Nick Cody On Why Comedy Is The Family Business

He's known in the stand-up biz as "the crusher". He describes himself as an "alpha idiot". Stand-up star Nick Cody is a card-carrying member of the fraternity of cocky comedians.

"When I'm with one of my really good mates - Scottish comic Daniel Sloss - my wife Lou says, 'Fuck, I just know when you two have been hanging out.' We're just strutting around, trying to out cocky each other in the dumbest ways," he laughs. "His promo photos are so photoshopped. If you see him up close - fuck me! Sloss, if you're reading this: stop photoshopping your dumb head so much! You're an unhealthy Scot, just fucking deal with it!"

Cody has made an art form of blokey banter, but it's a brand of shtick he sees as being in decline in Australian comedy circles. "In the past few years, I've tried to make my stand-up more and more ridiculously alpha, like, all my pre-show music, that I listen to before a gig, is Rick Ross and Lil Wayne and Drake. Hyper-alpha stuff," he shares. "There's so many comics that I find are like beta personalities. They're like, 'How do I figure out life? I'm trying to adult,' or whatever. So I prefer the opposite, like the names of my shows: Beard Game Strong; Come Get Some; On Fire."

If that makes Cody sound the wrong side of scary, don't be fooled - he's a family man at heart. However, that doesn't mean his comedy is family-friendly. The Cody clan are a bunch of "loose units" according to the 29-year-old comedian, but it's thanks to their LOL-worthy shenanigans and passion for comedy that he found his way into a career in stand-up. As they say, some artists are born, others are made — Cody is a little of both.

"It was my parents that got me into it. They are both super funny, but very different funny. My dad is really dry and sarcastic and my mum is just completely fucking over the top," Cody says of his first introductions to his chosen profession. "From maybe the age of 14 onwards, every birthday they'd give me my birthday money a month or so early, so when the Melbourne Comedy Festival guide came out I could pick which gigs I wanted to go to. I don't think my mum and dad ever thought at the time that I'd end up doing it myself, but I definitely inherited my love of stand-up from them."

Whereas some parents might have enrolled their sprogs in piano lessons or footy club, Cody's folks opted to give their son an education into the comedy greats, from an early age. "They'd let me listen to some old records of stand-up gigs when I was really young. I remember there was one - The Pick Of Billy Connolly - and I loved it because it had a picture of him on the cover picking his nose. So you know, as a six-year-old I thought that was fucking hilarious," Cody recalls. "My parents would let me listen to this record and I'd laugh at maybe 10% of it. But then I'd ask my parents about various jokes that went over my head. So he'd sing a song about divorce, for example, and I'd be like, 'What's divorce? I'm six - so what the hell is divorce?'  And they would explain it to me so I'd get why it was funny. So even when I was a pretty small, there were jokes that most kids wouldn't have understood, but I was like, 'Oh yeah, sweet! I get that.'"

Throughout Cody's upbringing, his family's warped sense of humour — a blend of boldfaced bad taste, boysy pranking and just the right amount of black comedy = has proven to be a major influence on his stand-up style. "That was just the kind of joking around that was always there when I was growing up — just constant breaking balls and just being as fucked up as possible, like the worst shit you could say about something," he sniggers. "My great grandma died a couple of years ago, and at the funeral me and some other people in my family were at the back making up reasons of how she died — she was 102. Things like, 'So sad, a heroin overdose at that age,' or, 'It was a drive-by shooting. Fuck, what are the odds?"

This irreverent gallows humour has also found its way into Cody's stand-up, including "heaps of beheading jokes" in his latest show, he proudly beams. "That's just what makes me laugh — really dark shit, but dark shit that still has an obvious link to comedy," he insists. "I'm not trying to make the crowd squirm or put them off — everyone has a darker side to their sense of humour, and I really like going there. But all I'm trying to do is be funny. I've got no interest in pissing anyone off."

Spending so many years surrounded by comedy has certainly paid off. Not only is Cody now considered one of the top stand-ups of his generation, he's also begun to make waves overseas, joining an elite group of just four other Australian comics who have appeared on that most hallowed of US talk shows, Late Night With Conan O'Brien.

Cody says his American debut was "terrifying" but this nerve-shredding watershed moment was also a valuable learning experience: "I was so nervous, it was like doing one of my first ever gigs again, and what I used to do if I was nervous was to have my headphones in, blast really aggressive rap music, drink tonnes of coffee and get more and more pumped up. I thought that was the answer, but I've realised that's actually the opposite of what you should do. Now I try and stay as relaxed as possible — I've even started doing some breathing exercises. But really once I'm out on stage, that's me at my most relaxed. I hate sitting anywhere just by myself, just overthinking things. It's like, I know the bits I'm going to be doing, I know how a mic works, just let me out there!"

Nick Cody presents On Fire, 11 — 14 May at Factory Theatre, part of the Sydney Comedy Festival.