It’s that time of year again when comedians all over the country and indeed the world are preparing their funniest bits for the oncoming comedy festival season.
Among them is funny man Rhys Nicholson who has been working long and hard on his brand-new solo show, ‘Seminal’.
“This time of year we're still frantically writing the shows and it’s only called ‘Seminal’ because it's vaguely a pun on sperm,” Rhys says.
“I’ve had a show before called ‘Bona Fide’ – I basically want people to have to say silly things when they buy tickets to my shows. It's still shaping together but I think at the moment… It’s an hour of dick jokes because what else would I bring? That's what I always bring. But I'll be talking about marriage equality stuff and it’s mainly a wrap-up of the nutso [sic] things that have happened over the year but hopefully funny, we'll see.”
Rhys does however make one very stiff stipulation about what he will not be doing in his show: “I have no Trump jokes,” he says.
“That's really all I need to make clear. I have not a single Trump joke because I feel like he's doing that himself. This festival season I bet there's going to be so many Trump shows; it's upsetting and awful that he’s the leader of the free world, allegedly, but there's other things to talk about.”
Rhys’ new show comes in the wake of the same-sex marriage debate last year, which he and fellow comedian Zoe Coombs Marr highlighted the importance of in 2016 by getting ‘married’ at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
With the passing of same-sex marriage legislation, Rhys says he and fiancé Kyran Wheatley are holding off tying the knot at the moment for a very simple reason.
“We won’t get married this year. We'll probably get married next year because of time but also because weddings are f***ing expensive.”
Rhys’ star is very much on the rise, having become a favourite on the comedy touring circuit here and overseas and last year he picked up an ARIA Award nomination for Best Comedy release for ‘Rhys Nicholson Live At The Eternity Playhouse’.
Like all comedians who have spent any numbers of years live on-stage, Rhys has come across his fair share of wankers and hecklers, though it seems not all hecklers are created equal.
“I think the weirdest one I got was quite early on,” Rhys explains. “When I first started I had some pretty brutal gay material. I’m filthy now but it's kind of a soft filth, a warm filth – then it was me screaming swear words and cock jokes.
“I’d just done a five-minute set about being gay and a guy heckled, he just called me a faggot and it was the strangest thing because it’s like 'yes, that's what we've been talking about for five minutes; were you not here?' I remember saying something about putting something in his mouth to shut him up, something that I regret now.”
Rhys Nicholson Tour Dates
1-4 Mar - Brisbane Powerhouse (Brisbane Comedy Festival)Fri 23 Mar - The Street Theatre (Canberra Comedy Festival)
29 Mar-22 Apr - Swiss Club (Melbourne Comedy Festival)
Fri 27 Apr - State Theatre Centre (Perth Comedy Festival)
17-20 May - The Factory Theatre (Sydney Comedy Festival)
