Part Four of Eight.

(My life as a clown)



* Granite’s mine
Mining is big in Australia, particularly in Western Australia and The Northern Territory. The promise of good money has lured many a man and women into the industry. The bigger mines have bars called wet messes where they occasionally put on entertainment.
Mines these days aren’t like the Wild West of old. They’re now very institutionalized with strict rules. In return workers get gyms, three cooked meals a day, neat and tidy air-conditioned accommodation, TV's, and great pay (compared to other industries). And in return again they also get kicked out and banned from working at other mines sites in the country if they misbehave (i.e. fighting, failing the morning breathalyser). They even have sexual harassment lectures where people are flown in to teach the blokes how to talk and interact with women. It’s mainly based around what not to say to women. I.e. you can’t say ‘nice ass, Karen’ anymore at the work coffee machine. If reported, you’ll get sacked.
And then someone books me to come in and do an act!
The bigger the laughs I get with my act at mines, the more management sit up the back wondering who is responsible for booking me.
Not many mines have me back twice.
‘He’s just undone every rule that was drummed into the team at great expense at last week’s seminar!’ is what I presume they’re thinking.
Particularly the time where I got the lesbian sexual harassment liaison officer up on stage (whom I later found out everyone was shit scared of because she's so strict) and innocently strapped a balloon dildo on her and asked her to root some guy who’d I’d tied a strap on vagina on to. To the crowds surprise and delight she loved it.
Anyway, I can remember talking to a few girls who were in their 40’s one night after a gig at The Granites mine in the Tanami desert in Northern Territory. I asked them what they thought of the strict sexual harassment laws where a bloke could be kicked off site for saying something like, ‘Nice tits’.
They took a sip of their beer and then one of them piped up.
‘I’ve been working on and off the mines for about fifteen years now and I think the rules have gone too far’.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Well it’s boring. The guys are now too scared to flirt with us now!’ she lamented.

* Hedland.
Port Hedland, W.A, ain't the honeymoon capital of the world or known for much else other than what's in the ground there.
The Pier Hotel in the centre of town has a unique world record though. It's the pub with the most recorded stabbings in one night anywhere in the world. On this eventful night back in the nineties, there were eighty-three recorded stabbings, which included six bar girls.
I don't know what happened that night between the two bikie gangs involved but I imagine there was one guy maybe on the mic going, 'come on Port Hedland, we've had 76 people stabbed. Six more and we've got the world record!'

* Halls Creek.
Halls Creek is on the only paved road through the Kimberley Ranges, located up the top of Western Australia. The nearest towns either side (Fitzroy Crossing and Turkey Creek) are over 200kms away.
Locals at Halls Creek affectionately call their town, 'Hell's crack'.
Anyway, the back bar of The Halls Creek Hotel known as the 'Animal bar', is the roughest bar I've seen anywhere in Australia. And I've seen a few. The publican took me around. It was midday. The bar looks like a cross between a fallout bunker and a chook yard (but can be hosed down easily). Outside are a whole lot of 'Long-grassers'.
Long-grassers are groups of Aboriginals who live in the long spinifex grass. They are generally either talking, drinking, laughing, fucking, fighting, passed out or cooking (e.g. a goanna on some burnt fence palings).
A lot of white people look down on certain groups of Aborigines due to their lifestyle choices.
I think deep down its just jealousy though.
How many white guys do you know who have the guts or ability to turn their life into one never-ending bux party!?
The publican says the 'long-grassers' either buy green cans (VB) or Red cans (Emu export). He introduced me to a guy called Ewok who smiled and grunted. The publican said he was born without a tongue. Fuck he could drink though.
I asked a local if there was much tension between the blacks and whites in the town.
‘Na', he said 'The white's fight with the white’s and the blacks fight with the blacks'.

* Mildura.
Aside from the sex, a bit of one-on-one female company is something I love and crave. Especially as a contrast to the huge amount of male group energy I'm always around while working in pubs while on the road.
The girls I love most are the ones who have the confidence and ability to be open about who they are with me straight away -plus have internet, a shower, a bed, a day job to give me some solitude to plan my tour and some condoms.
Relationships for me are not difficult just different. Despite what it may appear to a few people, I don't get laid heaps.
Many a time I've rocked into towns like an old mangy dog looking for a feed, which as any male knows can become a vicious circle...
Sometimes I can go so long without being touched by a girl that the only thing in recent memory I've got to wank over is the slightest touch of a service station attendant who accidently brushed my hand when she handed back my change back to me three states back.
Australia is a big country. Not many pubs employ me. Each year while on tour around Australia I average 75000 kms a year which is about 200kms a day.
Getting love on the run ain't always easy. When I get it after a long dry spell though, I lap it up like a bulldog with its face in a custard bowl (Sorry, I love that phrase. I had to put it in somewhere)
One such girl was Katie from Mildura. She worked as a nurse during the day. We met playing two up on Anzac Day. We shagged and I hooked up with her about four times over a couple of years when I was coming through town.
And I admired and appreciated her like every girl who gives me shelter and love in her house, trusting that I'm more 'harmless guy with a few stories looking for affection' than 'lone traveler out of Wolf Creek'.
It can still be nerve-racking too sometimes for me as a guy going back to a girl's house for the first time after I've just her though.
There are always risks on either side.
After all, as a male you never know when you're going to be used by a girl to make the psycho boyfriend who is coming around later jealous?
Or be used by the jealous ex-boyfriend who has no idea that the relationship between him and the girl you're sleeping with is over.
The first night at Katie's place, we were in bed when suddenly there was the noise of a whole lot of rocks hitting the roof.
'What's that?' I asked waking up.
'Ohh probably just some school kids throwing rocks'.
'At 3am?' I asked again.
'Yeah, they're just bored. It won't last long.'
I slept with one eye open that night, and then things got comfortable for four days.

Anyway, I remember driving back across the Nullabor after doing my first trip to W.A.
I was on my way back to Sydney.
It was November. Last time I saw or spoke to Katie was in January that year.
Before I texted her, I remember she said something about wanting to go to New Zealand for a holiday that year when I last saw her.
So I tailored the text. ‘Hey Katie, coming thru town next week. What you been up 2? Get to NZ? x Jimbo’.
She replied in text: ‘No. Bit of a change of plan. I met a guy, we're engaged and I'm having his baby in four months’.
We'd always been honest with each other.
So I knew there was only one response I could text back to her without her thinking I'd changed.
'So I suppose a root is out of the question?'
I never heard back from Katie.

* Manly
It was towards the end of my set at The Manly Boatshed. I had literally just mentioned the word 'Mother' in a joke.
A lady down the back suddenly yelled back over the crowd in despair, 'Don't talk about mothers, my mother's dead!'
I replied back, 'So what, we're all in the queue!'
It didn't shut her up though.
She kept on yelling out, 'My mum's dead!'
The crowd by this time was becoming nervous.
The whole tone of the evening was coming down and I remember thinking, 'I'm a comedian not a shrink and I'm now in a tough corner. To get a laugh from this I'm going to have to go a bit left of centre'
She then yelled out again, 'My mum's dead!'
So I looked at her and said, 'Yeah, well how about I go dig her up and fuck her!'
It got a laugh, a big laugh, mainly from people who were also vomiting into their beers. The lady then weaved her way through the crowd and tossed her wine in my face. Luckily it was white wine.
I then looked at the crowd and said, 'Thank you. I'm going to remember this night and so will you. Thank you. Good night!'
I then walked straight up to the girl in the crowd, gave her a big hug, thanked her for giving me a great finale and then asked her what the story was with her Mum.
She said, 'Oh don't worry about that, she died ten years ago, I'm just a bit upset tonight because I broke up with my boyfriend this week'.
She stayed for a quick drink and then left. The next day the agent who booked me who wasn't at the gig rang to tell me that the owner of the pub who wasn't at the gig either had rung the pub to complain about the comedian who was making jokes about 'digging up someone's mum and fucking her'.
She then said, 'Jimbo, you've gone over the line again'.
I then got into a philosophical debate with her about how there is no line in comedy because what makes people laugh what makes people is individually subjective.
As long as most of the people are laughing at my joke, who cares, if it's not someone else's cup of tea?
I wasn’t getting anywhere in my argument though.
I then said, 'Look it wasn't like I'd said, I'd stick her femur up my arse while I came into her skull! Where's the line now!?'
Anyway the line went dead and I went touring in Outback W.A again.

* Guerie
A lot of people often ask me, 'Have you ever had your head kicked in at a gig, Jimbo?'
The answer is ‘no’ but I've come close a few times.
One such time was the Mitchell Inn, located in the small town of Guerie in the middle of NSW. It was a good crowd of about 100 locals packed into the front bar. As usual, I tried to loosen the crowd up with a bit of local banter at the front of my set.
In most small towns there's usually a place where the locals sneak off for their first fuck or kiss etc.
In Guerie, when I asked, I found out pretty soon this place was under a local bridge.
The whole crowd seemed to be boasting about it by yelling out how they'd been there and who they’d fucked etc.
It was a good lively response but I tried to regain focus by pointing at one bloke and saying 'How about you mate, have you had a fuck under the bridge?'
He proudly yelled back, 'yeah!’
I then replied with what I thought was an obvious gag, 'What was his name?'
The crowd laughed and I kept jabbing the crowd, feeling a good rhythm and connection happening for a fun gig ahead.
That was until the guy I'd been talking to, weaved his way through the crowd up to my mic and picked me up by the collar.
He then pushed me through the male toilet door which was beside me and all of a sudden I was pinned me up against the inside wall with him saying above me, 'Stop calling me a poofter!'
I cut to the chase and said, 'Sorry'.
I wasn't sorry for what I'd said but I was genuinely sorry for upsetting him. After all, I'm a comedian. My job is to make people laugh not make them upset.
He accepted my apology more out of surprise I think than anything and then put me down and let me go.
I’m not saying this always works but not acting scared or aggressive to some being physically threatening, I think is the best option.
A genuine ‘sorry’ is always a good disarmer too.
Even for guys who are angry, ‘sorry’ can be a surprising response which is hard to punch. We all want to be listened to and by saying 'sorry' it shows at least you are at least recognising that they’re upset and won't do it again.
I then dusted myself off and we walked out and suddenly again I was back in front of 100 people who were watching a comedy show.
How do I get them back with a laugh while addressing what had happened inside the toilets?
I was going to say 'Look he just told me to stop calling him a poofter. Anyway, after I sucked him off he seemed to calm down....'
I didn't though because I wanted to live.

* Dunedoo.
Dunedoo is a town near Dubbo in NSW. The town was once going to put up a big Dunny in the main street to attract tourists, just like Coffs Harbour does with the Big Banana and Ballina does with the Big Prawn etc.
In Dunedoo however the idea was narrowly voted down by the farming gentry in the surrounding area - much to the disappointment of local shopkeepers and stoners.
I arrived to my gig at The Dunedoo Hotel early and wandered out the back. Two greyhounds were chained up. I walked up to them.
I’d done some miles that month and the two dogs sitting there forlornly looked liked they needed as much affection as I did at the time.
I started patting one of them. He loved it. I then went to pat the other one. The first one jumped across and bit me on the wrist. It wasn't a bad bite but it did draw blood. I went inside and asked the owner for some band-aids and showed him what his dog had done to my wrist.
He looked at my injury and said without emotion, 'Is the dog okay?'

The gig's highlight was a guy in the crowd who generously let me mine his personal life for laughs during throughout the show. He'd been married five times. He told me and the crowd that he'd left his second wife and then married her sister.
'What was that wedding like?' I asked.
'The best thing about my third marriage was that I didn't have to meet any new in-laws, that time.' he replied.
I then asked him, 'Did the sisters taste the same?'
Straight away he shot back with, 'There is a difference between vegemite and marmite'.

* Werribee Hotel.
Joey Jnr from the Werribee Hotel told me he'd 'seen and heard it all' working there.
'Give me your best story?' I asked.
He sucked on his cigarette. 'There was one couple who drank here. Anyway she was shagging someone else on the side. When the boyfriend found out she told him to go and stab the guy who she was shagging on the side coz she said she didn't like him. So the boyfriend stabbed him. When the other guy went to hospital, she then left her boyfriend and went to the hospital to say she wanted to be with the guy who she'd ordered the stabbing on. She then put an AVO on her old boyfriend. He kept on trying to get her back until the cops intervened and told him to stay away. Eventually he stopped contacting her. And that's pretty much the sign that a romance has died around here’, continued Joey, 'when an AVO is obeyed both parties know it's over'.

* UFO
One night at The Corrigin Hotel we were all called outside onto the street to check out what was happening on the street. A couple of guys had rigged up some garbage bags with some light wire around the rim of the bags entrance and crossed over in the middle where they'd tied a fire lighter. They then stood it up, lit the lighter and one by one the garbage bags rose into the air like a flotilla of mini hot air balloons.
Fifteen minutes later they were each like a bright planet drifting off into the distance. It was quite a sight, all ten of them.
Apparently they'd once done it from a backyard in Perth which resulted later that night in their flying machines being on the nightly TV news report. Hundreds of people had rung in asking what they were. The 7pm news reported them as ‘Unidentified flying objects’.

* Woody.
Woody was the first publican who gave me a gig in W.A in 2005. He was the publican of The Corrigin Hotel. After the gig he said I could stay in one of the rooms in his pub in between all my other gigs, I'd got after driving around the W.A wheat belt.
I’d got these gigs after spending a week driving through every town in the SWest of W.A hustling them up.
I went on to spend a lot of time at The Corrigin pub thanks to Woody's generous offer. Woody and I became mates, despite being totally different people. e.g Woody was an accomplished drinker. Up there with the best of them. I mainly sat on one wine when drinking with him and his mates. Woody always served it to me in a full schooner glass though, just so I didn't 'look like a poofter'.
Anyway, Woody took over running The Corrigin Hotel with his girlfriend Jodie when he was 24. He said he was the youngest Licensee in W.A at the time. Woody and Jodie worked as a team. She worked mainly behind the bar. Woody worked in front of the bar.
Woody's theory on running a good pub was this: Most guys usually drop in for three or four beers after work and then go home. He figured if he could get into shouting rounds with guys and nudge them in the process into having five or six beers, they'd then stay for 10 or 12. And it worked.
Turnover of his pub soared. After most nights apparently Woody would turn up to bed absolutely pissed at 3am having been in shouts with twenty different guys all night.
He would then placate an upset Jodie by saying, 'Just keeping the business running baby', before patting his stomach, ‘Doing it for us, honey, doing it for us honey...’
In four years since he was License, Woody said he'd put on over 50kgs. One morning I found him hobbling down the hallway. I asked him what was wrong. He said he had gout.
I said, 'But Woody, isn't gout an old man's disease from drinking too much piss?'
'Na, not in my case, it's hereditary', he grinned back, 'My brother got it at 21 and he doesn't even drink. I've been lucky'.
I was still in shock though. Later that day, I ran into one of Woody's mates on the street.
I said to him, 'Woody's 28 years old and got gout'.
His mate looked at me and said, 'Yep, a bloke could only dream of getting it that early'.
In Corrigin, gout wasn't a disease - it was an achievement.

I was the first person to hear a few weeks after my first gig at The Corrigin Hotel that Jodie was pregnant after ten years of trying together. Woody told me proudly that he was going to be a Dad for the first time, one night after the bar had shut while passing me a Canadian Club.
Jodie was told she couldn't have kids by the doctor years ago. Woody went on to tell me that he reckoned she got pregnant when he ‘rooted her’ on the night of my show.
He then added while passing me another Canadian Club, ‘I reckon you're a good luck charm Jimbo’.
He then said if the kid was a boy he wanted to call it Jimbo and if it was a girl he wanted to call it Jimboleena before handing me another Canadian Club.

Lucky for the kid, Jodie over-ruled Woody and called their daughter Jasmine. I was staying with them on the night of Jasmine’s birth. Woody woke me up and said, 'She's about to blow. I'm driving her to Narrogin'.
I knew it was a long drive and out of phone range. I left a message on their answering machine while trying to contact them half an hour later saying, 'I hope you don't hit a kangaroo', which I realised didn't make much sense when I finished the call because they'd probably get my message when they stopped driving.
They did hit a roo that night. They killed the kangaroo, dented the radiator but they got to the hospital okay. Woody heard the message later on his phone and reckoned I'd jinxed the accident.
'So much for my lucky charm!' he said.

Eighteen months later, Woody rang me up while I was in Perth one Sunday morning. He said Jodie was hassling him again to get married the night before over their second bottle of wine.
'Anyway', he said, 'I've made a few calls this morning to organise it in the gardens near the fountain at The Burswood Casino and you're the last call. Wanna be my best man?'
'Sure' I said.
And then I tried to think about my responsibilities for such an honour 'Does that mean I've got to organise a bux party?'
I knew most of Woody's mate's in town and so knew it would be easy to organise.
'Fuck no!' he said. 'The wedding is going to be next week with just you, one of Jodie's friends and family. I want it done on the sly before anyone in town finds out’.
‘Right so no bux party, Why not?’ I asked
‘Jimbo’, he stated clearly, 'there's no way I'm having a bux party because I know what they'll do to me! What I want you to do though is organise four quilts for all the boys at the wedding coz apparently I've got Scottish blood in me somewhere down the line, so it's going to be a Scottish Wedding theme.'
'What size are you all?' I asked.
'Big', he replied.
'But....’ I stammered back.
'Don't worry about it Jimbo, it's only a wedding, just get some big kilts, we'll fit into them. Anyway, Jas is screaming. I'll email you the address of the caravan park we're staying at the night before. We'll meet you there'.
He then hung up. I went to about ten fancy dress places that week. And the best I could find were four mismatched vaguely big quilts with matching puffy white shirts that hadn't been ironed.
I rocked up to the caravan park on the night before the wedding to meet Woody and Jodie, the parents and a brother and sister and Jodie's best friend all sitting around drinking. After a few hours and a few more Canadian Clubs, someone suggested a fit out.
I was nervous. I’m used to dressing like a clown. I wasn’t too sure about the bridal party looking like clowns though. Anyway, the four blokes kitted up. When finished, we looked like we'd been dressed at a jumble sale by kindergarten kids. If fact only three of us were in kilts because Woody's brother said we looked ridiculous and didn't want to take part in the ‘fancy dress party we were having’.
‘I’m wearing my jeans tomorrow’ he insisted, ‘there’s no way I’m wearing that shit’
And he had a point. All the boys were all laughing though and having a great time until we looked across at Jodie.
She was crying. 'This is not how I want the photo on my mantel piece to look like for the rest of my life', she sobbed.
The next morning Woody and I arrived at the local suit hire place at 8:30am half an hour before it opened, 'Just to keep the missus happy' Woody said on the way there.
Another bunch of guys arrived after us.
They saw us at the door.
One guy came up to us pointing at his friend 'Look fellas, can we go first to be fitted coz he's getting married today'.
Woody said, 'What time?'
'Midday', he replied.
'Well get in the queue’, said Woody, I'm getting married at 11'.
Inside, while measuring us up, the fitting lady started gently berating us for leaving such an important thing so late.
'This is the easy bit', said Woody. 'I still haven't found him a wife yet'.

*Bankstown cop.
My ‘I fucked a goat’ t-shirts always get such different reactions. The best reaction for me is when someone buys one. I often wonder where people wear them though when they wake up in the morning after one of my shows and realise what they’ve bought (or what they’ve done if they can’t remember).
No-one really tells me though coz I rarely ever see them again. One guy did. He said how he was once walking down the street in Bankstown Sydney in the middle of the day with my shirt on. A cop pulled over his squad car and went up to him.
'Where did you get the shirt? I want one. I want one'.
Anyway you can order them by sending me an email on jimbo@jimbo.com.au

* Thongs.
It was Australia day. I was in Boulder, W.A and had just finished hosting the wet t-shirt competition. It was a big crowd and a queue of people were lining up to buy my, 'I fucked a goat' t-shirts. Every now and then a guy would buy one and call me a poofter. It's an occasional greeting in Australia and generally just as friendly as the heckle 'I've fucked your Mum'.
When the fourth guy had said it to me in a row though, I checked with him to make sure it wasn't personal.
'Mate, why is everyone calling me a poofter today?' I asked.
He then looked down at my shoes. 'You're wearing Crocs mate. It's Australia Day. Where are your thongs?'
I then laughed while explaining that my sister had sent them over to me as a present before realising this guy wasn't giving me a friendly rib. He was genuinely upset that I was wearing Crocs and not thongs on Australia Day.
He then paid me $20 for my 'I fucked a goat' shirt, grabbed it and walked away with a snarl on his face.

* Langtrees
Langtree's in Kalgoorlie is perhaps Australia's most famous brothel. So famous that a large part of its income now comes from tours it runs through its premises during the day, to middle class tourists. Mostly couples.
There's no live action to be viewed on the tour though, through the variously fitted rooms (such as the one that looks like it's at the bottom of a mine shaft) but plenty of interesting stories.
The best one was about an effeminate boy who grew up in Kalgoorlie in the 1970's. He was continually bullied at school and like a lot of gay country Australian males ran away to Sydney at his first opportunity. He then had a sex change and became a dancer with the famous Les Girls troupe as well as a being a prostitute on the side.
Years later he/she moved back to Kalgoorlie and worked at Langtrees. Anyway, story has it, that one night when he/she was in the line-up one of the guys who used to bully her at school picked her out. While he was fucking her, she looked up at him and thought 'If only you knew!'
She now works as a prominent council member for Kalgoorlie.

* Observations from my South African standup tour.
In 2007, I got invited over to South Africa to do some gigs for a month.
I got the gig from Alain de Woolf who was a South African hypnotist I’d worked with on my Big Night Out show in 2003. We’d kept in contact over the years. He’s always said he’d get me over there in the odd phone conversation we had over the years.
I always thought ‘sure’ but also ‘as if’ and then sure enough, four years later he convinced an agent to fly me out there to do gigs while I stayed at Al’s place with his family.

Here are my observations from the trip which I wrote in my blog at the time:

The first thing I noticed here in South Africa is that they think that all Australian's fuck sheep. This segue-wise has been a gift from the comedy gods for introducing myself to crowds, getting a laugh and selling my t-shirts.
"Australians don't fuck sheep....we fuck goats."

The second thing I've noticed here in South Africa is the perception that Australian people are a very hard-working, well behaved, orderly bunch of people. I.e. we stick to the speed limits, we pick up rubbish and we basically do what the government tells us to do.
This is a safe, good and lucky Australian trait in many ways but I think the carefree, cheeky proud self-perception by Australians that we're a bunch of lay about larrikins who take creative short cuts at work, support the battler, think outside the square and who thumb our nose at authority is something we can no longer boastfully claim these days.
It's a bit like saying that America still gives a green card to the world's 'huddled masses'. Australian's don't fuck sheep but since the property boom in the early 90's are we perhaps starting to act like them?

The third thing, I've noticed in South Africa is that the cultural facade of white South African life is very similar to Australia's cultural facade in many ways (e.g. the weather, television shows, food, beer, BBQ’s, chit chat, the desire to keep up with the Jones's). The similarities stop there though.
And I benefit from it greatly on stage as the comedy scene here is a lot less conservative than in Australia.
That's because in South Africa, comedy also takes people away from the aftermath of apartheid, the extraordinary levels of violent crime still going on, the huge difference between rich and poor, the barbed wire and electric fences around each middle class home in the suburbs, the threat of being car-jacked at every traffic light, the thought that someone could kill break in and rape you, every time you go to sleep.
Therefore a comedian swearing and talking about sex on stage is the last thing a Johannesburg audience will get indignant about.
White South Africans often ask me 'why did you come over here to work when we all want to go over to your country and work!?'
I've been telling South African crowds though that in Australia one in seven people are on anti-depressants which is a far higher level than Sth Africa where there's probably more reason to be filled with anxiety and depressive thoughts.
One coloured guy said to me in response to my desire to find the answer to this peculiar disparity: "Depression! That's a white man's disease! When you live in a two bedroom house with ten others, you got no time to be depressed!"
And a white girl in another audience also gave me an interesting response to this fact.
She said that when people in Johannesburg get back to their houses/security compounds each night after work "we are always filled with such an incredible sense of joy and appreciation that we're still alive. Maybe you don't get that in Australia at the end of the day because things are too comfortable?!"

The fourth thing I noticed here in South Africa is the amount of bribes/tips you have to give to people who do things for you which don't need to be done for you in Australia. Things like tipping someone who fills up your petrol tank or pointing out where a spot is in the car park is. I can see why it's done though. It's a trickle down of wealth from people who have a lot more than those who don't, from a political system that’s doing it's best to correct itself while trying not to become an economic basket case like Zimbabwe.
Accepting tips is also more dignified than begging and eases people into the modern workforce culture where there wouldn't otherwise be an opportunity. In South Africa though, there is a fine line between tipping someone for a simple task and feeling intimidated which took me a while to get used to.
For example, when I went to collect my excess baggage from the cargo section at Johannesburg airport I was accompanied by two big burly blokes who kindly carried my bag to my car (which was out of CCTV range). They then got into my car and asked me for 500 Rand each ($200). It's amazing though, how stand-over men in any country who are trying to assault/intimidate/collect a bribe/get a tip off you, can be instantly reduced to giggling schoolboys just by giving them an 'I fucked a goat' shirt each.

The fifth thing I've noticed here is the amount of white people complaining about the racist policies of the BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) which insists a minimum number of black people be employed in every company in South Africa. It's the same merit vs. political correctness argument that John Laws used when women started getting job opportunities in the second half of his broadcasting career. This similar 'reverse-racism' and 'political correctness gone mad' argument from white South Africans, makes certain whites feel marginalised from all angles. Even when they go overseas, white South Africans still get vilified about their racist past from other whites.
Anyway, on this issue, I want to firstly say that I don't see any whites cleaning black people's houses in South Africa.
And secondly, I also want to make another point, which I hope people re-read carefully again if it upsets them: As a white Australian, the main difference between white South Africans and white colonialists elsewhere in the world is that we (Australia, New Zealand, America and Canada) managed to kill off our indigenous black people to a 'manageable' level while it was still internationally fashionable (i.e. before TV).
And rightly so too because 'these savages' had spears that could really fuck your leg up!
And when we in Australia did get the Aboriginal population (compared to the white population) down to an appropriate level, THATS when we let them vote (1967).
And there-in lies the essential difference between Australia and South African's historical treatment of blacks by white people. In South African history, whites seemed to more intent on segregating blacks and using them for labour in mines, agriculture and their homes.
In Australia we didn't segregate blacks and whites or make Aboriginals our maids, gardeners or lowly paid slaves. Although I'm pretty sure white Australians tried. (Why else would we still today stereotype Aboriginals as lazy? - It's because they didn't play ball!).
So instead of getting the locals to work in Australia, white Australians killed Aborigines (most notably in Tasmania) and pushed the remaining ones, out of mind and out of sight, into towns bordering the inland deserts where they still mostly congregate today (Wilcannia, Morree, Meekathara, Cunumulla, Katherine, Laverton, Ceduna, Halls Creek).
And that's the thing that genuinely impresses white South Africans about white Australians the most. World cup or no world cup, we've still got our country whereas they are losing theirs.


* Boulder
If I hadn't explained by now, my outback pub show basically consists of me setting up my P.A in the corner of the front bar, doing some jokes, inciting heckling and then having an audience talent quest to see who can win one of my ‘I fucked a goat’ t-shirts.
By the end of the two hours, Karaoke stripping is what my show normally turns into. The last time I was at The Rock Inn in Boulder, W.A, the winner of my talent quest was a consortium of four guys and one girl who stripped naked, jammed some toilet paper up their arses, lit it and then ran around the roundabout located outside the pubs front door while the rest of the pub watched from the window. The time before that a couple of girls simulated dildo sex on the bar with my balloon animals.
Sight gags work well in my show, especially when the crowd are all on their tenth drink or more. When they’re like this they generally want to have fun more than just listen to someone who is funny.
The time before the dildo sex incident I compared the wet t-shirt comp on Australia Day.
Anyway by this particular time in Boulder, I was a little bored of seeing the same type of thing win the talent quest: namely a guy come up and burn his pubes.
So I asked the crowd ‘Is there a chick in here who wants to come up and burn her pubes, for a t-shirt? I’ve never seen it done before’.
A slightly plump girl of about 25yrs put her hand up and walked confidently down the side of the bar to where I was in the corner next to an old broken poker machine. ‘Yeah, I’ll give it a go’, she said confidently. ‘I haven’t had a root or a shave in a year, so ‘fuck it!’
Next, she was standing beside me with her pants around her ankles looking nonchalantly out at the crowd. I then pulled two young guys up from the crowd who had lighters and told them it was their job to 'light the forest'.
Just to make sure there were no Occupational Health and Safety issues I got them to clump up a bit of her fur in their hands so it stuck out. I then got one of the boys to take the fire extinguisher off the wall and hold it, just in case the back burning got out of control.
As well as being careful, I was also milking the visual of a girl standing down the end of the bar with her box out while holding here hands on her hips.
After a couple of minutes, the girl was onto me though.
She turned around to me and yelled ‘Are you gunna hurry up and burn me pubes or what!?’
A guy getting his cock out in a pub is nothing special but a girl standing there exposing her bush is quite a site, even for me.
Even the topless bargirl seemed surprised. I’m not to sure whether it was because she felt redundant or shocked.
Anyway the guys torched up the pubes, there was a flame and then she patted it out, pulled up her pants and walked back to her friends with one of my ‘I fucked a goat’ shirts in her hand, which she'd proudly grabbed off me while the rest of the bar cheered. She knew no-one would beat that.
Coming back after a ten minute break, I said to the crowd, ‘If a girl has burnt her pubes on stage in the first half of the show, what the fuck is going to happen in the second half of the show!?’
Just then another girl jumped up and grabbed my mic and started speaking to me and the crowd. She said, ‘Jimbo did you know that crabs is the only sexual disease which is now decreasing?'
I said, ‘No’.
She said, ‘it’s because so many chicks are shaving now which means that the crabs have no place to live’.
I said, ‘so it’s a bit like the Orangutans in Malaysia: their numbers are being decimated due to deforestation of their natural environment’.
She said ‘Exactly’ and then sat down while I mentally noted to myself to put that gag in my next show.
I then went back to the talent quest.
I said, ‘because this is such a special crowd, (and because I’d run out of material) I’m now gunna put up one more t-shirt for anyone who can top the crab burning we saw in the first half of the show’.
Next minute I had a young guy lying down on the ground in front of me with his cock out for all to see. He then started to open a packet of beef jerky he'd got from behind the bar and put the bits of meat around his cock. He then asked me to whistle over the pub dog to see if it would have a feed.
Not many things on stage make me genuinely laugh but this was one of those moments. Not so much what this guy was doing but just the look of the people around the bar on this quiet Thursday night in Boulder.
'Whatever these people’s worries were, they weren’t thinking about them now', I thought.
The funniest thing for me though was watching the dog came over, have a sniff and then fuck off.
I then patted the disappointed guy on the shoulder and said, ‘Mate, when the pub dog won’t even go near your cock - that’s rejection!’
He got to his feet.
No-one beat him or was game to try after him though.
So I said at the end of the show ‘Mate, you’ve won the shirt but I should get another one made up for you to give to the next girl who gives you a blow-job which says, ‘I sucked the cock that the pub dog rejected' and when she asks, ‘what’s this about?’, just pat her on the back and say ‘Long story’.

* Aussie slang.
Guys in Australia often say, 'Harden up, ya soft cock' which has evolved to 'Go drink a can of harden the fuck up ya soft cock'.
What do girls say to each other I wonder?
'Moisten up ya dry cunt?'

* Touché.
A guy came up to me when I was selling my shirts after a show in Darwin with this really intense look.
He then stuck his face right into mine while pointing to my, 'I fucked a goat' t-shirts and said, 'you’ve fucked a goat, ya soft cock, whatever. If you were fair dinkum it'd say, 'I fuck goats'. You've fucked ONE goat!'
He then walked away and I was left feeling like some people maybe feel when they see my shirt.
He’d freaked me out to the point where I had no idea whether he was joking or being serious.
I love when that happens.

* Cunumulla.
A guy was telling in Queensland about 'a couple of friends he knew' in the Outback town of Cunumulla.
Apparently they were bored and kicking and throwing rocks on the outskirts of town one day when they came across a wild goat which they managed to catch.
One said to the other, 'How about we fuck it?’.
His mate looked at him strangely.
He then said again, ‘come on, how about we both just fuck it!?’
He then continued with his frenzied enthusiasm, ‘What else are we going to do out here, it's no big deal, come on lets just do it, no-one will know, lets just root it, what do you reckon?’
The other guy finally shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘Why not?’
The first guy then went, ‘yeah!.... Well you go first and I'll follow'.
Then as soon as the other guy stuck his cock into the goat he ran into town pissing himself and told everyone.
‘How Australian is that!’ I thought.
We never dob our mates in...... unless it’s fuckin’ funny.

* Weston
I was playing in the front bar room of The Aberdare Hotel in Weston, just outside Cessnock in NSW. Everyone was standing around. There was no formal seating arrangement for a show so as usual I was trying to galvanise the crowd into a bit of heckling so that the crowd could bond.
I did this by asking a young girl up the back a few questions.
A middle aged lady then piped up from the side, 'Careful Jimbo, she's going out with my son'.
I replied back, 'Let me get this right, 'Your son came out of your cunt and now he's cuming into hers'.
The crowd roared.
Even the guys at the bar who were talking before were listening to the show now. The lady then stood up and yelled out over the noise and hooting of the crowd, 'Na, ya fuckin' wrong. I had a caesarian!'
'Full marks to her', I thought.
Not only did she take the joke without offence but she went one step further then me in her reply.

* Snowy River
At the back of the snowy river there's a cute town called Walwa.
Anyway, when I did a gig at The Walwa pub and I found out some interesting information about the real story on 'The Man from Snowy River' after my show by a guy at the bar.
Apparently The Man from Snowy River was born at that 'inbred town of Tumburumba up the road' and the reason he could hold on to the horse down the mountain was because he had fourteen fingers.
It seems every small town in the world has a town down the road 'where they fuck their sisters'.
You got down the road though and the people are no different.
Except in Tumburumba.

* Vomit.
Being a pub comedian really comes down to one thing with publicans: selling alcohol. Most publicans don't really care how funny I am when they book my show. They just hope at the end of the day to look in their till, pay me my $200 fee or whatever and have more money leftover than they'd normally get on that night of the week. They're businessmen first. Comedy critics second.
I often go into the toilet after my gig. If there's spew in the urinal I know I'm going to get paid.

* Wedding Celebrant.
A few couples have asked me at times whether I'd like to marry them. I told one guy who asked me, 'how about I marry you while I'm holding a goat on stage on a lead, at a gig?'
He said if I could get my celebrants license he would. I looked into it and it cost $300 which I didn't have at the time.
Maybe I'll do it down the track.
Weddings are funny things. They basically seem like an excuse to get you and your friends together and have a party. I can't see myself ever getting married because I’m not into paper work or monogamy.
But one day I might do a surprise wedding invite to all my friends but not tell them who to. I reckon most of my friends would turn up just to find out who it was.
And none of them would be surprised when they saw a goat with garters on.
I would then get my Dad to walk her down the aisle. And my Mum would cry in the front row. Mum and Dad and my two sisters are cool. One of the most common questions I get from people is, 'What do your parents think of what you do for a living?
Neither of them has ever told me to get a 'real job' which, I'm very proud of them for and thankful.
They know I'm healthy, responsible and not hocking their furniture for cash!
What more could a parent ask for?!
Plus they know what I do is essentially an act.
One particular incident confirmed this:
Mum and Dad were once in a show I was doing where I do a gag about how the biggest heckle from going around to pubs in Australia is 'I fucked your Mum!'
I then tell the crowd how, 'last time I saw my Mum, I sat her down and said, 'you slut'. I've gone all round Australia only to find out that you've fucked a guy in every town I've been too!'
Mum then yelled out from the crowd 'Don't tell Dad', while my Dad sat there chuckling.


* My best story.
I always enjoyed playing at Karratha Tavern. They always let me play there and they always let me go for it. The bar was always full of single blokes still in their work gear getting slaughtered on beers then rum.
I don’t enjoy socialising in these environments but I love working in them.
Anyway, on this night as usual behind the bar were an array of topless bargirls or 'Skimpies' as they're called affectionately in W.A.
I did my show which culminated in me giving away an 'I fucked a goat shirt' to a guy who stuck his cock in his bourbon glass. He then told the crowd he was doing a performance piece called 'The Aquarium'.
I remember thinking at the time, ‘I haven’t seen that trick since Wickepin Hotel in 2005’.
Anyway, The Karratha Tavern owned a house down the road where staff and performers could stay. Back at the house afterwards I was having a beer with one of the Skimpy's.
Somehow the conversation turned to sex.
'My first sexual experience was when I got fucked up the arse by a dog when I was eight', she said out of nowhere.
I'd been on the road for a long time and thought I'd heard it all.
'This was certainly new', I thought trying to neutralise the shock I was feeling. I didn't want here to see the shock though because I wanted her to elaborate with details of her story and not clam up embarrassed.
So I took a sip of my drink and then tried to say in the most casual manner possible I could, 'Ohh yeah'.
She then said a little bit shocked herself, 'I've never really told anyone that before'.
I then said, 'So how come you told me?'
She replied, 'Well you've been down the pub for two hours telling everyone how you fuck goats on stage'.
I was silent. She had me there.
'Well have you?' she followed up.
I desperately wanted to be honest to her in order to mirror her honesty to me which I thought would get the rest of the story out of her.
So I said 'no'.
But as soon as I said 'no', I felt really bad that she'd told me such a big childhood secret on the premise that I was a goat fucker, so I added 'But I think that's because I haven't met the right one yet'.
There was a bit of a silence again. I knew I was walking a thin line of diplomacy to get this story out but I knew I had to press on and ask questions quick because I knew I'd never be in this conversation with anyone else again for the rest of my life.
'So you and the dog... how did you meet?' I said taking another sip.
She said she grew up on a farm in the country.
I immediately said trying to be cool, 'yeah, I know what it's like on a farm. Animals are shagging in front of you from a young age. It becomes normal....’
She continued, 'I was playing ball with the neighbour’s dog when the ball went over my head. I turned around to pick it up. Anyway, when I was on all fours, it mounted me.'
By this time my eyes were wide opened.
She continued, 'Anyway I was just curious so I pulled my panties down and the dog's cock just happened to go up the first hole which happened to be my arse'.
The beginning of that last sentence changed the whole slant of the story for me though because to me it implied consent.
I then realised I had to now ask the very big obvious question which beckoned on this once in a lifetime conversation.
'Did the dog cum?' I asked.
She said, 'No it just had a few pumps and then I pushed it off'.
Anyway, the comedian in me then wanted to go, 'so not only are you a dog fucker but you're frigid as well'.
But I didn't because I wanted to fuck her.
Doggie style.

* Review.
I get a lot of people reviewing my show, to my face and behind my back. Most either love my show or hate it. I know this and accept both. It's still nice to get good feedback though.
My Favourite show review, if not my only was by a guy who has become a bit of a cult phenomenon on the Sydney live music and comedy scene. He does reviews of music and comedy on the net under the name of ‘Sidney Critic’.
What I like about him is he's anonymous. No-one seems to know who he is. And neither do I.
Anyway, he was apparently in my crowd at ‘The Rude Show’ I did for the Sydney Comedy Festival at The Factory Theatre in May 2008.

This is what he wrote:
There has been a name change since I last saw this show years ago, it used to be called 'The Big Night Out' and is now the more aptly named 'The Rude Show', which describes the show better.
The thing about this show, if you don't know about Jimbo's previous show, is the level of rudeness, it's way ,way, way, way more rude than you could imagine, even the support acts, were taken aback, except Bev Killick.
Jimbo improvises based on the people in the audience. He singled out a group of three girls and stereotyped them as lesbians, trying to entice one to come on the stage and do a hand stand in the nude and 'fill up her box with JB and coke', while the other two girls sipped on cocktail straws while a cocktail umbrella hung out of her ass. Did I mention the show was rude?
The first act in this ensemble act with Jimbo MCing it was so perplexed, after Jimbo’s usual rude intro, he just had nowhere to go. His rudest joke was like a cute fluffy kitten to Jimbo’s utter filth. Bev was next, she is one rude bird, but that's what her usual routine is anyway. How rude you ask, well she explained how a girls undies gets a cake mix like discharge stuck to the inside with the edges drying out to form a Lamington like look, if you didn't wash them often.
Next was Eddie from the U.K.
He said 'I thought I was rude till I meet Jimbo', he stepped up his act and pulled it off.
Jimbo is up to his usual best, but be prepared to be shocked.

* Long way.
I once was doing a show in Lane Cove at a Bowling Club. Before the show a guy about 18 came up to me and said, 'You were the clown at my third, fourth and fifth birthday party'.
I patted him on the back and said, 'If you're a bit shocked tonight, keep in mind mate that my material has changed'.

* Censorship.
By 2008, I had a decent run of publicans who would book me in Western Australia each time I went back.
W.A is also my favourite Australian State for many other reasons.
It has huge, beautiful natural features from the reef at Coral Bay to the massive Karri pines at Nannup to the beaches of Esperance to the prehistoric gorges of Karijini National Park to the absolute remoteness of the Great Sandy Desert to the beauty of a Kimberley Skye.
And that's before you get to the huge Waterslide in the small wheat belt town of Kulin which was bequeathed by a rich farmer who wanted the kids of the town to have somewhere to play after he died.
As with all my favourite places though, it’s the people that make it.
The characters and the laid back attitude (which seem to have faded gradually from the East Coast a bit since the 1970's) brings me back every time to W.A.
Why? The capital Perth is the most isolated city in the Western world.
And when you go to W.A you go to W.A. You don't go there on the way to somewhere else unless you're flying over it on a plane to Southern Africa.
Gig wise the state was particularly good to me mainly because the mining towns had pubs that were full of guys spending money. After sweating all day to earn their pay, there was no censorship needed in my language or ideas.
Ironically, I have more creative control in pubs in W.A than any theatre manager or comedy venue has ever given me.
Anyway, I once booked a couple of theatres (not pubs) in W.A just to see if I could make the step up from pubs with my show after being on the road performing in pubs for years. The first one was a theatre in South Hedland.
I paid the $500 hiring fee and gave them my posters. On show night, they told me I had two paying customers. It was a theatre that held over 400 people. Backstage on the night, I didn't care.
I don’t see the point in getting upset about the people who don't come to your show in front of the people who do. Plus I love a challenge!
Anyway, I remember pacing back and forth backstage on this night thinking, ‘I'm going to give those two people who paid to come and see my show the best night of their life’.
Ten minutes after the show was due to start, I peaked out from the curtains but I still couldn't see anyone in the theatre. I couldn’t even see the sound guy up the back. I then went round to the one lady in the box office.
She said, 'Look, I'm terribly sorry Jimbo but the two tickets booked were accidently booked in your show by mistake by someone in the office a couple of weeks ago for a couple who wanted to see Ross Noble instead. It was our mistake. We swapped the tickets over last week and I forgot to change them on the computer. Sorry.’
'No worries', I said. 'The show must go on though, after all you've come to work and so has the sound guy and the girl in the shop. How about I do a little show for you three?'
'Okay', she said nervously.
I then got the sound guy to hook up my DVD and I took them through some of the footage from the wildest pubs shows, I'd caught on tape.
The guy burning his pubes... the blow-job incident at Parramatta.. the guy lighting his chest hair which then lit a cigarette in his mouth... the guy who drank a schooner of his mate's piss... and some other stuff.
After half an hour the staff said they had to go.
I then went down to the Last Chance Tavern which is the only pub in South Hedland. I had a beer and told the guy next to me my story about my first theatre show in the town and what a raving success it wasn't.
He then told the publican my story. The publican then said I could do a show at his pub in two weeks if I wanted. He said he'd put my posters up and I could take the $10 door charge.
'No worries!’ I said.
The next day, I drove down to the 400 seat ‘Walkington Theatre’ in Karratha where I had another show booked. I was a lot more optimistic about the turn-out to this show though. Unlike South Hedland, I had performed a few gigs in Karratha before at the Karratha Tavern and they had always gone well. So a few people in town had at least heard of me unlike in South Hedland. I.e. I had a minor following of at least more than two imaginary people, I confidently assumed.
The theatre too had advertised me in some papers and via their theatre mailing list. I did notice though before the show that they had advertised me as 'Australia's most all-round comedian - able to play to any audience'.
This was what my website said at the time but it referred to all my comedy. It didn’t refer to this show I was doing, I thought. I had told the lady when I booked the show that this was going to be my R-rated show not my M or G rated show. There had been a mix-up obviously.
'Not to worry', I thought.
As long as people turn up. And they did turn up. Fifty eight of them paying $25 each which meant I at least broke even on this gig when fees and commissions were taken out. Most of them sat up the front too.
During the show, I gave it to them as best I could. I did my jokes, pulled people up on stage, strapped balloon genetalia to them, got them to fuck and showed my footage.
Highlight for me, was when I showed the footage from my show in the only pub in Cranbrook which is down the bottom of W.A. It's the footage of a guy who lights his chest hairs from his belly button which burn up chest until it lights a cigarette in his mouth.
When I showed it to the crowd, a lady gasped particularly loudly in the crowd.
I asked her 'why?’
She said it was her brother. She then said, she had no idea about his ability to do this trick and was a bit in shock at seeing it suddenly in a theatre show.
I said, 'you mean Graham!? Beauty, I'll get his number after, I've been meaning to send him a copy'.
I did too and he was stoked. He said he wanted to get into stand-up comedy. I told him, he's always got a closer to his show if he does. As long as he's got time to regrow his hair back in between gigs.
Anyway, after the show I was told by a slightly upset manager of the Walkington Theatre in Karratha that she had to refund money to six people who left in disgust in the intermission of my show. She said they were regulars from the theatre's mailing list. She then went on to say that when she was trained in theatre school management in England her tutor drummed it into her that you should never give people a refund to a theatre show if they didn't like it because it was art which is subjective – and subjectivity is why theatre exists in the first place.
I then nodded wondering where she was going with her argument.
She went on to say that she'd always wondered why her teacher said this but tonight she had for the first time agreed with the people wanting their money back because she thought my material was totally inappropriate, especially the blow-job footage.
I was a bit taken aback but accepted it. Walking away later, I kept on thinking to myself that when I walk on stage, surely it is my space surely to do whatever I wanted?
Short of violence and getting people to do stuff without their consent that is.
I then got a bit wound up. I had been a good customer to her. I told her what the show was about before, I paid up front in cash, I didn't trash backstage and I was polite to all the staff. '
What I did onstage from that point was surely my business? ‘I lathered to myself as I walked to The Karratha Tavern.
When I arrived, a couple of blokes came up to me who'd been at the show and who'd also seem me performing at the Karratha Tavern as well before. They said they enjoyed my show and bought me a beer.
We chatted for about an hour as I came down from my post gig rush. And then one of the guys leaned across and spoke to me after his fourth beer, 'To tell you the truth Jimbo, I thought your show was good but it was a bit soft compared to what it usually is when you're down here at the pub'.
It then suddenly dawned on me that if I'd toned my show down for the eight or so theatre goers who’d walked out, I probably would have had about 40 walkouts from the people who'd turned up because they’d either seen or heard about me from before.
I vowed then (again) never to censor my show to what anyone else but my gut instincts said again. Otherwise no-one will end up enjoying my show - especially me. And then I thought I’d really be fucked because I’d be broke AND unhappy! Besides, if I'm going to do a job where I have to say what other people think, at least get one that pays better!
I really went off that night. I had three beers.
The next week I went back the Last Chance Tavern in South Hedland to do my show. Sixty payers at $10 turned up which meant I’d made my money back I'd lost to the South Hedland theatre the week before.
I was happy and the publican asked me to call him next time I was in town.
I then pulled out and drove 600kms to my next gig in Broome while The Highwaymen played, 'The road goes on forever and the party never ends'.


* Fringe Bar.
I was once doing a feature act at The Fringe Bar comedy room run each Monday night in Paddington, Sydney.
During my act, I'd had one heckler who was a drunk guy in a suit. He was sitting with friends on a bar stool up the back. He'd been yelling out stuff during my act. Drunk incoherent aggressive stuff.
I hadn't really said anything to him in return apart from ask him what he did.
He mumbled something about working in Advertising.
At the end of the routine, I asked the crowd if they've got any questions, (which is also my way of giving me a couple of seconds to remember if I've got another joke, I wanted to say).
One person yelled out, 'What would you do if you weren't a stand-up comedian?'
I absorbed the question and gave it some thought, thinking the question deserved a genuine reply.
I said, 'I'd probably still be working as a copywriter in advertising. I'd be really rich, twenty kilos heavier and I'd be sitting down the end of the bar really drunk yelling out stuff to the comedian which he couldn't work with while making asides to the people around me saying 'I could do this shit better than him'.
The crowd then clapped.
‘But instead, I'm doing it’ I added proudly.
The crowd then clapped and whistled.
More at him than me though.
Which I appreciated as I walked back to my mate's couch, smiling to myself while kicking a coke can.

I usually do The Fringe Bar gig when I get back in Sydney. It's one of the few comedy rooms that still booked me. The Fringe Bar is different from all others in Australia for me because it's got more female audience members than male. Stand-up crowds are usually particularly male dominated. On a quiet Monday night in the affluent area of Paddington in the swankily done up Fringe Bar, the ladies flock in.
One time was just after I'd just literally come back from a six month tour of W.A mines sites the day before and hadn't really gone over my set list and made adjustments before I went on stage.
In turn, I had a bit of a tough time this night as I lazily went into auto-pilot of my 'blokey set'. If you don't get a stand-up crowd at the beginning, they can be hard work getting back especially if you don't acknowledge where you'd gone wrong in the first place.
I'd gone wrong by showing them my 'I fucked a goat shirt' in the first five minutes and then followed up the silence by asking whether anyone wanted to buy one off me.
I was a bit short of cash at the time. I was MC and when I sign off my gigs, I usually give them my website jimbo.com.au embedded in a gag. I did this night as that night at the end of the gig too.
The next day I got an email from a girl telling me she'd seen my gig at The Fringe Bar the night before and she had some advice for me: I should stop wasting my money buying those t-shirts and should change my material.
I sent her back a photo of the place I'd last been in Newman, W.A with the 23 guys who'd made purchases after the show, who were all wearing my shirts.
I then said how there is a market for my shirts... but yeah maybe not at The Fringe Bar and I apologised for doing material she didn't like and said I'd adjust it in future. When a crowd laughs well and someone tells me to change my act coz they didn't like it, I get upset. With this particular gig, I agreed with her. I hadn’t done a good one.
We then emailed back and forth to the point where it would have been really easy to become Facebook friends.
And then I thought this relationship really sums up life in the internet age.
In Newman W.A (where a lot of the blokes don't even have an email), if they don't like what I'm saying on stage they'll just yell out, 'Fuck off Jimbo' or 'I fucked your Mum' or 'Get off'.
Whereas at The Fringe Bar, Paddington, Sydney, my heckles were now coming in the form of an email, 24 hours after I'd walked off stage!
Sometimes it's hard to leave what happens on stage, on stage.
You can have such highs and lows in response from crowds from one night of the week to the next.
The tough nights are the ones I learn the most from though, so on intellectual note I find it good to think about why it went wrong despite not wanting to dwell on how it made me feel.
Emotionally I try to internalise each gig until it's at worst a neutral feeling. I.e. when I kill, I save a bit of the euphoria up for when I have tough nights.
This also cuts down on my drug and alcohol bills too... and shop talk to someone who's not interested.
It also means, as a lone traveler, I wake up alive each morning, knowing where my keys, wallet and car are.
It's a total head fuck doing stand-up comedy and that's why I love it.


To be continued....

P.S. Thanks so much to the seven odd people who have indicated that they're got thru this book draft so far!
If there are anymore who have got through it, all feedback (good or bad) is most welcome on my noticeboard or via my inbox.

Part Three of Eight.

My life as a clown.


* T-shirts.
Before I drove around Australia on what I called to myself 'The never ending tour', I knew I needed to have some merchandise to flog after my shows to help increase my income or at least pay for the petrol. A shirt with a slogan is where most entertainers start.
Something smart I thought, perhaps like ‘Ideals: Weapons of mass deception’.
In the end I went for ‘I fucked a goat’.
I thought it had more universal appeal.
Why goats?
Sheep has racist conations. With cows you need a step ladder to fuck 'em and goats are found in every country. Plus they're sexy.
I gave my fridge, dryer and couches to friends. I then terminated the lease in my Coogee flat and hit the road in my Mazda 323 with everything I owned in it, on April 14th, 2009 for what turned out to be a five year odyssey around the forgotten pubs of Australia, 'looking for adventure and whatever came my way'.
The way I got gigs in pubs was simple. I'd just keep driving and pull into every pub in every town I was in. I'd ask for the decision maker and show them my posters. I then told them that I'd set up my P.A and do jokes in the corner of their bar for two hours in return for $200, a room and a feed. Afterwards I'd normally end up at a local’s party and stay there until I headed to the next town.
On a basic level, I was looking for money for petrol and food to keep me going as I went around Australia. What I wanted most though was to do the wildest shows I possibly could and to meet people who would spin me out with their outlooks on life. I slept in pubs, on the side of roads, in truck stops but mostly in strangers places who then went onto became my friends.
After a while, I felt I was no longer on tour, I was just going around re-visiting my mates.

* A.A meeting.
Jock was an old guy who sat out the front of the White Cliff Hotel during the day sipping take-away cans while his dog lay at his feet. He said he'd been banned for a year for swearing inside. When I heard this, I figured I wasn't going to get a show there so I stopped and had a yarn with him instead. We somehow got onto talking about the local branch of the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings he used to go to.
'We used to take a dozen in', he chuckled.
'Wait a minute', I said, 'You used to take a dozen beers into the A.A meetings?'
'Yeah he didn't mind it', he said casually back while taking a drag of his cigarette.
'Well I suppose alcohol is one way to get people to get to the meetings', I said.
'That's right', he said straight-faced, 'otherwise we would have pissed off.'
'And what happened to these meetings. Are they still going?' I asked.
'Nah, we stopped going. In the end there was only two guys going to it... and they soon got jacked off with each other... and so now it's all finished',

* Cat
After my show in Broken Hill, I heard about the guy who fucked a cat. He was caught after he turned up at the local hospital with the poor dead feline stuck to the end of his cock. Its arse had tightened up around his member during the act and hadn't let go right up until rigor mortis had set in.
Now, if you can suspend your judgement of what he did and look beyond that, I think the guy has to be at least admired for his courage in facing head on, what was a very sticky situation to be in.
I mean, come on! We've all been in situations (maybe not exactly like this) where you know it is time to go in and 'face the music'. It's not easy. It might be something like confessing to your parents that you did steal the chocolates. It might be telling your partner that you want to break up. It might be proposing to your partner not knowing what they're going to say.
Anyway, try to imagine what this bloke was going through as he paced up and down the car park of the hospital in his trench coat thinking 'if I'm going to get the smell of pussy off my cock, I'm going to have to go in and get help removing it's body first.'
And I reckon being an Aussie there would have been a small part of his brain that said, 'I reckon I can bullshit my way out of this by saying, 'no doctor, I know what you're thinking but I can explain....'
After many miles on the road thinking about it, this is the best excuse I thought of: 'Doc, I was lying in bed about to have a wank. Anyway, I couldn't find any cream so I grabbed some haemorrhoid cream which just happened to be lying on the table next to me and started applying it. Next minute the cat, who also happened to have haemorrhoids too, was backing itself onto my cock... anyway to cut a long story short, here I am. So how about you get the fucker off me and we discretely put this through Medicare as a strictly private matter'.

* Coober Pedy.
Coober Pedy is a legendary Australian opal mining town in the South Australian desert. Boom times for Coober Pedy were thirty odd years ago when migrants came from everywhere, in particular from Eastern Europe. One such guy called Nichola was at my gig at The Opal Inn. I pulled him up the front and asked him his story. He didn't seem to understand English so I spoke slowly.
He replied even slower with this lament: 'I come to Australia in 1967 to find my fortune but all I find is un-fortune'.
As a gag I then said, 'Look Nichola, I'm going to teach you some English, repeat after me, 'OWYAGOINGYACUNT''
To which Nichola replied immediately with an innocent face, 'Good thanks'.
After all these years, there was some English (or at least some Australian English) which Nichola knew very well.

* Rabbit fishing.
I'd just done a gig at The Residents Bar, near Uluru. Afterwards I asked the staff what they did in their spare time, apart from visit the big rocks.
They then laughed and went on to tell me about one guy who apparently goes out into the desert each sunset and sits on his Esky and loads up his fishing rod with baby carrots on gang hooks. He then casts it off into the sunset, jagging baby rabbits as he trawls the bait back in over the spinifex. He then breaks their necks and leaves them in a pile besides his beer cans.
I said 'does he do anything with the rabbits?'
'No, he just does it for fun' they replied.

* Alice.
The couple who won my talent quest at The Todd Tavern, Alice Springs were an elderly couple who took out their dentures and pashed each other. No matter how disgusted every one in the crowd pretended to be though, they were all still looking when it happened.
I sold 12 'I fucked a goat' shirts that night to a bunch of guys who demanded I kick on with them to the local Bojangles nightclub afterwards. As we approached the door I thought there was no way the bouncer was going to let 13 guys in, who were all wearing 'I fucked a goat' t-shirts.
'In you go fellas' he casually mentioned as we walked by the sign besides him which said, 'Strict dress codes apply'.
When I walked in, I realised we were over-dressed.

* Roopaw.
Marie runs the Calen pub on the Bruce Hwy, mid way up the Queensland coast.
'Thomas', a local has been barred that many times she said but 'he always comes back and apologises the next day when he sobers up and realises there is only one pub in town. He'll be a good heckler'.
It was a usual story and I'd love to know who in Australia has been barred from the most amounts of pubs. As well as the person who could drink the most as well as how many 'Wombat', 'Pluto' and 'Bluey's' there ares in the country.
Anyway, Marie told me the story about the guy in her bar, they call 'Roopaw'. He was born with a useless arm that just hung there.
One day when he was about forty he was at the bar with his mates and he said to them, 'Guys, I need your opinion. I'm thinking of getting my arm cut off. There's no need for it to be here and I couldn't give a fuck anymore about the way I look. Whatdyareckon? Should I do it?'
There was a long silence and then one guy piped up, 'I reckon you should get it cut off because when it goes hard we can put it behind the bar and use it as a back-scratcher!'

* Dysart
Brownie came up to me after the show and put his arms around me like we'd known each other for years. 'Jimbo, I've had the best week of my life', he beamed.
'Why?' I asked.
'Our football team got into the Grand Final and I got my first root ever. Then he added, 'without paying for it'.
'So you normally go to prostitutes?', I asked.
'Yeah when I've got some money I go to Mackay but they never look like they do in the classifieds. The last one I rooted had a fake leg. I fucked off with it afterwards'.
I looked back at him aghast.
'Don't worry Jimbo', he said, realising he'd just shocked the rudest comedian he's ever met, 'I gave it back to her'.

* Gin Gin
A lot of country towns in Australia advertise their tidy town’s credentials like a grown man who still wears his Cub Scout uniform to show the badges he collected when he was nine years old. Take for example Gulargambone or Narrogin. {insert pic later)
In Queensland, they have another state competition called ‘The friendliest town’.
Last time I drove through Gin Gin on the Queensland coast I saw a sign on the outskirts of advertising how the town had won 'friendliest town in Queensland' in 2003.
People often ask me on my travels, ‘What’s your favourite town?’
When I think about it, the favourite town is never the place which has the biggest reef, statue, rock, pub, art gallery or well known feature that sounds impressive at a dinner party. It’s usually the place where I had the best time with people and made some friends.
Which made me think, ‘how is the Friendliest town judged?’
Do a panel of guys go around from town to town having a drink in a random pub each night and at the end of their tour go, ‘Well, we all got laid in Gin Gin’?

* Cunt of a shot.
Opal mining towns are culturally unlike any other places in Australia. The main ones are Coober Pedy, Lightening Ridge and Andamooka. They are all rough, raw and literally down to Earth. I love ‘em.
The opal mining town I’ve grown to love the most though is Grawin, located west of Lightening Ridge. I've gone back there many times to do shows. When my Dad once asked me what I thought the most unique place in Australia was, I took him to Grawin.
When I was there the first time I heard about one character called, ‘Cunt of a shot’. He got the nickname after a night on the piss with his missus. In a drunken argument, he pulled a gun out and said he’d kill himself. Well he tried. He shot the left hand side of his face off, was taken to the nearest hospital, (a few hours away) where they did a skin graft from the right hand side of his arse on to the hole in his face.
Anyway, after this failed suicide attempt, the locals affectionately nicknamed him, ‘Cunt of a shot’ – not to his face though (what remained of it, at least).
I heard in the bar one night a fellow telling me how he was over at his place a few months after this incident. Again ‘Cunt of a shot’ was having a fight with his missus. The guy said 'Cunt of a shot' was telling her she’d done something the wrong way or something.
Anyway, his wife turned around and said straight back to him, ‘what would you know? You don’t even know how to blow your fuckin' head off properly!

Years later apparently, ‘Cunt of a shot’ was having an argument with a guy down at the local ‘Sheepyards Hotel’ in Grawin. The guy then left to go to the ‘Pub in the scrub’ down the road. When he got there, some mates asked him why there was blood all over his shirt. They then worked out that ‘Cunt of a shot’ had shot him from point blank in the back of his neck back at the ‘Sheepyards Hotel’ an hour before.
The guy who was shot hadn’t even noticed there was a bullet in his neck. He shrugged when his mates told him and kept on drinking. The bullet was removed the next day without any damage to him apart from a scar.
And ‘Cunt of a shot’s’ nickname was cemented with the locals.

* Gibbo
Gibbo was the barman at Molong RSL, NSW where I did a gig there.
After the show he came up to me and said, 'You know what I like about your 'I fucked a goat' t-shirts'?
'What? I enquired.
'They basically say, 'I don't give a fuck what you think about me!'
I hugged Gibbo. He understood the deeper underlying philosophical meaning of my t-shirts. I knew it was universal.
We then went back to his place and pulled cones. Gibbo's girlfriend's daughter shagged me. It was a top night. Gibbo and I have been mate's ever since.

* Animal fuckers.
I go on a lot about fucking animals in my show. It helps sell shirts too. I think I've sold about 3000 of them around Australia.
Fuck knows where people wear them?
Where would you?
Hitch-hiking?
And who would pick you up?
And would you trust anyone who you did pick up wearing an 'I fucked a goat' shirt?
I've done a lot of night driving around Australia, especially on long, dark unfenced roads like in the Pilbara where cows run across the bitumen unannounced at speed. I often think one day a cop is going to arrive at the scene of an accident and find a dead beast on the road, me dead in my upturned car next to it and 200 'I fucked a goat' shirts in the boot.
And he is going to scratch his head and say to his partner, 'Should we tell the coroner or should we spare the family the details?'
Often after my shows in country towns I get guys coming up to me and cornering me over a beer before gently asking, 'so have you fucked a goat?’ I started mixing up my answers to this question after I noticed quite a lot of guys getting disappointed when I said 'no' and then look at me like they'd just lost a potential soul mate.
I realised that by doing this, I was often missing out on an A-grade confession or an animal fucking story about, 'someone they know' in the town.

* Timboon
Timboon is a town tucked away on the back of The Great Ocean Road in Victoria. I was doing a show nearby and afterward the show was told about the guy from Timboon who was caught actually fucking a horse.
Apparently the local Warrnambool newspaper did an article on him and the last line in the article went, '...and it wasn't even his horse'.

* Tamworth
I was passing through Tamworth one year during the country music festival. My friend Gleny asked me to get up and do a quick set before her new band 'Gleny Rae and the Tamworth Playboys' played.
I opened by asking the crowd whether they wanted to hear my tribute to the late King of Australian country.
I then told the crowd the song was called 'Last night Slim Dusty bent me over and gave me his Golden Guitar'. Some jokes don't work in Tamworth, especially a few months after Slim's death.

* Katanning.
Katanning is a small town in the W.A wheatbelt.
The male to female ratio reminded me of a bumper sticker I once saw in Alaska: 'In this town you don't lose your woman, you just lose you're turn!'
Anyway, I was in Katanning for three weeks and was still five deep in the queue.

* Corrigin
It was Dicky’s bux party. The location was in a farm house about ten kilometres outside the W.A wheatbelt town of Corrigin. I went out to have a look. Dicky was the opening batsman in the Corrigin Cricket team. I’d played with the team for a couple of weeks last year in between shows, so I knew most of the blokes.
On the road, I get to meet heaps of interesting people and bond. It’s usually very intense but also fleeting though until I meet up with them again next lap. I’m rarely in the same social group for long. When I was playing in the Corrigin Cricket team each weekend in between doing gigs around the surrounding wheat belt, I got to hang out with a group of guys playing sport together. It reminded me of the camaraderie of team sports as a kid. Or perhaps even the camaraderie of working together each day with people in the same job. Or perhaps even the camaraderie you get from eating and living with the same house as people every day? – Which I hadn’t done for a while.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and lapped it up the team spirit as a total contrast to my normal life on the road. The running into the middle. to backslap a bowler after a wicket then the team huddle to talk tactics after a wicket falls and the pissup at the pub that night. Even though, I'm not really a drinker. I loved my brief time in the team. I got to play four games.
The first game, I was put in at number ten, which was fair enough. I hadn't really played the game in over 20 years. I got a duck, clean bowled on my fourth ball.
I later found out that the bowler was the brother of a girl I'd had a shag with in Kulin. She was typical of a lot of my shags. After the gig I went back to her place with her thinking, 'wow, the comedian is staying at my house'. Three days later she was thinking, 'how can I get rid of this homeless bum who sleeps all morning while I'm at work and then sits around my place checking the internet, using the shower and kitchen and waiting for the phone to ring for his next gig!'
I think she eventually got rid of me on the fifth day.
Anyway, back to the cricket. The next game, I decided to not play defensively like last time, so I went out swinging. Second ball, I was caught behind.
The next game the captain called 'Breeder' comes up to me and says, 'Look Jimbo, you're a good bloke and I know you're broke but there's a rule in the competition that if a player gets a duck three times in a row, he has to buy the team a keg'.
'No worries' I said, slightly honoured.
'You're opening too, this game', he then added five minutes before the game started.
To maximise the chance of the team getting a keg it made perfect sense to send me in to face the chin music first ball. I responded to the spirit of the game by putting on my 'I fucked a goat' t-shirt and strapping a blow up doll to my groin. The opposition team, by the time I'd got to the crease, got the picture I was 'on a keg' and crowded in close to maximise the chances of it happening. They knew that if a keg was on they would be hanging around for a few more hours after the game drinking free piss too.
The bowler came roaring in. First ball, I took a swing and edged the ball behind, splitting the gap between second and third slip. I ran three. I then removed my helmet and raised my bat to the boys in my team who were unselfishly standing up and cheering generously from the seats in front of the change rooms. I then acknowledged the six people clapping from their seats on Esky lids sprinkled around the ground who were aware of the occasion too.
I then did another three bat raises, imitating the way all my Australian cricketing heroes act when they reach a significant batting milestone.
And as I held my bat up for the last time to some stranger sitting behind the boundary fence, I realised, I'd just experienced one of the greatest moments of my life.
I then wiped the sweat from my brow and nodded to Dicky down the other end of the pitch.
It wasn't scoring a century at the MCG but it was as close as I was ever going to get.
The umpire then told me to remove the blow up doll from my groin.

When I got to the site of Dicky's bux party, a few months later in a farmhouse about ten kilometres out of town, there was about forty guys milling around the backyard sipping beers. One of the guys asked me if I wanted a beer.
I told him I wasn't drinking that night, to which he replied, ‘What? Have you got AIDS or something?’
What surprised me most was that he said it without any hint of sarcasm. It then occurred to me that the only men who don’t drink in this town are ones with terminal diseases. And even they were labelled as poofters afterwards.
Anyway I then asked the boys, ‘Is there going to be anything special happening for the buck tonight?’
‘Ohh, na, just the usual. What we’re gunna do, is chase him, pin him down, pull his pants down, poor some molasses over his cock, tie him to the hills hoist and then get the potty calf from next door to come in and lick his cock’ one guy replied.
I said ‘when is this gunna happen?’
His brother said, ‘in about five minutes’.
I quickly bolted out to my car and got my video camera.
The whole ritual started with his brother running up to Dicky who swiped him away. Dicky then started jogging around the yard while one, two and then three other guys started following him. Pretty soon there were five guys chasing him, while Dicky swatted them away with his arm. Most of the guys by now just stood around watching with knowing looks to each other while holding their cans. They looked on like it was a familiar scene. I looked on like I was on set at a David Attenborough doco, where a bunch of lions start to attack the lame animal in the pack.
It took about eight blokes to hold him down, while the rest of the group started standing closer and laughing. They then pulled his pants down, while one guy nearby piped up boasting about the size of his cock compared to the bux. Then the molasses was poured on. At this time, even the buck was still laughing. Then the rope came out.
This is when the buck started picking up some extra strength and started kicking as the rope was tried to be put around his legs.
At this point I think the increased buck's strength was coming mainly from the realisation that he was getting to the point of no return. He knew that once he was tied up, he would have pretty well lost all control of the situation. More rope came out.
Then something else kicked in. Dicky suddenly got super bux powered strength! The strength to take on eight guys pinning him down. A kick here, a punch there, a shoulder there. And then some combinations, increasing in speed and desperation. The fight was on.
Who was more determined?
The people tying him down or the buck trying to get out of it?
It was a good fight. One by one though, the boys started peeling off until there was only his dutiful brother trying to pin him down. Dicky jumped up and then started running around the backyard again. A few guys came at him but he pushed them away. He then snuck into the house and locked himself in the bathroom and had a shower.
I spoke to a few blokes after and said, ‘that was a bit full on!’
One of the philosophers in the group said it was a fine line at Bux parties. ‘You don’t want to totally humiliate the buck but you also don’t want to do nothing otherwise he’ll think he hasn’t got good mates’.
I said, ‘it’s funny because, girls don’t really do the same thing. I mean you never see at a hen’s night a bunch of girls suddenly attack the hen, strip her, tie her up and then get an animal to lick her while the rest of the girls sit around and laugh’.
I then started asking people what’s the worst treatment they’ve seen dished out at a bux party. One guy said they’d strapped a mate to a train naked which was going across the Nullabor to Adelaide. Apparently he missed the wedding.
Another guy said, ‘that’s nothing. My old man’s mate got tarred and feathered’.
I said ‘what’s that?’
He said, ‘what they used to do was get road tar and put it all over the bloke's body and then get him to roll in feathers which stuck to him’.
He said the guy ended up having to scrub his whole body the next day with kero to get it off.
The guy I was talking to, then said the groom ended up dying two years later from ‘cancer of the nut’.
I was a little shocked again and said, ‘that’s pretty full on!’
To which the guy replied, ‘yeah, shit happens’, before disappearing to get another beer.

* Wombat glasses
The guy at the bar was called Wombat. It seems there's one in every town along with Pluto, Johnno and Bluey.
Wombat yelled some advice at me as I was leaving, 'Jimbo, if you're going to drink drive, drink out of a stubbie not a can. It's safer.'
'Why?' I asked.
'Because you can see through the bottom of a stubbie'.

* Pluto
I was becoming friends with guys called ‘Pluto’ in just about every town I went to.
My mobile phone list was full of them. Each different Pluto had a dash after their name with a different town name location written in to differentiate them.
Eventually I asked one, ‘How did you get the name Pluto?’
‘Apparently, I’m out there’, he replied.
I then asked about the scar around his elbow. He said it was from punching a publican. He said he was outside the pub and punched through the window to get him. He said the reason he punched him was because he was upset at being kicked out of the pub. He said he’d drunk $300 worth of tequila. I thought about it. He had a point. No other business kicks you out of their establishment for buying too much.
Can you imagine a girl going into a dress shop and buying forty dresses and then eventually being kicked out because the shopkeeper was pissed off?!
And that’s what I like about freaks/nutters and so called 'weirdos'.
No matter how fucked up their actions and conclusions on life are, there’s usually at least a vague thread of rationality in every bit of madness they do or think which they’ll always tell you about if you ask and are prepared to listen to them.
Which I think is much more impressive than concluding an argument/discussion with the rationale of ‘I read it in the papers’ or a book or ‘Everyone else thinks so too'.
I got to know Pluto pretty well over several visits and late night yarns while he drunk ten bourbons and I had two. He had a slight speech impediment. Blow-ins thought he was simple. Locals knew he was a tortued genius as well as the best mechanic in the district.
One arvo I once asked him how come he knew so much after a discussion where I'd been thouroughly interested in listening to him talk about everything from crop farming to Aboriginal history.
He said he grew up on a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and decided one year as a teenager to sit down and read the British set of encyclopaedias.
'I'm just lucky I've got a photographic memory, I suppose.'
In 2008 Pluto from Corrigin died at 33 years of age while going to the toilet. A stomach ulcer burst.
He's still out there. Always was.

* Dog in a Ute.
Most towns in the W.A wheatbelt had a day each year where they did something weird to attract tourists.
Darkan imported tonnes of sand and had a beach party.
Kondinin had a legal burnout competition as part of their 'Hoonavation' weekend.
Corrigin tried every second year to beat its Guinness book of record attempt for the most Utes that can be lined up with a dog in the back of them.
Their best attempt is over 1500 Utes all lined up along the road into the town's showground with a live dog yapping in the back of each one. Corrigin even has a cemetery which is used exclusively for dogs located 5km's out of town.
On one particular attempt a couple of German tourists happened to be driving past. First they went past the dog cemetery then drove past 1500 odd Utes lined up with dogs in the back of them. They decided to drop into The Corrigin Hotel to have a beer and ask what was going on in this ‘interesting little town’.
One lark at the bar told them it was a funeral.
'Wow, it must have been a popular dog' replied the Germans.

The Corrigin Pub show was mad. Full of pissheads. I knew I had to go hard to impress them. I opened my show by suggesting that they spice up their local event by having a whole lot of girls line up down the main street while smearing dog food on their pussies and call it the 'Dog in a Uterus' competition.

* Patrick.
Patrick was a gold fossicker in Coolgardie. His pearl of wisdom to me at the bar was, 'When you're up to your neck in alligators the best thing to do is drain the swamp'.

* Esperance
Paul the publican at the Esperance Hotel Motel knew I liked talking to freaks. It's not that I don't like talking to 'normal people' (whatever that is) but I'm forever listening to chit chat in my life about things which have nothing to do with me. I don't mind it. It's part of being polite. But what I crave most is hearing something, some story, some prejudice or some perspective on life I've never ever heard before from another human being. They're the opals I'm trying to find in the soil of every casual conversation I have.
If I'm not getting any opal in a conversation, I’d rather be alone and chill. Paul the publican knew this. He pointed out to me an older guy at the end of the bar.
'Go talk to him. He’ll freak you out'.
He was an older Italian guy looking up at the horse races with a ticket in hand. I went up to him.
Straight away he got into it.
‘The problem with humanity is that humans generally follow the majority. We do this in order to survive. Yet nine times out of ten, the majority end up being wrong. If every human could learn to individually follow their own thoughts, intuition and psyche a lot more, humanity as a whole would have more answers to draw upon in order to take us to the next level of evolution - and this next step of evolution is something humanity desperately need to take now because culturally we're lost and not too sure which way is forward at the moment.'
I loved it. I thought the man was a genius.
He then went on to say while looking up at the screen, ‘what pisses me off most though, is why should Melbourne have the Melbourne cup each year!? Why can’t they tour it around the country and have it in different towns? You know, share it!’
Some people like Pluto go from idiot to genius upon meeting them. This guy went from genius to idiot upon meeting him.
Not that there's really much difference at the end of the day.

* Northcliff.
Northcliff is a small town at the bottom of W.A in tall timber country.
When I arrive at a pub to sell in my show, I normally tell/warn the publican that I swear a bit and ask if that is okay with them.
The publican lady at The Northcliff Hotel pub took a long deep breath of her cigarette when I told her and replied, 'I'd prefer if you swore, otherwise everyone will think you're a poofter!'

* Pemberton
When I was doing the gig at The Northcliff Hotel and talking about fucking goats in my show, the crowd suddenly started yelling about the 'duck fuckers' who live in Pemberton.
Years ago. a guy was caught fucking a duck there and to this day everyone in the cute town of Pemberton is known as a 'duck fucker' by the surrounding towns.
It seems that all it takes is for one guy in your town to do something like fuck an animal and unborn children in your town are tarred with the ramifications of your act years later!
Anyway, it got me thinking when I was doing a 12 hour drive to my next gig, ‘if I were a judge, who would I give the bigger sentence to, a horse fucker or a duck fucker?’
It'd have to be the duck-fucker I'd think. I mean feathers would be going everywhere. Whereas a horse... probably wouldn't even feel it.

* Goat shaggers.
I'm often told the story about the guy in England who was caught fucking a goat after a train load of people with mobile phones went past him at the same time.
My favourite goat fucking story though is the one about a guy in Afghanistan who was caught during the act.
He went to court and his defence to the judge was, 'Your honour, I couldn't afford a wife'.
Not a bad argument I reckon.
I mean how many girls reading this can honestly say that they've never had a fuck where they haven’t thought, 'I may as well be a goat!’

* Potty Calf.
I remember one guy telling me in a pub one night, 'The best fuck I ever had was sticking my cock up the nose of a baby potty calf'.
I said, 'How come?'
He said, 'Because it licked my balls at the same time'.

* Opportunity.
Most if not all of the animal fucking stories I hear seem to come from the country.
I don't think people in the country have a tendency to fuck animals anymore than people in the cities though.
I just think they've got more opportunities.

* Margaret River.
I arrived in Margaret River a few days after a guy had been caught walking down the street naked following a double murder he'd committed. When I got there he was claiming to the police who had caught him that his act was the result of drug induced insanity.
And I reckoned he had a point.
I mean, I'm not a murderer but I imagine if I was a murderer, the first thing I’d do after murdering someone would be to…. lay low?…..not attract too much attention to yourself? …not walk down the main street naked!?

* Pedro
Pedro was the Publican at The Seaview Tavern. Seabird is a sleepy fishing village north of Perth. The locals call tourists 'Wooducks' because they come in swivel their heads and then leave.
I had a lock-in with Pedro after the show and after his fifth beer he told me his dream to make money.
'You know those bins in the kitchen where you put your foot on a pedal and the lid goes up. Well I reckon there should be one like that on toilets for when guys go and do a piss. That way a bloke would never forget to leave the seat up'.
I look forward to seeing 'Pedro's Piss Pedal' on the market one day.

* Books
I was at the bar in the small country town of Mullewa, NSW chatting to a local truck driver. The conversation then got onto books.
I asked him casually 'do you read books much?’
He then looked around the packed bar as if to check that none of his mates were listening to him, put his head down and mumbled while looking at me nervously in the eye, 'yeah I'm not too ashamed to admit it, Jimbo, I read books'.

* Newman
Pidge is one of those extraordinary publicans who genuinely loves his job every second of everyday. Why? Because as he says ‘I get to drink piss all day, while I work!’
He's literally like a kid in a candy store when he's at work, which is about 15 hours every day. His pub is the Red Sands Tavern in Newman.
Pidge is an enormous bloke, 30 years old with a bald head and his name ‘Pidge’ tattooed on the back of his skull.
He says he got the name Pidge when he picked up an injured pigeon on his way back from school and nursed it back to health.
He said he tattooed his name on the back of his skull because he feels every person he goes past deserves to know who he is.
When I arrived at the pub I was a little road weary. It was about a two day drive to get there from Perth and I was starting to see the same things happen at pubs. Things which no longer shocked me, like burning pubes, tits being flashed etc
Pidge's energy immediately lifted me though. I felt comfortable around him, so I immediately cut to the chase and told him what my show was really about as opposed to the spam email I'd sent him months ago asking for a gig for my 'comedy show'. I.e I told/confessed to him that I’d seen just about everything happen on stage during my show except a guy eat a turd or fuck a goat.
I had no idea until later that Pidge had taken what I said as a challenge.
Halfway through my show, Pidge barged through the back door into the pub and up on stage, holding up a young goat. He then pulled his pants down and proceeded to hump the goat.
Just to clarify, I want to say his cock wasn't erect and it wasn't in the goat but his flaccid slug and the goat’s rear area were definitely 'bumping uglies'.
He then turned the goat around and kissed it on the lips and then grabbed my mic and told the crowd, ‘that’s just so you know I respect the goat after’.
Pidge then walked off with my t-shirt. I reckoned he deserved it more than anyone else I’d ever given the shirt too.
I then looked out at the crowd in this rough outback mining town and said, ‘What the fuck would it take to get kicked out of this pub? The Publican has just rooted a goat!'
From that gig on, Pidge and I were great mates. And his wife Jill shook her head every time we got together. It was always a long night.

Next time I was at The Red Sands Tavern a year later, a guy came up to me with a goat’s skull and gave it to me. He said he was the pub’s neighbour and owner of the goat Pidge had 'rooted' during my last show. He said, they’d had a barbeque one arvo and decided to eat it and he’d kept the skull for me as a memento.
Just then Pidge came up to me and whispered in my ear, ‘Just to freak the crowd out tonight Jimbo, how about we both skull fuck its eye sockets!’

After the pub had shut, Pidge put on a five hour show for me and the staff from behind the bar. Highlight being the bit where he tucks his cock between his legs and impersonates the world’s cheapest nude skimpy.
Pidge told me that night that his dream is to one day run a bar in Melbourne called, ‘Pidge’s nude net bar’. He said he wants it to have a see through roof with a non-stop netball game happening upstairs with girls wearing no undies. He said that way, every time the workers leant back to have a sip of their beer, they could cop an eyeful.
I look forward to one day doing a gig at Pidge’s Nude Net bar.

* Karratha
The crowd at Karratha Tavern is always packed, full of blokes drinking after a hard week’s work in the local mines. At one of my gigs there, forty minutes into my show a guy in bright orange work gear came up on stage and with a cone in his hand brimmed full of dope.
He said, ‘Jimbo, smoke it’.
I looked out at the crowd.
All of a sudden 150 guys started yelling in unison, ‘Fuckin’ smoke it, smoke it, smoke it’.
I didn’t want to let the crowd down so I had two and then cut to a break.
The bouncer then came up to me and said, ‘Jimbo, the manager wants to see you in his office’.
I slowly walked to the office, thinking of my excuses, ‘Look I was just doing it for the crowd, I didn’t suggest the idea…’ etc
The manager was behind his desk. He asked me to sit down in the chair in front of him.
He then pulled out a cone from his top draw. ‘Jimbo, you’re doing a great job out there, do you want another one!?’
I can't remember what happened in the second half of the show.

* Cockatoo Island.
Cockatoo Island is off the top of the Western Australian coast. It's full of iron ore. The mining company flew me there to entertain the workers at their wet mess bar.
About sixty of the workers came down to watch me. Like just about all my crowds when I meet them, they were sceptical of a comedian who they'd never heard of before.
'This cunt better be funny' is the usual vibe I get from crowds especially from the back row when I start. As usual I went hard. If you can get the back row I think, there will always be a few you flush out as collateral damage towards the front of the crowd who think it's too rude. But at least if the back row is listening, the gig will never descend into everyone ignoring you and talking amongst themselves.
In my book no-one listening or everyone talking amongst themselves is far worse than everyone yelling out, 'Fuck off!' together.
At least if they’re doing that, they’re listening to you. You can work with that.
At Cockatoo Island there was a middle aged woman who kept on yelling out I was being too rude and another girl in her twenties who was doing the same. Usually this is good for the show. I prefer it heaps more to people coming up to me after the gig and telling me that I should change my act.
To me this is gutless. Do your talking in front of the jury, like I am – to the crowd. And if the crowd agrees, I’ll thank you and adjust my act. And if they don't. I don't have to tell you to shutup. The crowd will.
Anyway, the gig was good but the younger girl was starting to get repetitive in yelling out how much she wasn't enjoying my act coz it was too rude - despite the males (90% of the crowd) loving it.
Then she went over to my P.A and started to pull out the chords.
I managed to get her to sit down with a joke without getting too serious mid gig. I.e by telling her 'Look I'm trying to do a job here!'
Anyway, the gig went okay and afterwards I went to sit down at a table for a drink with everyone. She then came and sat down next to me and started giving it to me again, telling me how rude and inappropriate I was.
I was pretty tired and was about to go into my standard reply: 'Look I know my act wasn't politically correct but comedy sometimes involves going over the line into taboo areas in order to get people to laugh and I didn't meant to cause offence’ etc.
Anyway, before I could say this, I realised her hand was on my knee. Next minute she was rubbing my leg. Half an hour later I was kissing her, in her room and listening to her tell me how she had a boyfriend on site that was flying in tomorrow, so don’t tell anyone.
Next we were in her bed rooting in every position she could nominate.
Finally she turned around and presented her arse to me. Or as they say in Western Australia, she motioned for me to root her 'up the rusty bullet hole'
As I was doing my load, I remember thinking, 'is it any wonder that us guys don't understand women?!’

* Griffo.
The Darwin YMCA is like four stories of concrete cell blocks. I was there for a week in 2005 in the build up to the wet season. When I moved into my room there was a guy from the room next to me sitting outside on the balcony sipping VB’s. He had tattoos down to his fingers, his teeth were gone from methadone. On the first night he told me how he used to do Armed Robberies. Lovely bloke though.
We chatted well into the night and each night after. On about the fourth morning, I remember coming out of my room to find him in his usual position basking in the sun with a tin in his hand. ‘Jimbo, you know what I hate about Darwin?’ he said before I’d even wiped the sleep out of my eyes.
'What?' I asked.
‘It’s just too hot to wear a balaclava!’ he replied matter of factly.
I thought to myself, 'Now that's funny!'
Over the week, Will went onto tell me his life story in detail as we both opened up to each other as only strangers who don’t know anyone in common do. He said he was 36 and on benefits for a fucked up liver and kidney and due any year now to die according to his doctors.
He said when he was 13 his Dad had pulled a shotgun on him in an alcoholic rage. Somehow the pellets had missed him. He then left home and couch surfed between his grandparents and friends places for the rest of his schooling while pulling cones and becoming a binge drinker.
The usual stuff from a neglected youth. What wasn't usual though were his results when he finished school. He got enough marks to get into the top Medicine University in Victoria. He said he left in second year.
I asked him, 'why?'
He said he soon found out that Medicine was based upon rote learning incredible amounts of information with little or no lateral thinking. He said it was all Cartesian thought.
‘I could do it but I got bored’, he said.
Then as an after thought he added, ‘I suppose the heroin habit didn't help either'.
I then asked him whether he wanted to come down to my gig that afternoon at The Winnellie Hotel. I could tell he didn't get out much. He said just wandering over to the TAB made him tired. When I told him though he said he'd love too come out and see my act.
At the pub I was to come on and do a couple of sets in between the strippers. The pub was full of guys still in their work singlets having a few beers and a perve before going back to home to their missus’.
As I've probably mentioned a few times, when you come on to do comedy after a girl has shoved a dildo up her, there’s only one way to go, and that’s hard from the very first sentence otherwise you’ll either get booed off or talked over.
I opened up first with the old classic joke I was peddling around the country ‘How do you get a poofter to fuck a girl? Ya shit in her cunt!’
From there I had them. Two twenty minute sets going flat out are hard though. Will was in the crowd watching from the back. I did a joke about gym’s and then said to a bloke on stage with me that I reckon the only time he’d been to the gym was to do an ‘A.R’. It got a laugh. Everyone in the crowd seemed to all know that ‘A.R’ was short for Armed Robbery.
I nodded to Will up the back, thanking him for the new term I’d learnt off him the day before.
By the middle of the second set I was desperate to keep the crowd though after I’d pounded them with my heaviest hitting punch lines with the shortest set-ups - the only jokes that cut it on a crowd that pissed up and wainting for the girls to come back on.
So I said I’d organise a jug of beer to the guy who could ‘fuck the pole’ the best in front of everyone - the pole which the girls had been dancing around before I came on. I milked about five minutes of guys coming up and rooting the pole in all sorts of positions to the amusement of the crowd. Then a guy came up on stage right into my space with a real serious face and yelled, ‘You want me to fuck the pole do you!?’
I said ‘Yeah’ leaning back cautiously trying to escape the spit coming out his mouth.
He then disappeared out into the car park. A couple of minutes later he reappeared. He walked straight past the pole towards me with an axe in his hand. The axe was a big long handle axe to match the big long handle moustache on his face. In these weird situations where I don't know what's going to happen next the best thing to do, I think, is to not act aggressive or scared, despite me being on the side of the later.
‘Surely I hadn’t met a nut who was about to kill me’, I thought.
He then stared directly into my eyes while holding the axe over his shoulder, half a metre from me, ‘You want me to fuck the pole do you?’ he repeated at the top of his voice.
The crowd was now silent.
‘Yeah’ I said a having no idea of what was about to happen and too scared inside to even guess.
That was until I thought ‘well if you’re going to die, Jimbo, at least enjoy it! Lighten up! After all it is a comedy show you're doing! What a way to go!’
He then walked over to the pole and cocked the axe as if he was about to chop the pole in half and I suddenly got his punch line!
He then turned around and smiled a cheeky grin at me as if to say ‘get it!’
I love it when people in the crowd freak me out!
‘What a sense of humour', I thought with a pinch of relief as I pissed myself with the rest of the crowd who started clapping.
‘Such an extravagantly well crafted set-up too’, I mused.
He then walked over to his table and laid the axe down and had a sip of his beer before raising his glass humbly to acknowledge the crowd while smiling sheepishly at his mates who were at the table with him patting him on the back.

After my set, I was back stage packing my t-shirts while amongst all the strippers who were getting ready to go to go out on stage later.
The lady who ran the strippers then walked up to me and poked me in the chest and said, ‘I was disgusted at your act. It’s so degrading and demeaning to women’.
She was a big lady and I could tell she was angry. Her reason didn't seem to match her words though. I was instantly confused.
‘What!?’ I stammered John McEnroe style. ‘You cannot be serious!’
She went on. I was about to interrupt her tirade with the argument ‘Demeaning to women!?Don’t you pay women to get naked and stick things up themselves for money?’
But I didn’t because I don’t actually think stripping is degrading to women. I’ve seen enough strippers to know it’s an act as well as an artform as much as stand-up is and I know from experience at watching so many strip acts that a good stripper’s performance goes way beyond the way they look. Holding drunk guy's attention for fifteen minutes is hard no matter what you look like naked.
Then again, perhaps I’ve seen too many strippers!? Either way though, I didnt' know what to say back to this lady who was seriously ripping into me.
Then a stripper walked behind me and said, ‘Don’t worry Jimbo, I enjoyed your set’, without caring about what her boss thought.
The boss lady kept at me.
I was now starting to get more upset. It was more out of my confusion of the situation though. I couldn't work our why this lady was verbally abusing me and so I started raising my voice back to her.
The bouncer standing next to both of us then stepped in and said, ‘Careful what you say mate, she’s my Mum!’
Anyway I backed off and went back to the bar. Ten minutes later the publican was slipping me my $100 for my gig. I told him about the incident.
He said, ‘don’t worry about her. She’s had the stripping contract for the last five years here and this is the first time there’s been any other entertainment on in between. She’s just paranoid that she’s about to lose her job!’

I walked away relieved and marvelling at the concept that there’s usually some other reason behind all our verbal rants which is totally unrelated to what’s coming out of our mouths. Working it out is very difficult. Especially the ones we do ourselves.
Anyway I was philosophising about these quirks of human nature with Will on the way back in the car when he said, ‘How do you normally come down after a gig with all the adrenaline and all?’
I said ‘I normally go for a walk or have a quiet beer or a water or something’.
I then looked at Will curiously and said, ‘How the fuck do you come down after an armed robbery? I mean the worst thing that can happen at my gig is no-one laughs and I don’t get paid. But if your gig fucks up you get ten years in jail!’
Will answered, ‘the best drug after an A.R is dope or heroin, the worst is speed’.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because then you go back into town and tell everyone what you did!’
I rolled my head back with laughter. Another punch line that floored me. One that was true too. Five kilometres down the road I then said, ‘Look Will, I remember an A.R happened at a pub when I had a weekly show up at The Cross in Sydney years ago. It was The Vegas hotel which is basically a pokie den’.
I went on, ‘The pub had two entrances and three blokes had come in via the Kellett street end, chained up both ends from the inside and told the five customers on the pokie machines to get down on the floor. Anyway, apparently one guy didn't want to get on the floor coz he'd just got 'The Feature' and was keen to see how much his free spins were netting. The gunman then repeated his demands to get on the floor but the guy wouldn't take his eyes off his machine. Finally the gunman pulled his chair out from under him. When the guy hit the floor he then looked up at the gunman and said, 'Can I at least look at the fuckin' screen?!' By this time, I think the gunman realised this guy was the last guy he had to worry about in the place’.

By the way, can you imagine that guy one day at a Gamblers Anonymous meeting and being asked the question, 'When did you realise you might have had a problem gambling?'
'Well a guy once had a gun to my head and I didn't give a shit...'

Anyway I then told Will how the three gunman held the bar staff up and ended up getting away with about $12000 in cash. They missed the Kings Cross cops arriving by about two minutes. Their burnt out car was found the next day.
I told Will I imagined there were at least five people involved in the job including the getaway driver and someone else in planning, which meant they'd risked by two minutes going to jail for ten years - all for about $2000 each.
I then said 'Why do you do it?'
Will then said, 'Jimbo, Armed Rob is like comedy, you don't do it for the money you do it for the buzz!’
The reasons why people do armed robbery suddenly made more sense to me.
Risk taking. Some guys get it driving fast, some get it gambling on the stock market, some get it doing comedy in Outback pubs, some get it by fucking their sister-in-law, some get it doing Armed Robbery.
Will then stared out the window and started talking like many a jaded old comedian, I've heard after a gig reminiscing about the good old days. In fact just about any old guy talking about his business and how things have changed.
'AR isn't the same as it was in the 80's though’, lamented Will. ‘Direct debit machines ruined our game. None of the small shops carry cash like they used to. The returns just ain't there'.

Back on the balcony that night, Will said he was going to miss me when I was gone, so he was thinking of doing a 'job' in Darwin just to stay interested in life.
I asked him 'what was he going to do?’ trying hard not to think I was in Quentin Tarrantino movie.
'I've thought it all out’, he said.
I'm gunna hire a Santa suit and walk down the street with a bell handing out lollies to kids. When I see a good cash target, probably a tobacco shop or kebab joint, I'm gunna pull a gun on them, get the cash, run down the nearest alley, ditch the Santa suit and beard and then mingle in with the crowd. Should be easy'.
'And a good story for the NT news too', I warned.
I then wen on, 'look Will, I don't want to read about you in some Adelaide newspaper in a few weeks and go, 'OOhh no and he did it in a wonder woman outfit too!''.
Will laughed and had another sip of his beer.
'You know Will', I eventually said after a long silence, 'When you pull a gun to someone's head, you're probably just trying to project and exorcise the demons of feeling utterly hopeless and at the mercy of someone else which is left over from your experience of having your Dad pull a gun on you when you were a kid..... That wasn't fair what happened to you as a kid but it's not real fair to the people in the shops you're pulling a gun on either'
Saying the truth to friends doesn’t always get the result you hoped for.
It's always a risk. It can go either way.
The lightening strikes around Darwin in the lead up to the first thunderstorm of the wet are awesome.
Will had the best seat in the house from his balcony on the third floor of the YMCA where he'd been the last six months.
'I know. I know', he said gently as he took another sip of his beer.

* Worst heckle.
I'm not too sure if this was the worst heckle I've ever had while I'm working or the best heckle. But in terms of me being speechless this was the best heckle:
I was in Darwin at The Winnellie Hotel again, a year later during the wet again after doing my third consecutive set in between strippers where I'd been performing five weeks in a row to exactly the same crowd.
I was really running out of material and dead tired when a guy wandered on stage and calmly whispered in my ear, 'You're going to wake up in the morning with a shit on your forehead'.
I wrapped up my set pretty quick after that and went back to the YMCA, sat on the balcony and gave Will a call while the lightening snapped on the horizon.
Will was over in QLD by now back in rehab.

To be continued....