“Comedy’s easy to know when you’ve got it right because the audience laughs,” says a reflective Shaun Micallef of his bread and butter.
“It’s honestly the easiest thing to be proved or disproved. Drama’s a bit vaguer. Drama you can get away with less or more because it can be grey. But if comedy’s not funny it’s dead, it’s nothing.”
On a Wednesday morning at ABC’s writing hub in leafy Elsternwick the veteran comedian is sitting in an ordinary office. At first it’s hard to separate Micallef from the swag of erratic and oddball characters that became his trademark.
Unmasked, Micallef is sincere, articulate, and self-deprecating.
He’s casually dressed and sporting a bushy beard set to be shed before he steps behind the news chair for the third series of his satirical news and current affairs program,
Mad As Hell.
Micallef confesses he didn’t bother following news for much of last year and only came up to speed over the past few months.
“There’s a new government in. I don’t know if you knew that,” he quips.
“The nature of the show means that it needs to be topical and as up-to-date as can be. It’s recorded Tuesday night and goes to air Wednesday night. In the space of a day, hopefully nothing major happens.
“Mind you we’re not a real news service so it doesn’t really matter,” he laughs.
Asked to describe the series, Micallef says it’s a “squint and you’ll think it’s a news program sort of show”, declaring almost apologetically that he reckons it actually looks better than a lot of real news programs.
He suggests there’s no line he won’t cross for a laugh but concedes some topics covered in the second series made him cringe.
“There were certain harder jokes about the world which seemed mean-spirited when you put them in front of a live audience.”
The shift in thinking is one of the major reasons politics has become the show’s pet topic. “Which, let’s face it, never really deals with anything majorly important,” he says.
Micallef believes people like Tony Abbott and Bill Shorten are fair game.
“[But] if you’re gonna make a joke I think it should be about what they’ve done rather than who they are or appearances or anything. That is by and large how we approach things. I’m not sure we take cheap shots at people. Hopefully we don’t.
“Mind you, on a slow news day, why not,” he says with a chuckle.
The 51-year-old was born in Adelaide to an Irish mother and a Maltese father and was drawn to comedy.
“I was a kid who was attracted to comedy. I liked watching Jerry Lewis, for example.
“I’d then go and amuse my friends or my family by doing an impression of him or something that was like it. So I absorbed a lot of that.
“It’s hard to tease out any cultural contributions to it,” he says of his family life.
“Laughter was pretty highly valued. I had a funny uncle and a funny grandfather. Oddly enough, I got most of my approach from my father who was very straight.”
Micallef performed throughout his teenage years and at university but went on to become an insurance lawyer.
“I never really considered it [comedy] was a sensible career or even job. I certainly didn’t think I could sustain myself and an eventual family from it. Also, I don’t like actors.
I don’t like the idea of being an actor.”
In hindsight, his late start would prove a blessing in disguise.
“I made all the mistakes I could have made and embarrassed myself by and large in my 20s away from the television camera. Then when I was about 31 that’s when
I turned up on TV.”
Micallef ventured to Melbourne in the early ’90s when he first gained recognition as a cast member on cult sketch comedy show
Full Frontal, his most famous character the punch-drunk boxer Milo Kerrigan, still fondly remembered today.
A string of credits over the next two decades has included his beloved show
The Micallef Program, a stint on Sea Change as Warwick Munro, and hosting game show Talkin’ Bout Your Generation and The Logies. He’s also written two books, and even played horse trainer Lee Freedman in the movie The Cup.
“I wouldn’t like to have never had a crack at it,” Micallef says. “I’m glad I did it. I’d hate to think that I’d be sitting there bitterly watching television thinking I could do better than that.”
The father of three admits he couldn’t have foreshadowed the heights his career would reach.
“That I’m a person on camera is a bit of a surprise and unusual. I’m not entirely sure that I would lead with that. On my tax returns I write occupation – writer. That’s what I am. I’m a writer-performer. I’m not a performer- writer. I’m not an actor.”
Micallef argues he’s not a workaholic but acknowledge finding it difficult to take a breather. There’s no legitimate hobbies to speak of, other than an appreciation of film, and spending time with family, which usually consists of hopping in the car with his boys and heading down to a comic book store in Coburg on weekends.
“My kids make me laugh. I tend to laugh at stuff that’s got nothing to do with comedy. Comedy is the re-creation of those moments that I have in real life.”
From the outside looking in you get the impression Micallef is happy with his lot in life.
“I know enough about the business that at some point you approach the end of what is your shelf life and you go do something else. When I’m no longer telegenic enough there’ll be a stage where it will be better for me to move behind the camera and produce and direct and write; which I do.”
That day seems a while off for now with the third instalment of
Mad As Hell chugging along and a fourth planned. “I’m always surprised when something lasts more than one episode,” Micallef jokes. “You go to a third series and that’s gravy.”
rfedele@theweeklyreview.com.au
» Mad As Hell is on the ABC on
Wednesdays at 8pm
