Simon Taylor is an Australian stand-up comedian based in Melbourne and LA.
He is the host on Channel 31’s flagship show ‘Live On Bowen’ along with his web show ‘Beat Streets With Simon Taylor’. He was a writer for ‘The Tonight Show With Jay Leno’ until its completion and also wrote for Shaun Micallef’s ‘Mad As Hell’ on the ABC.
Simon has toured the world with his stand-up in places diverse as New York, Albuquerque, Singapore and Cambodia. He has enjoyed/ endured his fairshare of ‘weird’; here are four such tales.
Adelaide Fringe Festival
Anything can happen on an Adelaide Fringe stage. It’s not that out of the ordinary to have to follow an act that has just run around naked, or that threw knives at a moving target or that rubbed their bum on an audience member... or all three. So pretty much every gig I’ve done there has had some element of absurdity. The most recent of which was doing a gig for a silent disco. A crowd of people with headphones were either tuned into music and were dancing around, or were tuned into my microphone and were listening to my gags. That’s the first time I’ve performed to a bunch of people in different realities. It was weird and ridiculous.A bar in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
I had a gig booked in Cambodia for Boxing Day. It was well organised and crazy fun. The next day I was staying in a cheap, little hostel down one of the darker streets of Phnom Penh. I walked out of my room at about 10pm to go to the bathroom. The owner of the hostel, a 20-something woman yelled “hey funny man! Come perform in the bar”. In my shorts and singlet I was lead to the communal area where I was given an esky to stand on and yelled a 20-minute set to a few dozen backpackers. It was my favourite gig ever.A mothers club in Albuquerque, New Mexico
Most open-mic comedy nights are a line-up of adolescent males talking about their dicks. Not in Albuquerque. The comedy night was held in a giant, empty nightclub on Tuesday. The majority of the performers that night were recently divorced mothers hanging shit on their kids and ex-husbands. It was a kind of weird mothers club therapy group... but with jokes. When I was on stage I talked about how I should call my mum more. It was the most enlightening show I’ve ever been a part of. Sad, humbling and retrospectively super funny.A mansion in Singapore
A friend of a friend was a looking for a comedian to perform at his wife’s 40th birthday in Singapore. They paid my flights and when I arrived, the client was a Perth-born construction manager named John who picked me up in his Ferrari F430. Their house was practically a palace, all set-up for the birthday party. His wife was a Malaysian-born woman who spoke English perfectly, but her family didn’t quite have the same grasp. So I was being paid big enough money to perform to a crowd of kids, grandparents, cousins and friends who may or may not have understood my jokes. It went okay.{youtube}QdS_5SFD0N0{/youtube}
Simon Taylor Tour Dates
3-8 Mar - Brisbane Powerhouse (Brisbane Comedy Festival)25 Mar-19 Apr - Melbourne International Comedy Festival
