Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer and comedian who wrote the songs for the West End hit Matilda, also a composer, actor, and musician.
On the island
Eight records
I was trying to choose one and of course what happens when you're trying to choose you sort of feel like you need to pay homage to the history of it. So I went all the way back to Muddy Waters and I went with Mojo Working because it's an absolute classic.
Waterloo SunsetFavourite
I love him as a lyricist, I love his voice. So I went with my heart and went with probably one of my favourite songs ever written, which is Waterloo Sunset.
And it has that feeling of, look, I'm tired. I just need someone to look after me now. And if it's Jesus for Charlie Rich, then all well and good for me, I guess it's my family.
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
There's something that just feel so individual about him, like he's just expressing exactly who he is.
Carl Anderson (from Jesus Christ Superstar)
Andrew Lloyd Webber / Tim Rice
I reckon I sang this song standing in my parents' lounge room to the vinyl original London cast recording version of JC Superstar maybe five hundred times, and subsequently got to understudy the role of Judas in two separate Perth productions of JC Superstar, but never played the role and it's uh it's I keep thinking, I'm gonna one day I'm gonna play Judas, but I just love it'cause it's just pain and rock.
There are so many great Deep Purple songs, uh but this song is just ridiculously cool. It's from the era where Richie Blackmore was playing guitar and Ian Gillen was singing. And um I just love it. It just rocks, it's ridiculous.
I couldn't do a list without a Beatles song, but it it it was a I mean, I just found this so ridiculously hard. I to my surprise, I thought I would choose a McCartney song, but I chose a John Lennon song because uh it's just so cool.
Unable to identify with confidence
This song my brother and I used to play it in pubs, and it's just such a great pop song, incredibly uplifting, and I guess uh it's it's a great love song, too. And it's Swedish.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:49You've said you passionately believe in not setting goals. You don't get opportunities if you think you know what you're meant to be doing. Tell me more about that.
I I I believe that very strongly, but it's significantly influenced by hindsight because it's worked for me. I'm incredibly squeamish about this sort of I've always wanted this, this is my dream to be ex, you know, I'm going to pursue my dream, come what may, and all that sort of stuff. I hate that sort of nonspecific language. It doesn't mean anything, you know, to me. I don't get what you're saying. You have a dream and it seems to not be influenced by any other factors but your fantasy of it. Probably more of us have the sort of life where happily lots of opportunities come your way and you need to be ready to receive them by having your eyes not on the prize but on everything around you. And uh I guess if I had to impart uh wisdom to my children, which I hope never to do to them, I would just say work incredibly hard at whatever you're doing and then people will respect you and you then they'll ask you to do something else, you know. I'm not I'm not disciplined at all, but if I've got a task in front of me I go pretty hard at it and I I think that works.
Presenter asks
8:51Did they [your parents] expect stuff of all their children in terms of academic achievement?
It's weird, isn't it? You feel like your parents are really heavy when you're young, but I look back and realise how, in my opinion, how right they got it, where they put their emphasis. I went to a boys' private school for 11 years and private schools in Australia aren't like the public public schools here, but they're still, you know, I was privileged to go to that school. But we didn't have fancy cars and we went camping and my granddad had a farm and we spent our weekends on the farm and they didn't ever say we had to be doctors and they didn't say we had to be professionals and none of us are um in the sense that we're not lawyers, doctors, vets and dentists. So they there was low amount of pressure in that regard, but a reasonable amount of pressure in terms of uh not letting yourself down.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
10:20White Wine in the Sun is one of your best known recordings. It talks about the relationship between you and your family. Was it motivated by looking at your first child and thinking, the circle has closed, I get it now? I'm wondering what your parents made of the song.
I think they really like it. Um w we're not a particularly demonstrative family. We're a hyper communicative family. We all talk to each other every week. But we're not emotionally demonstrative and that's a pretty emotionally demonstrative song. They they love it. It's very personal but that that that song wasn't an epiphany for me. I had my baby and I was in London and I was overwhelmed by a sense that I needed to get it home, stick it in the ocean and show it to my mum. And that didn't come as a surprise to me because you could have asked me five years before I had a baby and I would have said I love my family and I like going home and seeing them, you know.
Presenter asks
15:59Your breakthrough in this country came at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005. By that time you'd been working for about a decade on your music and stand-up, yet you were named Best Newcomer. Was there something a little bit galling about that?
No, not really,'cause I'd actually only been I mean, uh, it was my first ever attempt at doing comedy that show. Uh, I wasn't new to the stage and I wasn't new to playing music. But I'd my twenties were spent sometimes composing for theatre, sometimes playing in cover bands, a hell of a lot of cover bands, piano bars, acting when I got acting work, and I'd had a great time. And then early 2005 I straightened my hair and put the eyeliner on and by Melbourne Comedy Festival two thousand five I kinda had what you would call a comedy show. And so I was new, you know, I was really new.
Presenter asks
17:12You got a very bad review at Edinburgh, which has since become infamous because it was by a man called Phil Doust. You wrote a song in response to his bad review called 'Song for Phil Doust'. Brave, dramatic, and probably wonderfully petty that you did that.
So petty. Well, I don't know how I feel about someone anymore because I feel bad for Phil that if you type his name in or whatever, his name is associated with my song. ... I actually didn't write that song straight off the back of it. It really affected me and that's more because I was not ready for an article in a national English newspaper. That was just so awful. And that's a hard lesson to learn. I think all reviewers should write as if they're watching a friend of their sister's.
Presenter asks
20:21Why continue to put yourself out there? If you feel it as deeply as you've just described — the sense that it hurts — it's interesting that you still need and want to go out there and put yourself out there to be judged.
Because I, while I don't like my voice and doubt my work, there's another part of my brain that knows that I'm good at it. ... I love it. I absolutely love it. I mean I could not design my career to be better than it is. I get to play music, I get I get taken seriously, I can I make people cry in my shows, I make them laugh, I play my own material, I play pianos that are better than I deserve, with musicians that are better than I am, in rooms that I wouldn't have dreamt of. And then I get to write musical for as well. It's ridiculous. Why would you stop?
“I don't know talking about myself, you know, just the normal stuff.”
“I hate that sort of nonspecific language. It doesn't mean anything, you know, to me. I don't get what you're saying. You have a dream and it seems to not be influenced by any other factors but your fantasy of it.”
“I only care about people's religious belief where it hurts other people, in terms of my comedy. In a broader sense, I'm just really interested in it.”
“Even if you do live in the memories of a couple of generations it's so fleeting that it's insignificant. But none of this is depressing. In fact, it's awe inspiringly awesome that this event has happened, one's own existence.”
“People don't even know how to spend their Saturday afternoons. What what do I want with eternity, you know?”