The BRAG’s got a soft spot for Sammy J & Randy. Pure immaturity doesn’t get much better than a show from the skinny guy and the rude purple puppet. Their Sydney Comedy Festival show, An Evening with Sammy J & Randy, promises more stupid tunes and silliness.
Sammy J & Randy are just finishing up filming their new TV series, which has been three years in the making, and are looking forward to letting loose onstage in Sydney. “We’ve written this whole new show,” says Sammy. “We’re back to our filthy, smutty selves. It’s just us, with the keyboard segment and some silly songs – an hour of songs, smut and shenanigans.
“There’s no narrative. There’s a bit of audience participation where we get in people’s faces, making people uncomfortable.”
The pair plays around with ideas in the same way you do when you’re stoned – like what if Randy commits a crime and is arrested and allowed his one phone call, and rings Sammy and then realises he could keep his one phone call going on and on and on for several days? There’s a song called ‘Whoa Nellie’ – that one’s about nicking a miniature pony from a kids’ petting zoo. There’s also a special New Year’s Eve song about making New Year’s resolutions that get a bit lost at the Opera House celebrations on actual NYE.
Sammy reckons there might even be some crowd-surfing on his part, if not Randy’s. “The setlist has a certain order but the rest is loose-ish,” he says. “If an incident takes off with audience responses we’ll go with that, make it a priority. In Perth a few weeks ago a woman walked past the door during the show, so we dragged her in and interviewed her onstage. We sang a song about her – it took a good 15 minutes.
Sammy might be the human face of the duo, but he admits he often gets a little jealous of his purple companion. “He gets to sit there the whole show. He rides on my coattails. He has a delightful existence coasting on my comedy career. He’s got it pretty sweet.”
He certainly has. Sammy J & Randy have collected several awards over the years, including the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s Barry Award in 2010, and they were nominated for the Best Comedy Release ARIA in 2013.
But is there anything Sammy would like to explore beyond what he’s doing now? “I’d like to own a private jet,” he says. “I have flown a plane once – I went on a joy flight and it was thrilling and exhilarating and fucking terrifying!
“I’ll never do it again. I don’t have the constitution. It’s fine when it was smooth but when it got windy… wind is your enemy. Most musical comics have written a few songs about flying, cause we spend so much time on planes. I’d like to write a book, a musical, a play. It depends how successful our show is – we’ll see if there’s any interest in us in the wider population, see if any more people want to get on the Stinky and Pinky train.”
Sammy says he and Randy (Heath McIvor) are very much stuck together. “We each do our own thing; he’s in Adelaide at the moment doing his own show, so that’s why it works so well, cause we’ve always got other outlets. We’ll keep doing Sammy J & Randy for decades to come.”
Sammy J & Randyappear in An Evening With Sammy J & Randy, as part of Sydney Comedy Festival 2015, atEnmore Theatre onFriday May 15.
