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....