Beloved Aussie comedian Sammy J has been making audiences laugh from the stage, the screen and radio with songs, poems and outrageous characters. He farewells the beloved characters of his ABC Sketch show in Good Hustle at Canberra Theatre Centre on 26 May. CW caught up with Sammy ahead of the show to chat career, characters and comedy.

1. Tell us about Good Hustle.

For the last five years, I’ve been doing weekly sketch on ABC all about politics and society and stuff and along the way, I’ve created a number of characters as part of those. After five years, I decided I was going to wrap that up and so I thought I would do a big farewell tour, which is farewelling about 15 characters in total.

It’s a big hour, a lot of costume changes, a lot of songs and sort of a chance for anyone who knows my ABC sketches, it’s a chance to see those on stage. Also, for anyone who’s never seen me live before, it’s a pretty big, bold, accessible show.

I’ve got the main heavy hitters – government coach, my yoga instructor, playground politics, and bush poet. There are some characters who only appeared on TV once and will never be seen again because they had too many complaints or were too weird. All the crowd favourites.

There was one called Sick Dog who was an FM morning radio host who was set in a quarantine hotel and people hated him; I think it was the mullet.

2. Do you have a favourite character to play?

In the live show and on TV there’s my bush poet SJ Paterson, who I just really like because he’s got a massive beard. In the stage show, he does a poem about Australia Day and whether or not we should be changing the date. For me, the joy is actually in the silence, there’s laughs in the poem but it’s also trying to hold the crowd and hold the silence. I do feel a physical transformation being the poet.

3. When did you know you wanted to do comedy?

I’ve been thinking about this lately because in high school I was the class clown and leader and used to write poems about my teachers and write songs and muck around. So, it was always part of my personality, but I think it probably goes back even further to prep when I was turning up singing Don Spencer songs to the kids.

I was, this is not unique to me, it’s a pretty standard comedian story, but I was the skinny weird kid who wasn’t good at sport so I used laughter as my currency at school. So, by the time I finished year 12, it was sort of the only option for me.

4. How has comedy changed?

That’s tricky to answer because, for me, it’s changed because it’s been 20 years, the difference for me is a good one; I used to play to four people in a pub and get heckled, now I have hundreds of people and my crowd always know what to expect. So, it’s much more enjoyable for me now.

Comedy has changed in that obviously there’s a much greater awareness of privilege and power and there’s a much greater awareness of the concept of punching down or punching up. Audiences aren’t nearly as quick to embrace comedians who are seen as cruel or being offensive for the sake of it.

I also think it comes and goes in cycles. I’ve seen a couple of cycles now where there’s been backlash to the idea of political correctness and people want to say what they want; I feel like these are cycles that have probably been going for long before I was born as well. Ultimately, I don’t think comedy changes as much as people might think because of tastes and trends. It’s someone on stage trying to create an environment where people feel happy and safe to laugh and if they fail in that they will lose their audience.

5. What’s next?

I do breakfast radio in Melbourne with ABC, so I’m keen to be able to enjoy just having one job for a while because it has been a fairly hectic couple of years doing that with the TV and touring. Part of my reason to step away from the TV was just to have some space, so I don’t know what is next. I’m just excited to have some space again to see what bubbles up. I’ve got lots of things I would like to do like write a musical or write another book but I’m not in a hurry either. I’ll turn 40 in July and then I’ll take stock of my existence.  

Answers condensed for publication.

Say goodbye to your favourite characters in Sammy J’s Good Hustle at Canberra Theatre Centre, Friday 26 May 8pm; canberratheatrecentre.com.au

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