Funnyman Dave Thornton tells us about the secrets of the comedy industry, his love for silverside, and his plan to ride out of a casino on a brand new jet ski.
The all-star cast for Laugh Your Pants Off, a one-night-only comedy show at Jupiters Casino couldn’t really get any better, with Dave lining up alongside Peter Helliar, Wil Anderson and Hannah Gadsby. “All the audience members know that with a line-up like that, no one’s phoning it in,” Dave says. “Because every comedian's ego will jump out and say, ‘I do not want to go on in front of all these great comics’. When you've got all these great comics, it's just one big pissing match. We're all trying to outdo each other. So the winner is the audience and the loser is probably the comedian's ego.
“Like so many comedians and like every comedian on that list, I'm starved for attention, and a gig like this is going to get me a lot of attention, so ... With a great crowd laughing at all your stuff, any comedian is going to be chomping at the bit.”
Performing on TV, radio and stage, he’s done it all. “I think each one is almost like a break from the other. I do one and I think, ‘This is heaps of fun’ and then I do it for too long and I go, 'I'm bored now'. Then I get to do something else and I go, 'HOW MUCH FUN IS THIS!', then I get bored again. So it's this strange little cycle. I remember my mum used to feed me silverside a lot as a kid, corned beef, and there was just too much of it. And now, I haven't had corned beef in ages, I'd love a plate of that.”
It’s obvious that Dave’s got a cracker personality, but when asked, he warns that revealing the secret to comedy might cause fireworks. “This is like Skull And Bones, if I told you I would have to kill you. There is a secret, and we all do know about it, but we can't let the outside world know. We have killed men about it before. We're like the Knights Templar. We have to guard it with our lives. every comedian does have [a go-to joke], like a ‘break glass in case of emergency’, but the unfortunate thing is that it is so powerful. Us comedians all know that there is a joke out there that is so funny that it's actually killed people. You want to use it tentatively.”
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Famous for his appearances on comedy TV shows such as Talkin’ ‘Bout Your Generation, Good News Week and The 7pm Project, he can currently be found on the panel of Channel Ten’s This Week Live. “I enjoy giving little Tommy (Tom Gleeson) shit. That is pretty much the most enjoyable thing I can do. Oh, I'm not sure if in your street press you can use the word 'shit'... I can dumb it down for you. You can change it to 'crap' if you like.”
When asked if there's anything he hasn’t done yet in his extravagant professional career, he's optimistic. “[I’d like to] hook up with Eva Mendes. Is that possible? Could you write that down so that when it comes up in Google alert on her phone, so she'll know that I'm talking about her?”
As a final message to his Gold Coast fans, Dave makes the following proposal. “Maybe I could just put in a request. Maybe if all the people from the Gold Coast could come bearing gifts, that'd be great. Just try to up each other for all of it, that'd be good. There's nothing like a bit of Queensland hospitality to make you want to come back for more. Who knows? Maybe they could throw it all together and get us a jet ski.”
Dave Thornton plays Laugh Your Pants Off at Jupiters Theatre on Friday November 8 with Wil Anderson, Peter Helliar, Hannah Gadsby, Damian Power, Stephen Head, Lindsay Webb and Ellen Briggs.
