Five Minutes With Katie Burch

You finished runner-up in this year’s RAW Comedy competition. Tell us about the experience.

Yeah, RAW was pretty cool. I think the best part was performing to such a big crowd in the national finals, I’m pretty sure it’s gonna take a while before I can convince that many people to come and see me again. The crowd was so supportive, 1,500 people sitting for two hours laughing at new comics – man, I’ve done gigs where guys were sleeping on the table in the front row while pro comics were on! I felt pretty lucky to get so far, the NSW Finals were amazing, there’s so much talent around.

You did it with a set that included a dead baby joke – is anything off-limits in your comedy?

Ha. No, I don’t think anything is off-limits, so long as you believe in the material. I personally love comics who do violent punchlines, there’s something funny about things that are wrong. Those kind of jokes are so much fun to perform too, because everyone in the room has to react – it makes the crowd band together like an angry mob, everyone feels like they’re a part of something.

Do we take things too seriously in our day-to-day lives?

Definitely. You’re all going to die, and so am I.

What’s the best gig you’ve ever played?

It changes all the time. I had a gig in a country town where everyone was drunk and yelling stuff out – there were hundreds of people squished in, an old man fell off his chair in the middle and couldn’t escape, there was a ghetto blaster, that one was pretty good.

What about the worst-ever gig?

It changes all the time. Last week I did a gig in a room where I was the weakest link, everyone else on was one of my comedy heroes. I only had seven minutes, but I kept going and going waiting for a bell – there was definitely a peak where I should have left the stage but I stayed and stayed; people looked sad, someone coughed. At 13 minutes I gave up on the bell and left the stage. There was no bell. What I heard earlier was a dinner bell.