Although still relatively unknown in Australia, comedian Paul Foot is hard to overlook. With his distinctive hair, style and verbosity, his comedy is some of the most unique on the scene today. He’s currently on tour in Australia, and I catch him snacking on sushi in his Melbourne hotel room. “What I’m going to do to aid my enjoyment of the interview,” he explains, “is I’m going to get my sushi.”
Foot makes regular appearances on UK music panel show Never Mind The Buzzcocks and, from my memory, is the only person I’ve ever seen make Mighty Boosh creator Noel Fielding giggle. “Oh that’s nice. He’s a very generous performer…I recorded Spicks and Specks last night. It’s going out next week and again they were very generous on that program.”
Although appearing on pop music shows is commonplace for Foot, the subject matter isn’t his forte. “I listen to classical, I don’t know anything about popular music from the last 50 years.” He chuckles at my suggestion that he host a panel show on classical music. “It wouldn’t be very successful because not many people listen to classical music.”
While having one’s own TV show is often seen as the pinnacle of a stand-up’s career (think Louis CK, Simon Amstell, Marc Maron) it’s not something to which Foot aspires. “You’ve quite rightly pointed out that my career isn’t going as well as them,” he jests. “Lots of comedians do standup comedy because they want to get into TV or film. I’m the opposite…I would do it because it would mean more people would come to my shows because my first love is live comedy.”
My next question is interrupted by a deafening yell. “Ahhh, it was a bit of wasabi, it was marvelous, a wasabi kick right all in my face, all in my sinuses, wonderful! I love the wasabi!” He screams again. “Ahhh, that’s another one, that was the last piece of sushi but I loaded loads of wasabi onto the final one, it’s like a big treat.”
He moves onto a bag of lollies, facetiously questioning why Australians don’t call them sweets. “So I’ve got some LOLLY,” he says. “A lady gave them to me in the street yesterday…she seemed like a nice lady and it’s got four lolly in so I’m having lolly.”
He starts to explain his smorgasbord of lolly varieties, but gets distracted. “Smorgasbord is one of three words that have entered the English language from the Swedish language. The other word is ombudsmen.” I’m musing on this piece of trivia when he interjects. “And the other word is IKEA.”
Grab tickets to Paul Foot’s Wordsat The Comedy Store fromFriday April 25 to Sunday April 27 as a part of the Sydney Comedy Festivalfrom Ticketek.
