The healing power of laughter _{by Madelaine Empson}

Australian comedian Andrew Hamilton is about to tour Aotearoa for the very first time with his award-nominated, critically acclaimed debut show Jokes About the Time I Went to Prison. Performing at the Abandoned Taproom in Petone on Saturday the 14^th of June at 6pm and 8pm, the “fascinating and unique” (Chortle: The UK Comedy Guide) viral online sensation, co-host of the Flog Cabin podcast, and member of the OG Crew will do exactly what it says on the can: riff on the four months he spent in two of Sydney’s maximum-security prisons in 2021 for the supply of psychedelic drugs.

Did you ever envision a career in comedy, let alone one that would be so successful?

No, I don’t think so. I think I’d always had an interest in comedy. Even from a very young age, I used to go to a lot of stand-up in Sydney, and not just the big comedians either. I would go to very small local stand-up comedy shows with a lineup of nobody-comedians, just because I really loved it. Sometimes I would write down jokes in my phone, like joke ideas, which is quite telling I think. I had an interest in it, but I never made an active plan to go to a gig and try out – I just thought that was too terrifying. It wasn’t until I went to jail and I had the opportunity to ask myself, ‘If I could start my life over, what would I do?’ Really, the only answer in my head was stand-up comedy. That told me everything I needed to know. I got out and started doing it, and I threw myself into it. In my first year, I did something like 260 comedy gigs in Sydney just to try and get better at it. I found that if you’re trying at something that much, you can’t help but accelerate.

I read that you realised the transformative power of laughter whilst in prison. I wondered, did you have any specific lightbulb moments that prompted that voice to say, ‘This is what I’d do if I could start over’?

There was one moment that I talk about on stage where one of the prison guards called out for a guy named David Wilson, and then a whole yard of crims started doing their best impression of Tom Hanks in the movie Cast Away. ‘Wilson! Wilson! I’m sorry, Wilson!’ I remember being in tears laughing for a good two minutes. When I was laughing, I realised I’d forgotten about my surroundings and the cameras and the barbed wire fences. That really showed me, well, wow, if laughter can make me forget that I’m in a maximum-security prison... That’s incredibly powerful.

When you first got out and hit the ground running with 260 gigs that year – I have a bad-pun joke question...

Go on.

Did you get off to a shaky start, or were you... away laughing?

[Laughs.] Not bad!

Thank you! Basically, how do you think your style has evolved since those initial gigs?

You look back at old tapes of you doing stand-up and you just can’t help but cringe at everything, from the jokes that you wrote to the way that you performed. Even now, I’ll look back at the tapes of me from three months ago and think that it’s all absolutely awful. I think that’s just a pretty common pathway for people in any kind of artform, right? You look back at it and cringe a little, but realise how much you’ve progressed. I think when I started doing those first stand-up gigs, I wasn’t really performing, I was just trying to remember the words that I’d written down and memorised at home. Over time, you add more and more strings to your bow, which is just timing, little mannerisms, all the things that add to a comedic performance. And you know, I’m only three years in, so there’s so many things that I still need to learn. I look at comedians who are seasoned, and they just have all these tricks up their sleeve, and wow, that’s amazing.

I’m enjoying the journey, and I seem to be making people laugh. People keep coming to my shows at the moment. That’s good enough for now and then it’s just about continuing to put in the work to keep learning.

This is going to be your first New Zealand tour. How are you feeling and what are you most looking forward to?

Well, it’s my first international tour at all, because I’ve only been allowed out of Australia since December. I was on a corrections order for two and a half years, and that’s finished now, so I’m able to tour. Of course, New Zealand made sense as my first international tour because I have a pretty reasonable fanbase here, it seems, from social media. You guys and I seem to share a pretty similar sense of humour, so the jokes should translate – for the most part [chuckles]. I’ve been to New Zealand a bunch of times in my pre-comedy life, but I’m very excited to be coming over there to do stand-up. It looks like a very fun little tour. I’m going to see a great piece of New Zealand and hopefully meet some very colourful characters, and we’re all going to have a laugh together. So, I’m absolutely pumped for it.

Anything in particular you’re looking forward to doing in Welly?

I have been to Wellington before, and I remember you guys had very good beers and restaurants and bars in a place called... Newtown?

Yes!

And was it called The Beehive?

You got it.

And I also went for a beautiful walk, even though it was freezing cold, up... Mount Victoria? I think I got that wrong.

Nope, you’re nailing it!

Great, I don’t need to worry about whether my memory still works! So, we’re probably not going to have time to see everything, but I think at the very least I’m going to go have some food, a couple of beers, and a coffee in Newtown.

The location we’re doing is The Abandoned Taproom in Petone. The tickets there seem to be selling really well, probably among the best of the whole tour. We’re doing an early show and a late show, and it looks like both will sell out. It’s awesome. You know, if you can’t get excited about a sold-out show on a Saturday in a brewery, you probably shouldn’t be in comedy!

Agreed! If audiences could take one thing away from the show, what would you want it to be?

So obviously, a lot of the show is me doing jokes about my stupid past life and all the mistakes I made. I do a fair few jokes about drugs and addiction, but the most important part of the show for me, and the one I’m proudest of, is the sincere part I end with, which is about why comedy is so important to me. I truly believe in the healing power of laughter. I feel very fortunate that I discovered comedy, and I use it as a kind of example to show people that you can screw your life up in many different ways – including like myself and go to prison – but you can change your life. You can turn things around. I also hopefully try and destigmatise a bit about the prison experience. Just because people go to prison doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily evil people, and I think, as a society, if we’re faster to try and support some of these people, it would have a positive impact on that cycle of crime that we see in Australia and around the world.