#149 Andrew Hamilton’s Redemption: From Magic Mushroom Kingpin to Comedy Star

Hi, my boris and this is straight talk. Andrew Hamilton, Well, straight tour mate Mark. Hello, It's good to be here, so tell me what the fuck happened?

Good question, please search won't oh fuck?

Next thing, you know, the raptor scadn is smashing through my door with a battering ram. I ran upstairs and started flushing drugs.

Down the toilet.

But this raptor scored guy like tackle me to the ground. He had like his knee in the back of my thigh and he just goes, stay down in fat cunt. You've got a twenty cock. I think I needed to have the fall to really appreciate everything. I think I needed that setback. I'm much happier now living with my parents and doing stand up comedy than I ever was making money as a drug dealer.

Andrew Hamilton, Well, straight tour.

Mate, Mark, Hello, it's good to be here.

You know what this was really weird. One of the reason he hear is my younger son dms me on believe the dms me not he doesn't send me missing was the dms me on my Instagram account from his Instagram account little clips of You, and this has a bit some months ago and I just went, you know, did you get them thumbs up? And something goes, oh, Dad, you don't understand the dear. You know you don't get it. Dear, you don't you don't understand it. The piss take dud because I know you were And this.

Is my fake business podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

And he said, Dad, it's a piss take he like he was my son was saying the piss is he thirty two? He was saying the piss out of me. He's saying, yeah, silly, old fuck.

This is what you sound like.

You don't understand this ship. This is you Dad, like you read it. And anyway, and welcome, welcome, well, thanks, And what's the T shirt?

Mate? Confit con Fit. Yes, my my mate Joe Kwan owns a gym in Paramouna that's run all by x cons so stands for Convict Fitness yep. But I kind of I got connected with Joe from doing a previous podcast I had where I was just trying to interview people who had similar stories to me where they'd gone

So I want to go back a little bit. You acquit yourself quite well when you speak, and part of your gig now you maken do itut of being the way you speak. And we'll talk about this. You know, your tour coming up. I want to talk about your book coming up and your podcast, et cetera. But if I just you know, I know lots of ex cons in my life. Fortunately for me, I do know them, I say as that fortunate thing. I'm lucky to know

I grew up in Hornsby and I had a very happy childhood. I was one of five kids. I went to a private school. I went to Riverview in Wow Standy Nation's College.

So you're you're a Jesuit boy.

Yeah, Jesuit boy.

My dad was actually a Jesuit scholastic for like almost a decade. He was a student priest before he became a father. Yeah.

Most by the way, most people, Andrew don't realize that a Jesuit scholar is a thing. It's they're actually quite scholarly in lots of different things, not just theology, but quite scholarly across the board.

Right, And you have to do it for like over a decade to become a Jesuit priest. Yeah, so yeah, I think just for it to become just a standard Catholic priestss like three or four years maybe, But for a Jesuit it's like it's like twelve thirteen years or something crazy like that.

And how old are you now?

Thirty eight eight?

So were you at rev Whenma Costello was there. Father Costello, No, okay, he's a friend of mine. He was the resident precept for a long time. He was a good friend of mine actually. And the intelligence that came from this dude was crazy. What he knew about shit he knew about was amazing. And his influence was mental like he's influence in politics, his influence in business he had. They're very good at infiltrating processes. So you're a kid nor sure,

Then wasn't four?

What did you do?

Then? I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life. I went and just started studying an arts degree at Sydney UNI and just drinking a lot, doing a lot of drugs with my mates. And I was pretty aimless. And then I I did that for a year or two, getting very average grades. And then I was getting into a bit of trouble in Sydney.

Like as and comm's communications. Yes, yeah, yeah, so likes a degree in marketing or communications.

Yeah, yeah, they had there. I enrolled there, went there, lived on campus for three years and had a great time there in Bathist. It's amazing, and I mean it was like whenever you see college movies in America. It was like that you living on campus with guys and girls in the same dorms together, and you're just drinking and partying and trying to fit in some study.

Yeah, but you probably don't get it up to as much mischief as you if you're here in Sydney. It was intense.

It was different. There was a lot of drinking and sex and drugs. It wasn't I wasn't getting into fights here as much so it was. It was it was a much more acceptable kind of.

Trust benign, Yeah, a bit more benign. Yeah, So you a degree then what happens what job?

Well, I I got close to graduating. I think I only had two subjects to go, didn't leave. My lecturer was being asked by employers because they would recommend anyone that they think a pretty.

Like reternships and stuff like that exactly.

So I got recommended for a job, I went and did the job, and if you got the job, and so I was like, well, I don't need the fucking degree anymore.

So I got the job.

So I just a job doing what working in public relations back back here in back in Sydney.

So just quickly defined to us what public relations means, like you're talking about corporate relations, or you're talking about publicity, blisses st or brand push it, what is it?

Yeah?

So I was working mainly for corporates in helping them with their media relations, either to help market whatever the main stories that they wanted to push out in a lot of traditional media. And then as I continued to progress in public relations, I started doing more crisis management as well. So if companies fuck up, I'd be telling them, you know, advising them what the messaging should be and how to keep us out of the paper. That kind of stuff.

Yeah, so sometimes putting you into the paper if you've got a good story to tell, get now it's the papers if the paper's telling bad story about me, which which is pretty much the PR mantra exactly. And good at that.

I was very good at that.

Yeah, so how long? How long did you do that? For?

About ten years?

Well, that's probably most of your life. Yeah, but I just put to take you into your thirties. Yeah, so a.

Lot of my life.

And so I worked at a small agency and then got a gig at the world's biggest PR agency and I was an account director there and I ended up getting nominated for Best I was the thirty Under thirty Awards when I was twenty seven.

For B and T.

Thirty means what it's the B and T magazine have like a list of people in marketing and PR and advertising that are the high achievements that are under thirty. And so I got I won that in the PR category when I was twenty seven.

Wow. So I was telling me what the fuck happened?

Good question, I don't know, man.

At the same time, I was just a degenerate alcoholic and gambling addict, and I was just a mess and I think I.

Got into degenerate.

Really, I was just a mess man.

Yeah, I was just I was like after hours obviously.

A chronic gambler.

Well, I was after hours until the last few years when I just became a massive coke head all day, every day.

The wheels kind of we're pe we're talking about now.

So I mean I was. I was.

My gambling problem started when I was about eighteen, like Pokey's bad, and then as I got older, I just never had any money. Anything that I had would just slip through my hands very quickly. And so by the time I was at UNI, I was living on campus and I had very little money. And I ended up going to Thailand with a bunch of mates and trying

Did you do it? Did you do it? Did you do it for fun or recreation or did you do it for securitive reasons?

No?

For fun recreation?

Yeah, Yeah, So we were partying. We were at a full moon party and we were the night. We were there the night before a fir moon party in Thailand. It's on one of the islands Copenyang. They had a place called Mushroom Mountain.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you can get these magic mushroom shakes, and so we had those and they were really strong the night before the I think they weakened them on the night of the full moon party because there's just too many people. I can't handle that many people tripping out hard. So we had it the night before and fuck me, it was just like flowers bursting out of my eyes and just it was just this kaleidoscope in my head

And so I had this kind of life changing experience.

And I came home and told my mate how good they were, and he started researching how to grow them, and next thing you know, we had different strains of mushrooms that I would take to UNI and give to my friends, and suddenly they became very popular and i'd start selling them to friends of friends. There's a little

That's a funny thing that when people do that sort of stuff, that sort of self justification for their own degradation, Like you know, like you fuck yourself up and but if you thought about I'm fucking myself up here, maybe that's the first step. It's nothing to do with how

Nobody likes to have accountability, Mark, Yeah, but it was it was much easier to to just go fuck, the rules suck. I'm going to make my own rules. So to have a really hard look in the mirror.

Yeah, because the end and by the way, the rules do suck, and and and sometimes the logic is, let I get the logic one hundred percent, but I will ltimately you're responsible for yourself totally. And what was really important is to be healthy, yes, and to have consciousness. Yeah, sure, I get it, Mike Tyson stuff talking about it, you know, like I get it where the psychedelics actually can help you, and every now and there might be worth thing to do.

And I think a lot of that came down to it's taken me many years to realize is I kept gambling because I needed.

Just a distraction from my own life.

I needed an escape.

Yeah, it's funny that would you call avoidance?

Absolutely?

Yeah. I didn't want to sit down and think about why I felt so empty inside. And the reality was because I was living a life for that purpose. Even though I was good at public relations and I was doing that for a job, I didn't really want to do it. And I had all these things in my life that I dreamt of doing and I wasn't doing anything of any of them. And so I think instead of facing that, I was just trying to escape all the time.

That's a really good thing to say that, that's that's a good thing like identifying that. Then I didn't have a real purpose that I could embrace because it's not like you had a shit family and you know, Mum and Dad was still there, and it's not like you maybe you did, but perhaps you're not sort ofmmunicating to media stuff at some sort of post traumatic stress disorder, then did you were just at that up? So it was just about purpose.

Exactly right.

I think I came from so much privilege and I could have done anything, and I chose to do nothing, and so that kind of ate away at me.

It's like a guilt, Yeah, a bit of a guilt.

Yeah, I think so. I think it was just this such waste of potential and I didn't want to think about.

It, you know, Like, I mean, I know it's a little bit heavy, but like and you know, you are a comedian, but but a lot by the way, a lot of comedians actually sort of have this as part of their life, the heavy shit.

I think.

So we offer joke where you're chatting to other comedians that it's anyone who's well adjusted typically doesn't go well at comedy. It's people that have got really fucked up shit going on.

Yeah. Certainly my experience to the commedians because when I did The Apprentice Celebrity Prince, every series we had a comedian on there, and it was quite interesting to see the actually if you actually said and don't have a conversation like this. Generally speaking, there was some shit that happened in their life, or there was something they were very unhappy about in their life, but they're fucking good comedians,

I think it's dangerous to live without it. My experience is if you're living without purpose, without a reason to get up in the morning, then you start to feel hollow inside and then you start to feel that emptiness with anything, and a lot of the time that can be pretty bad stuff.

And by the way, we judge ourselves pretty hard to like, did you. I mean, by the way, I'm not someone who's judging it, because I mean, I'm fairly old, but I have been through the same stuff. Okay, maybe not as hectic as you did, perhaps as hectic as you did too, totally different period in the eighties and it was a different world those days. But you know, there was some stuff in my life and I know, I think anyway, because I come from a really good mum

I was doing that for over a decade. I think that I was just escaping into alcohol, drugs and gambling and I can't And that was both.

That was for anything.

I would escape if I had a good reason, if I was happy, celebrate drugs, gambling, alcohol, if I was sad, escape drugs and gams.

Did you get decided with it?

Not really With gambling, it was no, I didn't.

Really.

The drugs are like you're going to have with your mates and there's a gang and tonight we're going to get on it.

I think, not so much by the drugs, but just as the social aspect of it was certainly something. Yeah, there was a time I left where I couldn't have four beers without having a mental trigger. Okay, it's time to.

Do cocaine and have another forty vodkas. Yeah, because beers are work atting more, get onto something else.

That's it.

I'm getting too drunk. I better get on the gear. Sober up, sober and by the way, now I feel so we're going to get on into the drink.

Click. Still a little Holy shit, it's Thursday.

It you'd be going for four days.

How the fuck do we think that way?

I don't know. Yeah, when I think back, it just how fucked up I was. Like I would often go four or five days without sleep, just just sort of never ending drinking and drug cycle. And yeah, it's just what a waste of my brain cells, but also just my life because now I do so much fun shit every day and I'm just I can't look back.

Drug free, drug free.

I drink alcohol, but drug.

Free, be more moderate as a drinker.

Yeah, very much. So. Yeah, I don't really drink spirits. It's just a couple of years at gigs.

Yeah, so okay, So tell me about the pizza business.

So I was selling drugs for many, many years, and that went from me just selling magic mushrooms to then that, and that was a small business at the start, but every year it got bigger and bigger, more people heard about it, and mushrooms became more mainstream. There was a time where the fuck were you growing? From you la to say, my mate was growing them in his house, and that I started as just like one little container to by the end it was like a whole house.

Exactly, right, I mean, yeah, if you just follow the gelatin capsule, then your.

Body yeah yeah yeah.

But so that was a business.

So that was a business that grew and grew and grew, and there was a time where it was only busy during like summer and people going on like camping trips, and then I'd have this huge spike around the vivid Light festival. Yeah, when everyone's tripping out going to see the lights. But then over the course of many, many years, that just became a huge business. And so then I expanded into MDMA and acid and ketamine and cocaine. Because everyone would always come and ask me because I'm going

Hard to spend.

Yeah, hard to spend. I mean I tried my best mark.

I was putting about eight grand of coke up my nose a week, and I was spending a fortune on eating out at rest.

What period twenties, early twenties, This is.

No, this is recently. This would have been like when I was thirty five.

So what's a grammar? Coke course, Now gramdma.

Coke is like three hundred bucks, and that's not even a gramd. That's like point seven of actual coke.

So three hundred bucks, set's three grams of a thousands of twenty four twenty four grams a week.

Well I was I'm talking like wholesale what it cost to me. So I was doing about twenty eight grams of coke a week. Fuck now, yeah, I wasn't fucking about.

So you would have been completely not incoherent, but you would have been completely not in reality. Yeah, the whole world's fine, exactly, nothing's gonna happen, no, exactly. I think I thought I was too smart, and I thought I was just too low key to ever get caught. And so I was just selling drugs out of my house

And I had a business which was just people that had to be referred by someone, so I didn't have any like weirdos scratching at the door at three am. And so yeah, the money started to pile up and I needed something to do with it. And so I had ordered so many pizzas during cover, and I didn't like any of them. I was like, I'm going to open my own pizza restaurant. And so I just contacted made of mine, who's a share and told him my idea, and then we opened up a pizza bar and King's Cross.

It was called called Brooklyn Crispy.

Which was selling like American style thing and crispy pizzas. And I had two dogs that my girl my fiance was getting poppuccinos for, like those like dog yeah Capital coppuccinos, and so I was like, well, we should do something for dogs. So we started selling dog pizzas, which was like a nutationally approved pizzas for dogs. And all the gays of Pott's Point have dogs instead of kids, so they'd spend fifty dollars on a human menu and one hundred dollars of the dog pizza.

Men, it was crazy good business. They're actually good business decisions though.

Yeah, yeah, I had good ideas.

It was just a shame that, yeah, it all kind of fell apart. But so what happened?

Were you pushing the cash through the joint. That not really the lord of the money it was.

It was just to try and make the business a successful business. I wasn't trying to clean the drug money through it. But and what I realized was just how much fucking money it costs to get a restaurant off the ground.

Yeah, you know, and successfully you need to.

Yeah, you need to run at a loss for quite a long time I think before. That's why I think most people that are running restaurants must be drug dealers or crims, because I don't know, you have to have a big financial runway just to get it to be.

That's a very interesting point too, by the way, Like how do they fund these things? Yeah, a lot of people borrow money against the house or the parents' house, or the gun, borrow money from the bank.

But you need a lot. I think you need to be running at a loss for like at least two years before you start to really become.

Most small businesses today don't matter what it is, even it's not a restaurant, like a lot of probably eighty months to two years is about the period it takes to start to break even even yea. So you run it, you run a piece of joint.

I've had plenty of people tell me that, like trying to have a buddy lady operation through a restaurant was a bad idea. I should have had either a hair salon and you just pour shampoo condition down the drain and so you've done, you know, two two thousand wash and dryers today, or maybe like a doggy daycare. Yeah, just so, yeah, we dogs out one hundred dogs today would have been a much cheaper operation than trying to run a fucking restaurant.

But but they're good experiences, guess for you too.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was very proud of it. Like in my head, like this is the delusion I had. I was going to open five or six restaurants.

Delusional.

Yeah, I was going to open about six or seven of these restaurants, franchise around Sydney, and then I was going to stop drug dealing once like these were profitable, and then live off that.

Because you wanted to get out of drug dealing, they yeah, exactly.

I didn't think it was it was a long term thing forever, and so I did. In my head, I thought I had an exit strategy. But I also spoke to a lot of guys when I was locked up, and you know that, you know, I think they would have got to the point where I had six or seven businesses.

I want to come up with another excuse to keep drug dealing, Like.

You think because too easy.

You just think it's never going to end. You think you're too clever. You just yeah, you think that you can just keep going going. There are many guys that actually like set a goal and say, oh, this is what I'm out.

It's funny. And I've had discussions with my sons and other people about this sort of stuff, saying, unfortunately the media TV, it's such you can glamorize drug dealers or criminality basically, and of the criminals that I've known in my life, very few of them actually landed successfully. They're either in jar, dead or desperate. Over a period of time one of those three, not many of them actually turned it any good. It's never glamorous. Usually none of

So what happened?

You've got a red said, Yeah, my house.

Got raided On the fourth of June twenty twenty one.

I was at home. It was a Friday afternoon. I was high on cocaine. I hadn't slept in about two or three days. I was watching some guy Reachi movie and then I just heard this loud crack in my front door, and I just I thought that some junkie or something in Surrey Hills had fallen into my door. But then I heard police search won't oh fuck, And it was just so surreal, like I don't know what, like how much time went on between everything, because it

Me, you know, like like pick.

So they found me really quickly and they threw me to the ground, and yeah, they told me that I had the rap. I wrote a joke about it. This is like one of my first jokes that road was the raptor score guy like tackle me to the ground. He had like his knee in the back of my thigh and he just goes, stay down, you fat cunt. You've got a tiny cock. And I had pants on,

I could have had more in there.

But so what did you get? What did you get convicted of?

I got convicted of large commercial supply of silicon, which is the active ingredient of magic mushrooms LSD and so large commercial supply of mushrooms and acid, the supply of MDUMA.

That they're not in that kind of les.

So what was your ends?

So I was in I was locked up in maximum security remand for like four months I was in Parkley Prison and Long Bay Jail, and then I eventually got granted bail to my parents place where I was under house arrest. So I wasn't allowed to leave the house unless I was in a company. No, no ankle, bracelet, But the cops were checking regularly.

Just bail, this is bail. Yes, I was.

Under house arrest. I wasn't allowed to leave the house unless I was the company of my parents, who were both in their mid seventies. And so when I first saw an ad for open My Comedy competition and decided that I should go and start doing open mic because I had to bring my mom along to the ships and as.

Part of your bail conditions, yeah, I had to.

I had to bring it to the show. And then I had to ask if I could go on early because I had to get home for my curfew. And so I started doing that and that started doing going well. And so when I got sentenced in July twenty twenty two, I got sentenced to an Intensive Corrections Order ICO, and so that I'm essentially doing a prison sentence in the community right.

Now, zeron prole basically basically, yeah.

So I have to get permission to leave New South Wales still till Christmas this year, and I had to do two hundred hours community service. But one of the reasons that kept me out of prison was when firstly I was doing clean pissed tests, I was doing drug counseling, I had a full time employment. But also the judge like that I was doing stand up that wasn't one he'd heard before, and he thought that was a very positive sign of rehabilitation.

Oh yeah, and it didn't have anything to do with the stylist down to be doing so in other was sort of admitting or talking about the things.

No, we tried to.

We didn't talk about the content of the comedy. That could have to risk if he knew that I was joking about getting arrested to go to prison and joking about being a drug dealer. That may have brought up questions of remorse or anything like that. But so we didn't get into the content.

So that's mad though. So you eventually found your purpose, but you had to get arrested to do that, right And by the way, how'd you feel been locked up and put in Remand I don't know where you first went to. You would have gone to Silver War, I guess Parkley Parkley, So you're Roman in your day one? I mean, did they put you out of Sorry Hills? Some we did the first, did you at the police center.

Yeah, so you go to the Surry Hills Police HQ for a night. So you were sucked up down in the dungeons.

How'd you feel?

Oh, I mean I hadn't slept in days, so I just tried to sleep, just try to sleep it off.

And were you sharing the self?

I was sharing the cell with a few other guys.

And was that confronting for you?

Not really.

I think that what I've discovered about myself is that I'm quite resilient. You know, you don't really know what you've got in you until you get tested, and so I've found myself okay in all those situations. I was just like, look, you know, this is what's happening. Just we'll deal with it one step at a time. And so I was still deluded though I thought I was

And what about guilt, new family and stuff like that, how that all work?

So, yeah, I had my first phone call with my parents. I think it was like my second day at park Lay Prison. I was able to make a phone call to them, and that was hard, Like it hit them really hard. And my dad told me that my mom had like fainted. I think she was having some health issues, but this didn't help. That has exacerbated it. And then they said to me that they thought me going to prison might be the best thing that's ever happened to me.

And what did you think about that?

I thought that they were probably right, even though yeah.

He didn't resent that comment.

No, no, I didn't.

I thought maybe maybe they were right. And so it turned out over the next few weeks is kind of my fiance dumped me when I was in prison, and mates became more and more flaky. That the only people that were constant there with my parents, and so I

I'm the black shape.

Yeah, yeah, you're clipstim Well I think you did a skit or you do a skitter around the meals in jail. Yes, tell me about that.

Well, when I was when you first arrived in prison in twenty twenty one, it was during COVID, right, so you spent the first two weeks in quarantine. So I had no TV, nothing to read for the first ten days. And so for me, having just been pinched and coming down from drugs, I was in a really negative headspace and had I had no escape. I was just stuck in my own thoughts, like you fuck it, what have

I'm going to a restaurant or something.

So I just started scoring about of ten and like an adjusted prison scale, because I was like, this is you know, prison food.

It's not the real world.

I need to be a bit more generous with the scale. And so I just started doing that every day, and I did it for the whole one hundred and twenty five days that I was locked up, And it was just a kind of a fun distress action and I use it kind of also as a bit of a journal, and so then it would be fun to just argue with my cell mates about like that.

I'd be like, oh, I'm giving that a six point two.

They'd be like, oh man, that's a four. So yeah, it was just it was just a fun creating distractions. I think, I think, so yeah, I think I am, and then you make it funny. Yeah. So I started writing the food reviews, and then I started writing jokes a little while later, once I had it sobered up and got off drugs and had a chance to just ask myself a lot of questions, like, you know, if you could just start your life over from scratch, what would you do? And the only answer in my head

But you've never done stand I've gone, but I used.

To go to it a lot, and sometimes I would sit there and write jokes on my phone. But I never looked into like where there was an open mic or how you'd even go about it. But I think, deep down somewhere in me, you just always knew that answer, but I just hadn't.

It was scary doing stand up comedy.

I yeah, it was terrifying the first the first few times. I mean it still is terrifying now, but now I know that it's the thing I have to do. But when you first get up there and you start talking and everyone's quiet because they're listening to you, and you haven't a set a punchline yet, I'm like, fuck this is And then you say and then you suddenly get to a postline, people laugh and suddenly relief washes over you.

But because that's your reward, that's your drug.

Yes, absolutely, yea drug now, yes.

So you know your brain gets a response in a sort of Flooge's system with the serotonin instead of cocaine, doing.

It exactly you're doing. I think that people that are that have have very addictive personalities. They often focus on the negative side, but if you can find positive outlets for it, an addictive and addictive personality can be a superpowerful.

Totally powerful. Ye, completely powerful. I'm noticing that you move around. Do you have ADHD?

Yes?

Yeah? Yeah, so yeah, but did you know you had that before I did.

I got diagnosed when I was about eight years old, but I didn't really start to become a problem with me until I was about sixteen.

Do they jammy ridden.

Dex mphetamine to have like okay, so okay, you're on dexies so not anymore.

I haven't a word, but you were. Yeah, But because sometimes that's the start of the addiction, Like for me, I've seen happy for and you know, he stopped taking DEXs because someone says you shouldn't be taking this basically is emphetamines speed. You shouldn't be taking so many because you shouldn't take that many in the first first place. But that you start self medicating take eight and then you then you stop one day and if someone says that we stop, Okay, now what I'm going to do?

Was grinding my teeth and having trouble going to bed when I was sixteen seventeen because I was on so much dex amfetter.

Me if do you hold your hand like that on purpose? No, because the move a hand moves around. Are you What I'm trying to work out is are you conscious of it?

No?

I'm not.

No, I'm self conscious of Its probably another thing.

Not really, No, Sometimes I'm just my legs are just going crazy.

It's natural. Yeah, yeah, that doesn't bother me because I have family members who do this sort of stuff. I get it. I understand it. It's a good way to lose weight too, by the way, But now because you're moving also moving Yeah, no, no, totally your your I mean, if you, if you, I don't know if you've ever done one of these, but if you ever sat down down a metabolic rate test, So it's a test, they sit you down. You've got to be relaxed. You've got to sit down and relaxed or in your in your

But it's even more impressive when I get fat, because that means I'm really sick of the beers.

That you must be consuming a hell of a lot of calories relative to your burn. That's quite interesting. And and and ADHD people actually have a have a superpower when it comes to not putting weight on if they watch what they eat. It actually is super power.

Yeah, when I when I focus on my training and I'm actually like counting my calories like I just smash it very quickly.

Very very quickly. So go to jail, get let out. You're cognizance of family cognisance. In other words, you're sort of under house arrest sort of thing. You're on bio to go through a period. Then you get sentenced. Sorry, you got sentence, and you've got your own parole. Effectively, you've got built yourself a new business that being well, there's a few pass your businesses to tell me it's just not just so down up comedy to the podcast.

So yeah, I got out of jail.

I mean. One of the things that was crazy about the prison thing was when I first started thinking about doing stand up was I was was because I saw so many funny things happen in jail. Like there was a time where I saw the guards talking. They were calling out for a David Wilson, or like David Wilson to the others, David Wilson, and then a whole yard of krim started going Wilson Welson like I'm doing there, like Tom Hanks castaway impression, going like Welson, I'm sorry.

Were you doing any stand up in prison?

No, I mean in my cell to my sellies. Yeah, not really in the yard because you know, if you say a joke that goes the wrong way to a guy in the yard, because I had some pretty serious consequences. But yeah, it completely changed my way.

I don't have nights and stuff like that, like entertainment nights, like.

Maybe in like sentence prison and maybe like And it wasn't COVID nothing. There was nothing going on during COVID, Like they had no classes, they had nothing. It was a pretty grim situation. And that's why I think that they had They had the Parclay prison right when I was there, because the guys were just exploding because they had nothing to do and family visits were canceled.

It was just powder that.

Yeah.

Yeah, but yeah, so I got out and started doing stand up and then that started going pretty.

So how do you do stand? Like, I mean, you said you started doing some but just someone invite you do? You have to put an application? And how's it work?

You just look up there's a I mean, I'm sure in many major cities as a Facebook group about their open mic nights, and so I just looked up where an open mic night was, and you just put your name in a bucket and with like twenty thirty other guys, mostly dudes, and you just get your name randomly drawn out and that's when it's your turns to do five minutes on the mic, and just.

At a club or something.

It's usually at a bar, at a bar in a small room where it's basically no one else there other than other comedians that are trying to make it.

So how do you get you for back?

Well, that's the problem, right is because you've either got a bunch of guys that are studying on their phone what they're going to say, or they're jaded because they've been doing open mic comedy nights for six years and haven't gotten in anywhere, so they don't really want to laugh. So you've got to really be funny before. Yeah, exactly.

Get the practice of saying the words in front of people.

Yeah, and so that's that's important, but.

You're not getting the vibe there sometimes sometimes.

Look, I found if you're going to an open mic for the first time and you're doing jokes they haven't heard you say before, then you'll get a Usually you'll get an honest reaction, particularly if you start to get laughs early, then guys will stop what they're doing and

So it sounds like a startup world, but they're always meeting up the startup world, you know, like all the startups, like business startups, they're all going oh shit, there's a Google conference on the will turn up, or there's some other thing on World turn Up. And there's the same dudes all the time. You know the girls, guys, it's the same game.

Must be so many of these subcultures where it's just the same people going to everything right, and so what I'm the best. What I found was the only way I could get a reaction out of these guys is if I wrote a new five minutes of jokes every couple of nights. So I was just like writing, writing, performing, like trying new stuff all the time. And I think that made me a better comedian very quickly, because I

Called Raw, and I got through to.

The state final of that, and then I got.

How much time it's on stage that you get five minutes and so you.

Perform at the Comedy Store and I got through to the state final, which was pretty crazy because I'd only been doing comedy for about maybe four weeks at that stage, and so yeah, so it was awesome, and so I got to perform at the Comedy store in the state final and I didn't get through, but that was enough for me to open the door for me to get an opportunity at better gigs in Sydney, which was rooms where it wasn't just you performing in front of other

And do you get gigs as a result of that, to paid gigs you do?

That's still quite slow.

You know, most of the time in Sydney, in a lot of towns, you're doing ten minute spots for no money, just because you have the privilege of being able to test out your material.

Say you're doing that for audio right, to build audiences and to test audiences.

Exactly like practice exactly. So now I get both unpaid and paid gigs. Paid gigs, I'm doing my best stuff because I'm getting paid to do that. But at unpaid gigs, I'm just running a whole bunch of new stuff. I'm doing whatever I want to do just so that I can make it a learning I'm getting something out of

Is that right?

Yeah, there aren't that many, particularly not ones that have a group of guys together who are actual comedians as opposed to a lifelin cut girls that they're funny exactly, they're not actual comedians.

Exactly, right.

Yeah. Yeah, So I'm talking about like stand up comics stealing a show together.

But what are you doing? Like, it's what's the sort of general content where we're talking about it, like you're taking the.

Piss out of each other or Yeah, it's a combination between just anything what's happened to us that week or things in the news, or just taking the piss out of each other. But we just talked shit for an hour a week and it's slowly growing. But it's awesome because then those people that love the show will come to our live shows, which is awesome. There's quite a few people that we listened to the podcast that went and saw all three of us at our live shows

Politics. Are you playing into that or not?

Really?

I mean you've taken a piss out of trumple Biden.

Or sometimes, but it's not really what do you really?

Were you going with it? What do you normally do? Is is a situational What are we talking about?

I mean I was talking about I went and saw two live Terminator events last week, so I I talked about that. I saw they had Terminator one at the Opera House with like a live orchestra, and then they had I saw Terminated at the Hayden Orpheum and they had the bad guy Robert Patrick from that movie like there in the audience doing a Q and A. So I just talked about the funny the funny stuff from that.

So you do you did?

You do?

You sit there in for example of those two examples, in an audience and you look for what are you looking for? What you think is you can make humorous or you can are you taking something out of it that actually is humorous?

You just see the natural humor in it. Yeah.

So there was a guy that was so excited to ask Robert Patrick a question about when he watched the premiere of Terminator two, whether he knew like that he was part of something that was going to be so historic and special. And so then Robert Patrick said, oh, not really. I was just there stoned with my friends and was just.

Like, oh cool.

The humor was in seeing this guy and obviously spent so much time and he's so excited to ask this question that it was such an underwhelming answer.

That's amazing.

But see that that's an interesting skill that you have, that you can see that humor. Yeah, whereas the poor guy answered the question, he's going to feel fucking like let down, like a heap because it was expecting something overwhelming. I'm like, well, this is my life, lifetime dream or something.

Yeah, we didn't know it was going to be such a huge cultural moment.

Yeah, changed the course of history.

Right, that was the answer he wanted. It's just like I don't really did I was started.

But do you think that the guy answered the question, do you think he was taking the piss or.

I think he would have had a real answer in his head.

But I think but I think that was also true that he was stoned at the time, but I think that they would have been part of his head. It was like, holy shit, this movie is amazing, right, But it was just such a funny answer.

That that is pretty hilarious because I can imagine the guy sitting there very nervous about asking the question for a start, like getting really nervous, picked.

Out for days, pick me, pick me.

You're like fu, I got picked his my chance and he probably would be a little bit shaky on your voice, and then you just go. Shoulders had drop forward so that you're you're doing a tour. There's a tour coming out?

What's that?

What's that all about?

So this this too is I'm doing my debut show, which is the show I did last year at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. So I at the time I signed up to do Melbourne Comedy Festival, I had maybe twenty minutes of jokes that I thought worked. And when you do a comedy festival, when you're doing a solo show, you've got to do They say an hour, but it's usually about fifty minutes of material, and so I am

Pitching the room, or you pitch to get into it.

You're asking someone who's booking that room whether you can be part of their lineup for the festival, right, And so I got rejected by put much everyone. The only one that said yes to me was a small cocktail bar and I offered me a time of ten forty at night, right, ten forty to do sixteen shows.

Fuck that, I'll take that.

I was like, I'll do it.

I just want to be there secon shows for ten forty sixteen days.

So I'm doing over the course of three weeks. I'm he's doing sixteen one hour shows at ten forty at ten forty at night, so I'm doing on a Monday Tuesday Wednesday night, I'm ten forty night, and so I thought, fuck, this is going to be hard. But it turned out to be a blessing in disguise because I was the only show I think on a Monday, Tuesday Wednesday that on past nine thirty at night. So for anyone looking

What is it?

And so I think people are drinking, they're out night, They're like, or do you want to go see some idiot took about prison for an hour in terms of people do so people turned up and I started doing the show. So the first night I had like five tickets sold, and then seventeen people showed up on the door, and so I ended up doing the show in a room that could only fit about forty to twenty two people, and I was like, and it was amazing. The show went so well, and I was like, I am going

We were sold out most nights, and it's like, it's.

Crazy, So the two are you're going to do now? The tour I'm going to do in August is your tour those it's just me, Yeah, it's just me touring around to about something crazy like twenty four towns around Australia.

I me some examples. We're going like Tamworth or the Top.

Regionally, we're going to Newcastle, Aubrey, Bunbury, Western Australia, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunny Coast to Woomba, Darwin, Lawn, Cesstin Hobart.

I'm going say to people find out about like where do they go to book it?

So a list dot com, dot you is the website or my I've got it all listed on my socials. I'm very fortunate that my socials have like blown up crazy.

I've got like I'm going to talk about your instagraments socialistic.

Yeah. But so so the show.

I'm doing my debut show around the country because a lot of people haven't most people haven't seen it. And I have the i have a book coming out at the same time, so I'm going to be taking the book on the road to sell at the shows as well.

And what's the book about.

The book's about my crazy life.

It's about me being kind of an aimless person that fell into drug dealing and how that escalated and my time in prison and how that became such a life changing experience for me. And turn me towards comedy. So it's called The Profound Benefits of a Stint in.

Prison, So it's sort of like an autobiography.

It is, Yeah, exactly.

How much of that is therapeutic for you? Like how much of that is like selfishly done? And I don't mean in a bad sense, but like therapeutic for you to actually write about what you haven't haven't done.

The book and comedy have been hugely therapeutic. When I first started doing stand up, it was because I was pretty angry. I wrote from rage, right. I was just I was so lost and confused and angry, and the only constructive outlet I could think of was to take the piss out of myself and my dumb mistakes, and so to weaponize that and kind of own it. I own my dumb life and mistakes and just get up on stage and be like, hey, this is I'm an idiot, this is this is my dumb life. Found I found

But do you ever worry? Does it ever get because a lot of people would feel this way, You're I hate the fucking word, but your vulnerability, like you're out there putting it all on the line. You're just telling everyone about everything and to somebody sent you don't give a shit. Yep, maybe you don't give a shit. I'm assessing that does it ever bother you that everybody knows everything about you? Like and maybe do you everything yourself?

All?

Wow? They know about my mum and dad's kid and my brother's brother. And one day you might be a father yourself. You married to good kids, But like I said, one day you know one of your own kids. You ever worry about that?

I don't think so, because when.

I'm not convinced me.

When I was sat in prison and I started thinking about my two options. I could either get out and go back to like a white collar job and hopefully pretend like it never happened, or because at that point there was only one article about my arrest and me being locked up that was in the Daily Mail, and I thought, well, who the fuck reads that anyway? So I had that Sorry. Now I'm good friends with them.

Now, yeah, they like covering me because I'm such a weird, weird fish, but they they I was like, well, I can either go back to my normal life and pretend it's never happened, or I can do the complete opposite and just own the fuck out of it publicly. And some reason in my head I was like, that sounds so crazy. I better the work, and it has, and.

So I've I I thought there was part of me which was like, surely I'm going to get booed off stage and have people hate me for this. But I've had so many people, particularly all the people that I thought would be shocked by what I'm talking about, come to me afterwards and be like, great stuff and amazing that you've turned your life around, and so.

It's a good redemnstance story.

I get so many messages from people who have found something in me talking about my life that's resonated with them. I had one guy message me to say that he got out of prison and just went on with his life and never talked about it. Nobody knows about it, and seeing me own it has inspired him to go and do public speaking courses so that he can start to talk about the most acts he made that has led him here.

And I thought that was really cool.

Yeah, it's funny. I was just seeing about something he said that Dali Malesmas. There's not that much of a gap between finding being angry about a situation or seeing a situation being funny. I mean you seem to be able to actually lean into not being angry and being and seeing it as a funny outcome.

Well, I think you know, if you break down the things that make you angry and also like how people act when they're angry, a lot of it, if you just stood back from it can be funny. Right. It's like Bill Burr is one of the best comedians world

I was on bail.

Like this, all this stuff from my dumb life was funny and people are.

Now you chose to see the funny side.

I chose to see the funny side.

Also signed fuck this, I'm angry.

Yeah, but I've gone down that road before and I just and it doesn't lead you anywhere positive. And so I was just like I tried to weaponize it in a positive way, and it's completely changed my life. Ever since I've been on this path with comedy, opportunity after opportunity has kept coming to me and doors keep opening, and it just makes me know that I made the right decision.

You're getting the and you're also getting the sort of the chemical rewards in your brain too.

Totally.

It's give me the right rewards.

I mean, you do find there is a law of diminishing returns when you're doing the same joke the two hundredth time.

That's why I.

Fired, You've got to constantly be coming up with new stuff, because when you have a new joke that you've just written and you test it out and it kills straight away, it's such a rush.

Yeah, well, it's funny you're talking about daily mail, and that's the difference between rage or anger and comedy. Many years ago, I've been in a gym dan already, and I was walking. There's a market up here King's Cross that does not I walk up there and I'm going to get a juice and shit like that. Anyway, so I've got change prepared short the summer, two shirt on

Know, I mean exactly the say bark like me when I got raided and this guy told me out a tiny cock. It wasn't funny at the time. Now it was what I was locked up. Well, actually that's hilarious.

Yeah, but do you think to be hilarious do you think he was having a bit half funny?

I think these guys that raid, how like the raptors score when they're raiding, they're so pumped up on red bulls or whatever the fuck they take, and they're so used to going into places with guys. They've got weapons and stuff like that they just got, so they're so pumped when they find the bad guy, right, they just they want to mouth off. You think that that's it. They're like, fucking stay down, your motherfucker.

So they just sayn and they probably go back later on talk I told you how that's moall cock and they'll have a good laugh.

They probably how many times has that guy been set my clip of stand up exactly?

This is his best joke now, So so.

Where do you see yourself going? Like, I mean, you make money out of this is giving you a living? I mean you're not making the same money making when you were stilling drugs.

But yes, I'm not making drug buddy anymore. But I'm making a basic living out of stand up now, which is fucking hard to do. Yeah yeah, yeah, And I've only been doing it for two and a half years, so you know there are guys who are ten years in that are barely making a good living out of stand up.

It's hard.

So yeah, because I want to ask you about that, because like you was before you were drug dealer and you're making shitload me you piles of cash and shit like that. How do you reconcile those two? Like you work so hard, I mean sure there's a lot of enjoyment out of what you do, you don't make much money out of it, yep, how do you reconcole the difference between the two? And do you?

I think that you money money earned from hard work always feels a lot better for starters. But also like I I'm cool that because last year I did stand up and I made fuck all. This year I've made a bit more, and next year I'll make it more than that, And so I can see that there's a clear trajectory here. And I I love what I do. It's my favorite thing in the world to do. So I'm not too worried about the money because it fills

Is extras and just one on your socials, what are you doing TikTok? As well as the scramble just Instagram.

TikTok and Instagram. Yeah, I've got no idea what I'm doing on either.

I just post stuff and that's your authentic's And how's it nums going? Like you're getting good engagement?

I mean last year, I think in April I had like six ersand followers on Instagram. Now I've got two hundred and twelve or something.

Like that, so it's grown a lot. And do you know your audience I mean on Instagram for example, on your socials, do you know your audience is at like young guys, young girls who are looking.

At It's like ninety three percent dudes, right. But the thing the interesting is the social numbers aren't the same as my show numbers because women buy tickets comedy shows much more than guys.

But any comedy, yeah, any comedy generally.

But particularly you know, I'm seeing groups of girls well or just take their boyfriend or partner or husband whatever, that they'll be the one who's the instigator of buying tickets. There are groups of like usually like four or five dudes being like boys comedy night Tonight.

Fellers get the lads we're doing stand up, They go to the park. I think the arts is gay, so.

That that's fine, but it's just I mean, it's interesting that there's that skw on social but then that's not the certainly not the skew at a live show.

Right, So your social is your your social giving that you've got a couple hundred thousand, is that about sort of trying to sell something through that? Like, I mean, how do you how do you use weaponize comedy, but how do you commercialize something like that?

Yeah? I think it is. Even if people don't necessarily follow me, me putting stuff out on social media that's gone viral has certainly helped with recognition of my face. So that when there's ads out, either posters or digital ads who're like, oh, that guy's made me laugh before, and he's coming, he's doing exactly, so then they're sharing. People take a punt far more if they've if they know your face and you've made them laugh before, then if you're just putting a poster and they've never heard

Up over time exactly, and they'll at some stage that they'll interconnect, yes, or they'll overlap each other and you'll get some benefits from both to the other.

I definitely know that there are people that So I used to be part of this comedy channel called yeah Ad, which was the fastest growing comedy channel in the country, and that brought a lot of people either to my social pages or to live shows. So that's been a huge driver of it. And so we're about to start a new comedy channel, me and a bunch of the

That's a collective of other comedians, though, So I mean, how important is it four comedians to hang out the other, the lean on each other.

I mean, there's plenty of amazing comedians that are very anti social, you know. So I don't know. I am such a social person and I try to introduce myself to everyone that I meet in stand up and to help them in any way I can. And I think that I think that sometimes you don't really know the value straight away of these friends until later. If they're just vouching for you for an opportunity or a gig or whatever. It just makes sense to me.

How important is gratefulness to you? I mean, like as a I don't know, I don't know if it's an emotional whatever, it's a virtue being grateful, grateful for what you're doing, because that's one of the things I just get out of this conversation. I mean, it's not a big money spent as a comedian, not yet, but.

I mean that being said, Mark, I think that.

I mean, my management say to me that, I'm like, they've never seen anyone selling as many tickets to shows after two and a half years in comedy as me.

So the trajectory great science is very very promising.

I would about gratefulness, I mean, is that just grateful that you can get them to do this shit?

Oh?

Every time?

Man, it is so surreal to me every time I get up, particularly when I'm doing my live show, when I'm doing solo shows and people have bought a ticket to come see me and spend an hour with me, that seems still very surreal. And so I'm so grateful that they're there. And then because of my socials and who I am. At first it was people just going

It's my favorite thing to do.

People ask me like, how can you go a whole month touring around and doing an hour show every night? Isn't that going to be draining? And I'm like, no, I get energy from it, Like I get my cup gets filled from performing and being around people. So that's the easy part. You know.

It's interesting as you're talking then, I was just thinking about your dad's studies in theology as a Jesuit scholar, and the sort of things that they sort of study are concept concepts around virtues, you know what like, but

I think I needed to have the fall to really appreciate everything though I think I needed that setback. I hope that people can find a way to be on the most positive path without having that fuck up. We're all fulls of shit. But from my experience, for a lot of people, it isn't until that happens that they really figure out what their priorities are in life and start to live their best life and appreciate things the most. Whether that's a marriage breakdown or a job loss, or

Thanks so much that that's a pretty cool guy, cool story.