Comedian Sammy J has a Phantom comic book obsession that he needs to get off his chest and he wants to explain how an awkward nerd ended up with a federal policeman searching his attic and why he owes his marriage to the United Nations.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

Sammy J’s an interesting guy: a school kid who digs global affairs, a partial law student (he made it halfway through the degree), and a musical political junky.

His new show Hero Complex is a kind of memoir and – like all Aussie school kids who made the right-of-passage excursion to Canberra – he reminisces about his school trip to Parliament House.

But this wasn’t any old sight-seeing tour, Samuel Jonathan McMillan was there as a card-carrying member of the United Nations Youth Association.

“I dressed up in a Ukrainian national outfit because everyone was given a country to represent,” he said. “It was my first sort of time in Canberra and it was my first time meeting other nerds as well and it really got me completely hooked on politics and global affairs.

“I think I’m the only one from that cohort who ended up as a musical comedian but it was a genuine life-changing experience, not least because I met my wife there as well.”

So picture this, it’s 1999 in suburban Frankston, Victoria, and Sammy J has to track down a Ukrainian outfit and research this far-flung Eastern European country.

When he got to Canberra with 100 other kids from around the country, it was “a pretty wild week” (even though he was bullied by Belarus and didn’t get along with Poland).

“Not many people can sort of pinpoint one week which really changed their whole lives but for me, that was it,” he said. “It was amazing, all very passionate adolescent nerds from around Australia converging.”

Their scholastic challenge was to solve global poverty and climate change. Unfortunately they didn’t deliver.

“We did what we could but it was a big challenge for a 15-year-old,” Sammy J said.

So what the United Nations have to do with the comic book character, The Phantom?

“It’s a great question,” he said. “The Phantom’s wife in the comics is Diana, his wife works for the United Nations and so that’s what got me into the United Nations to begin with.”

Don’t worry if you don’t know who The Phantom is, not many people do, which is why Sammy J used to swap Phantom comics with his school gardener because he was the only other person he knew who liked The Phantom.

“This show is kind of my Batman Begins moment really,” Sammy said. “It’s kind of an adolescent memoir but it really goes to the heart of why I got into politics to begin with and why I’m such a politics nerd.”

In a full-circle moment, it just so happens that another boy at Sammy’s school also liked The Phantom – and he is now a prominent federal politician.

“I won’t name him, you’ll have to see the show to see,” Sammy teased, quite chuffed he rated a mention in this mystery politician’s maiden speech.

Sammy J was destined to be a musical comedian because in Year 7, he was enthralled by the 1959 song The Elements by American satirist Tom Lehrer, which was set to the Major-General’s Song from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance.

Sammy J memorised every word… during school lunchbreak.

“Arsenic, aluminium selenium, and hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and rehenium….” he sings down the phone line. “My Year 7 music teacher played songs of his and he was the one who taught me satirical songs. He would sing some really funny and depraved and biting songs but because he’d sing it so sweetly with his lovely little pink piano, he would just completely get away with it.”

When Sammy J first started writing songs, he tried to follow Tom Lehrer’s style and write about the entire Melbourne train network.

“I memorised every train station in Melbourne, which I realised was a very short-sighted thing to do because I couldn’t travel interstate with that song,” he said. “But, you know, you’ve got to start somewhere.”

Whether you’re a Phantom fan or not, or whether or not you’re a political nerd, or just an outsider who never really belonged, Sammy J has got you.

“Every night there’s a handful of Phantom fans in the crowd wearing their Phantom t-shirts and it’s like a secret language, I’m glad that they can feel seen,” he said.

Sammy J’s Hero Complex is at The Canberra Theatre on Friday 20 March. Tix:   canberratheatrecentre.com.au/show/sammy-j-2026