“I’min a motel that was directed by David Lynch,” Sydney comedian Rhys Nicholson whispers down the line. “It’s all flickering lights, and really old furniture, and there’s a creepy kid playing with a yo-yo out the front… It’s quite nice.”
Nicholson is in a motel in regional Queensland. If you’ve ever seen the angular, sharp-suited comic with the Bowie-circa-Low haircut before, then you’ll know that Nicholson is out of place. But then, out of place is where Nicholson is often most at home.
“Last night I performed in a town famous for homophobia,” Nicholson begins, and you can hear his smile through the phone. As a young gay man who stands on stages in clubs and pubs around the country, Nicholson has sharpened his razor wit on the uninformed prejudices of stupid people. He may well have been prepared for the worst.
“I told a guy in the front row I’d like to have sex with him,” he continues hesitantly. “And somehow, I got a round of applause.”
Being out of place, it seems, is exactly what endears audiences to him. “I don’t want your readers to think that’s all I do,” he laughs. “Please don’t make the headline, ‘Rhys Nicholson fucks his audience’.”
It’s not just that Nicholson is gay, it’s that he’s a gay man who’s bored of all the fuss surrounding homosexuality. For many audiences, this is a new attitude to sexuality, rarely seen onstage. “There are more interesting things about me than that,” he says, echoing a philosophy on sex that he has shared both onstage and online in his video for Reach Out, ‘It Gets Boring’.
“People have an idea of what being gay is, and when they come out, they try to become that,” he says. “When I was 19, I tried to be a ‘gay guy’, which in Sydney meant wearing V-neck tops and having an eating disorder. But then you start to focus more on who you are, stop emulating people.”
When Nicholson talks about sex, or relationships, it only highlights that everybody has the same experiences throughout their life.
“It’s wanky to say it like this,” he laughs, “but I’m not talking about being ‘gay’, I’m trying to talk about what it is to be human… and to sell merch.”
Nicholson’s acerbic stand-up comedy focuses on his discord with almost everyone and everything around him. He’s a Newcastle boy in his early 20s who, in his trademark three-piece suit, looks and talks like a high-stakes gambler from the early 1920s. He is an open book with a dirty mouth. A typical Nicholson set will find him flipping between casually sharing his personal embarrassments with the audience and insightfully commenting on the world as he sees it.
And it’s the world that Nicholson is interested in. After touring the show through Australia, including sell-out performances at both the Melbourne and Sydney Comedy Festivals, Nicholson is taking his latest stand-up show, Eurgh, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
“Edinburgh will be a month of standing on the street, trying to get people to come see my show, drinking from a flask in my jacket pocket,” he says. “But I’m proud of the show. It’s gotten the best reviews of anything I’ve ever done. And I’m excited for people to see it.”
So make sure you see Eurgh for the last time in Australia at The Comedy Store on Saturday July 19. Because in less than a month, Nicholson will be out of the country, and exactly where he belongs again: out of place.
CatchEurghatThe Comedy Store onSaturday July 19, tickets online.
