to be me on the egg shaker, keeping rhythm, which is going to be so entertaining. Oh, and there’ll be some stand-up comedy as well, don’t forget that bit. That’s probably going to be the bulk of the show. There’s some highly amusing stand-up comedy from me.
Dom: Am I allowed to plug some other shows that you’re doing or would you prefer that I didn’t?
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah. I don’t think that I’m doing any, though, am I?
Dom: Well you’re going to be in Melbourne from 13th to 16th of December at the Crown Casino supporting Jason Alexander. Yes, that’s true. I’m doing a support for Jason Alexander. There’s a few of us on, actually. Akmal as well, and a couple of other people. Jason does a few numbers because he’s quite a broadway musical star. He’ll also do a Q&A about Seinfeld which will no doubt now be about, “Er, was Michael Richards a racist when you worked with him?” So that’s going to be a bit tedious I think, poor Jason Alexander having to answer questions about Michael Richards the whole time. But it should be a really fun show. Rebecca De Unamuno is going to be on, doing some improv as well…
Dom: Oh wow! And Tom Gleeson’s on, as well.
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah, and Tom Gleeson. So it’s a really big show.
Dom: Geez, I wish I could get to Melbourne!
Kitty?
Kitty Flanagan: Yes?
Dom: It’s been a pleasure!
Kitty Flanagan: Thank you so much.
Dom: Thank you.
Kitty Flanagan: How outrageous: ‘nude teenagers’, he was googling. Isn’t that against the law? He didn’t write ‘nude teenagers over sixteen’. He didn’t do anything legal like that.
Dom: You’re right, it is against the law!
Kitty Flanagan: Yeah. It’s against the law.
Dom: I’ll make sure I word it better when I google.
- For a breakdown of the elements of the Stand & Deliver! theme, read the first bunch of footnotes from Episode 1.
- This Station ID was devised and recorded by gentleman country doctor and composer predominantly of songs of faith, Joe Romeo.
- Recorded live at the Cardenia Cultural Centre, Packenham. A great DVD it is too.
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