News Archive

For those of you interested in the not-so-comic side of my songwriting…

“Drowned” – the ballad I wrote for the film “Two Fists One Heart” – has been released on itunes. This oughta take you straight there.

You can also watch the music video exclusively on this site. Check it out.

I will be conveying my medium-sized arse to Australiatown in March next year to perform my show, “Ready For This?” in various cities. I suspect it’s going to be pretty fun.

Here’s the plan:

Adelaide Her Majesty’s Theatre, Friday 13th – Saturday 14th March, 8.00pm
Tickets here!

Gold Coast Gold Coast Arts Centre, Sunday 15th March, 5.00pm.
Details here, or phone the Box Office on (07) 5588 4000

Brisbane The Powerhouse, Wednesday 18th – Sunday 22nd March, 9.30pm
Tickets here!

Wollongong Illawarra Performing Arts Centre, Friday 3rd April, 8.00pm
Tickets here!

Sydney The Enmore Theatre, Saturday 4th April, 8.00pm
Tickets here!

Geelong Performing Arts Centre, Thursday 9th April, 8.00pm
Tickets here!

Melbourne International Comedy Festival The Forum Theatre, 14th – 26th of April, 7.15pm. (No Monday show)
Tickets here!

Perth Concert Hall,Thursday 30th April, Saturday 2nd May, 8.00pm
Tickets here!

If you live in the top half of the world and feel subsequently left-out of the above plan, you can compensatorially furnish your home with my “So F**king Rock” DVD, which you can get here.

Sorry, this one very quick but informative.

1. I can be seen making an idiot of myself tonight on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. (This is a British panel show, for those elsewhere.)

2. On Sunday night, Channel 4 is screening the Secret Policeman’s Ball, during which I will perform… assuming they don’t cut me out. (This is a British Amnesty fundraiser, for those elsewhere.)

3. My new DVD, “So Fucking Rock” is available to pre-order from HMV ahead of its November release date. I’ll also being doing a gig at HMV in Oxford St closer to its release. Stay tuned.

tim xx

Martin Martini and the Bone Palace Orchestra are playing at the Soho Theatre in London for the rest of this week.

This music is original, brilliant, cool, weird, uplifting, thoughtful and just plain mad, and is performed with a manic insanity the likes of which you have never seen.

You know I don’t spam much, and never about other acts, but you MUST go and see them if you can get to London this week. If you happen to like me, this guy and his band have been described as a mixture between me and Tom Waits.

9:30 pm at the Soho Theatre. Do it. Buy a furkin ticket.

tx

Hi. Just a quick one.

Next Sunday 13th July, I’m performing alongside Jo Brand, Jo Neary, Jo Enright, Ed Byrne, Milton Jones,
Steve Merchant, Mark Steel, Mat Holness, Dan Antopolski and the great Robin Ince to raise money for the Childhood Cancer Research Fund. Pretty amazing lineup I reckon, more Jos than you can shake a stick at, and obviously a seriously worthy cause. Hope you can come.

Also, I am doing four previews of my Edinburgh show, “Ready For This” at Soho Theatre in late July. Tickets here. They (the shows, not the tickets) should be fun and a bit messy. Featuring brand new hits – that at the time of posting I still haven’t finished – such as “Feminist”, “The Good Book”, and “Racist”.

x

Hello hello hello.

As you may have noticed, I’ve posted all the Autumn tour dates of my new show, “Ready For This”, on my gigs page. Scary huh?

And Linzy, bless her, has made this ace mappy thing for those of you who crave cartographical augmentation of the temporal.

tx.

The writing of this post finds me well and truly back in the United Kingdom Kingdom Repeated.

And that, dear friends, is the extent of my justification for my title.

I feel like I ought to write a proper blog for once, one in which I actually regale my patient reader with reflections on my activities, rather than simply advertising my latest gig behind a thin veil of over-short sentences and mildly amusing non-sequiturs. Unfortunately, I’m not a natural anecdotalist. I know that that sounds ridiculous, given my chosen profession, but it’s true. Even the most exciting events in my life can be rendered completely suburban in my retelling. However, there has been a small wave of requests for details about my US trip, so I’m going to try.

Thus:

We flew to New York in an aeroplane. (Or as the Americans call them “Airplane”! Huh! Hahaha! Airplane! Hahaha!!! Crazy Americans!!). The driver who took us to our hotel asked me what I did and I told him I was a comedian and THAT is a mistake I will never make again. He told me countless jokes on that seemingly eternal drive, my favourite of which was, Why did the rake break up with his girlfriend? Because she was a ho., and my least favourite was something to do with Mexicans at airports. I didn’t understand the latter, because I’m not fully versed in the subtleties of the local racialist oral tradition yet. I will be though. Bloody Mexicans with their… hats… and their… outdoor parties with

Drinks.

The hotel we stayed in was nice. The restaurant downstairs was said to be owned by that irascible British gastronome, Gordon Ramsey, but I heard no foul-mouthed rants from the kitchen nor caught sight of the famous leathery scowl even once. I did however pay $US110 for breakfast on our first morning there, so I believe the rumour to be true. After that morning, I chose to break my fast at more economical eateries.

The venue in New York was called Ars Nova. That’s Latin for “New Arts”. I assume it was named thus because they were trying to target a Latin-speaking audience – in a country like America, it’s all about cornering a niche market. Unfortunately, it’s more likely to be translated as Butt Star by the average punter. Assuming, that is, that I am the average punter. Which I think I am. I punt mean. (That’s a pun. The mean bit, I mean.)

Language barriers, quotients and flat-bottomed boats aside, it was an amazing room. Only tiny, but the piano was great and the gear was great and the people were fantastic. Such a cool venue. The shows went great. There was clapping and drinking of wine. I met a couple of people who had traveled large distances to see my show, based only on my youtube presence and the enthusiasm of my UK and Australian fans. They were nuts and extremely nice. Just like my UK and Australian fans.

New York City is cool. If you like feeling you’re watching a TV show from the inside, you’ll like New York. I don’t like that feeling, but once I’d shaken it off, I liked the city very much. The people are nearly all Americans there, and for the first 24 hours I just wanted to shout, EVERYBODY JUST STOP FUCKING SMILING AT ME AND TELLING ME TO HAVE A NICE FUCKING DAY, but I didn’t which was good because you get used to it pretty quickly. I went up the Rockefeller centre and looked off the edge. It’s high. I like the Chrysler Building best.

We caught an airplane (when in Rome etc) to Las Vegas next. Everything that can be said about Las Vegas has been said. Oh except this: It’s a place where if you leave your ipod in the ipod dock in the obscenely massive hotel room, you won’t ever see it again. And maybe also:

It’s ridiculously hypocritical for I who, like all of you, live in the unprecedented luxury of the western world surrounded by everything I want or need and with more wealth than 96% of the earth’s population, to get on my soap-box about affluence, but. Vegas is fucking awful. I struggled to have a sense of humour about it. Perhaps the best symbol of the… discardability of the place is the “Colosseum” – a 5000 seat venue which they built for Celine’s show and which apparently is now to be torn down. And named after one of the most permanent and extraordinary human-built structures on earth. I dunno. When is irony not funny? About then I reckon. The whole place feels exactly like Sideshow Alley did at the Royal Show: a simultaneously cheap and expensive oversupply of crappy, shiny, colourful ephemera. Like an extra-marital one night stand or a Big Mac: even while you’re digging in and enjoying it, you’re suffering from premature remorse.

I did one 40 minute set in Vegas as part of the HBO Comedy Festival. It was OK. It was in a ballroom at Caesar’s Palace and I didn’t like the vibe of the room at all. Spoke to Mr Izzard after he had done a gig later that night in a (much bigger) ballroom in the same Hotel, and he hated it too. So Eddie and I have that in common, at least. Jerry (you know who I mean… my mate Jezza Seiny) was doing the Colosseum on the same night. I didn’t chat to him about it, but I think he went OK. Obviously he would have struggled to sell tickets, but I hope he doesn’t resent me – it’s not my fault we were billed at the same time.

So from Vegas, we went to LA. We hired a big car and I played some pool at Roger Taylor’s house. Not THAT Roger Taylor, the other one – the drummer from Queen. Cool huh. He wasn’t home, but I don’t think he would have minded. Oh and the shows were pretty good. And I had loads of meetings with people. And they were nice. I signed with an agent called Richard. He seems good. He’s going to either make me a movie star, or not make me a movie star. Huh! What are the odds on one of those things happening? Crazy Americans.

And then we took an aeroplane to Australia. We were on the same flight as Damon Herriman who was previously my hero and is now my friend. For you Australians, he played George on Love My Way. And he’s brilliant. Oh and he was the weird hick guy who picked up the dude and the chick in his pickup truck in House Of Wax. Huh. I liked the bit when Paris got the thing through her head. Huh. Huhuh.

I had a fine old time in Australia. There was a beach and I chose to go to it quite a lot. I got a tiny bit brown. My baby went in the ocean and that is good. I saw my mum and yes, I drank white wine in the sun y’all.

And so, on we go.

Some of you reading type people will now know that my next big coming-up-thingy is a 6-week run in New York, starting on March 3rd. I’ll be performing at the New World Stages six nights a week until April 12th. Unless, of course, I don’t sell tickets and we have to close the season early, but that will never happen because everyone in the whole of New York is going to be rushing for tickets. “Why”, you ask? Because if they don’t, I’ll have to close early. And that, my lovelies, is an example of Petitio Principii, or begging the question. Sort of.

You may encourage your buddies in New York to click here to buy tickets. If you are actually in or around New York yourself and would like to buy tickets, then you my special friend, should click here.

My Edinburgh and Glasgow shows this weekend have sold out, which is very exciting. I do hope you enjoy yourselves, you Scots.

tim.
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Dearest friend humans.

Thanks very much for all the nice comments and messages about the BBC radio show. Very nice.

And thank you for coming to my shows in Brisbane and Perth. If you did. If you didn’t, that’s ok.

Below I’ve copied an article I wrote for Drum Media mag here in Aust. Some of you would have seen it. It’s about Christmas. Which is timely.

Have fun ChristMAS times wherever you are. See you in the New Year. You are all wonderfully nice.

Snogs.

tx

The History of Christmas. by Tim.

Christmas to me means writing a column about Christmas. The only time I ever get asked to write columns is at this time of year. An editor of a music magazine somewhere says, Who are we going to get to write a column about Christmas? We need someone moderately well-known, musical and preferably comic. And some spotty intern says, How about moderately-well-known musical comedian Tim Minchin? And the editor says… well the editor says, Yes.

I do understand my task here. I understand that I am expected to produce some amusing whimsy about turkey with in-laws and drunken blowjobs at office parties and why no one ever gives Myrrh and more. What ever happened to Myrrh?, I might write, and you might think, Good point, C-grade celebrity Tim Minchin, good point. What did ever happen to Myrrh? And that would be nice. Because we would have achieved empathy.

But instead I am going to write a short History of Christmas. Note: everything I write is true.

Go.

Christmas was originally a Roman pagan festival of lawlessness called Saturnalia. For a week, no one could get arrested for wrecking shit or going nuts. There was lots of singing in the nude (a practice recommended by Tim), plenty of shagging (also recommended by Tim), some rape (not recommended by Tim, but you can watch heaps of it on CSI SVU – I heart modern morality), and some eating of human-shaped biscuits (Tim impartial). It was fun for everyone. Well… nearly everyone. See, at the beginning of the week they’d find a dude who they didn’t like (could be a chick, whatever, lay off) and they’d feed him loads of food and make him shag and party and stuff and then at the end of Saturnalia they’d kill him. Totally kill him dead. Kill the living fuck out of him. Ostensibly in order to ward off evil forces and enemies of Rome.

Saturnalia was – understandably – pretty popular. Completely amoral behaviour (not immoral – who am I to judge?) and a wee bit of human sacrifice. If they’d had cameras, it would have made perfect reality TV. (But they didn’t have cameras, not for many many years yet. In fact not until Joseph Nicéphore Niépce squeezed out his first image over an 8 hour period in 1827. Eight hours! Bet he didn’t delete that fucker, even if it made him look fat or whatever.) So when the homies who were running the increasingly pop cult of Christianity wanted to get more members, they decided they’d just tell everyone that Jesus (or whatever his name was) was born on the final day of the festival, which was… wait for it… December 25th. (Actually, the most likely date of the big J’s b’day is thought to be September 11th. How fucking weird is that? Someone make a documentary.) In this way, the Christian leaders back then were very similar to the leaders of the Pentecostal churches of today: to increase membership, you just change the frickin rules dude. Reinterpret the story. Like reinterpreting the Lord of the Rings to make it about lanky people with hairless feet on a journey to get rid of a necklace. Don’t fucking start me.

So Jesus was introduced and the hitherto pagan Romans just shrugged their shoulders and went with it. They didn’t really care about the justification for getting nude and singing and rooting and eating person-biscuits, as long as they still got the week off. Of course, even back then the Christian church was pretty into their moral directives and all, and they weren’t really sure how the traditions of Saturnalia fitted in with said directives, but they really wanted to get their numbers up, so they just started calling it Christmas and let the Romie Homie’s get on with the raping and the eating of the gingerbread men (or women, whatever, lay off).

To reiterate: the church put Jesus’s name to a festival of sexual abuse and human sacrifice in order to increase income. Oh, and here’s a cool thing: you know how Jews are always banging on about how their people have been so mistreated through the ages? Blah blah blah. Well in 1460ish, Pope Paul the Twoth revived some of the old Saturnalia ways for the amusement of the Roman people by force-feeding a whole lot of Jews food and booze and then making them race naked through the streets while all the good Catholics laughed at them. I think it’s a hilarious idea, and I don’t know why Jews are so sensitive. Maybe ol’ Pope Benedict should revive the tradition, but use gays instead of Jews. It’d be just as funny I reckon.

I know what you’re thinking: “But where does Tim Allen come into this?”. I’m getting there, alright?

Nicking bits of other cults was the bit of business development strategy that made Christianity what it is today. Another example: the church encouraged decorating Christmas trees when they were trying (successfully) to pinch the members of the pagan hippy mob, the Asheira cult. Oh and I assume you know about Santa? He was a Turkish bishop called Nicholas who was the dude who first called Jewish people the “children of the devil”. Bless him. He was idolised by these sailor dudes who took his bones to Italy where he usurped the stocking-filling attributes of a local lady-deity known as The Grandmother. The cult spread to the Germans and the Celts where Nick got mixed up with Woden (big white beard, rode a flying horse), then the Christians took him on board to try to… wait for it… increase membership. Time passes, Coca Cola hires a Swedish artist to make a Santa who drinks coke, and now here we are, 5 years old in Myer Perth city, sitting on the knee of a fat man in a red suit who is touching our thigh and asking us what we want for Christmas and the answer is: to get away from you, you obese, sweaty, antisemitic paedo fuck.

Hold on, hold on, I’ve skipped a bit. Roughly one thousand nine hundred and fifty three years after the birth of Joshua (or whatever his name was) and twenty-two years after the birth of Santa Cola, a boychild was born in Denver, Colorado to Gerald and Martha Dick. His name was Timothy Dick. Timothy Allen Dick.

Tim Dick’s dad died in a car accident when he was eleven, and his mum married an Episcopalian deacon two years later. When Tim was twenty-five he was arrested on drug (dunno which type) charges and spent two years in gaol, after which he changed his name to Tim Allen and made the hit ABC comedy series Home Improvement before bringing us the cinematic joy of The Santa Clause 1, The Santa Clause 2 and The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause.

A clause can be defined as an article, stipulation or proviso in a treaty, bill or contract. In the case of Allen’s seminal trilogy, it is a pun.

In the case of the above sentence, the word seminal is a pun.

Have a spoofy Christmas.

Well would you look at this: I finally got me a fancy new site. Although to be honest, it’s kind of a similar site to my old one – it merely looks all new and funky. I do hope you like the new vibe. Some people might claim my compulsion towards skintight bodysuits is indicative of a certain dearth of aesthetic sensibility. To them I say, “you just can’t handle the confronting beauty of the curve of a lycra-clad bollock.” Again, I lie. I don’t say that. I actually say, “Are you saying I’m fat”? And there are tears: silent tears, swept uncaringly away by the winds of reality which are, in turn, generated by the fan I take with me everywhere I go.

Oh yes, the News. Gee I love News. Especially when it satiates my voracious desire to consume the misery of people who are kind of like me but not actually me. Mmmm, human misery. Yummy.

Right. Let’s do it…

NEW WEBSITE LAUNCHED!
Look, to be honest, I think we’ve covered this one. Moving right along.

DVD – SO LIVE ON SALE* REALLY SOON!
This is really exciting. SO LIVE is a big, fat, two-act show filmed at the Sydney Opera House Studio in May 2007 which combined all the best bits from my shows, Dark Side and So Rock.

The DVD also contains extras including clips from the ABC’s Spicks and Specks and Sideshow, the BBC’s Comedy Shuffle and the Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala. For full details or to preorder now, go to the STUFF page.

Officially on sale on November the 7th in cool stores* that sell cool DVDs with me in them.

* Please note, for various boring reasons, SO LIVE will only be available to buy in stores in Australia and New Zealand. If you are elsewhere in the world, it can be easily ordered online and mailed to you with very reasonable postage fees and all that jazz. Also, unfortunately the DVD is PAL, which means some (most I think) US machines won’t play it. Which is a bugger. However, don’t fret sweet Americans, because…

US TOUR DATES CONFIRMED!
I will be performing the following dates in the US in November:

New York City: 12th, 13th, 14th at The Ars Nova 511 West 54th Street.

Las Vegas: Saturday 17th as part of the HBO Comedy Festival at Caesar’s Palace.

Los Angeles: 19th and 20th at the ACME Comedy Arts Theatre, 135 N. La Brea Avenue.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to finally be doing some shows in the US. But I’ll try: wahoo. I’m very much looking forward to meeting some of the American YouTube / Myspace friends I’ve made in the last few months. (When I say friends, of course I mean potentially mad stalkers who I convince myself are friends in order to quench my unquenchable thirst for love.)

BRISBANE SHOWS ALMOST SOLD OUT!
I’m doing six big chunky two-act shows at the Brisbane Powerhouse between the 12th and 16th December. Tickets are selling encouragingly fast so, y’know, get onto it Brizzy humans. Some of my Myspace friends are flying from far-flung cities just to see me. Frickin weirdo stalkers. (By which I mean, hot lovely ladies).

LAST MINUTE PERTH SHOW ADDED
I’ve decided to add a last-minute, pre-christmas Perth show. I did a couple of shows at His Majesty’s back in April and they went really well. So I’m doing another one on December 19th. Tickets on sale now from bocs.

FILMING BEGINS ON WEST AUSTRALIAN BOXING MOVIE
By the time this site goes live, filming will have begun on the as-yet untitled boxing movie being made in Perth, West Australia. I’ll be on set in late November, shooting my scenes in which I play a… wait for it… funny musician called… wait for it… Tom. Hmm. I’m actually very excited about it. Fun. Catering. Yum.

OK. I think that’s all for now. Feel free to comment me below, and let me know how my News made you feel in the trousers. Or wherever. And don’t forget, there’s a rather cool (if I do say so myself) community of my online friends who like to discuss stuff at Linzy’s rather humblingly me-oriented forum, which you will find on the angryfeet forum.

And don’t forget to sign up to my mailing list if you haven’t already done so!

tim
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