"At Least A Million People In Australia Fucking Hate Me!"

Despite being one of Australia’s most successful ever comedy exports, it’s really only in the last few years that Jim Jefferies has made major inroads in his native country. His cause to break large in his homeland probably wasn’t helped when he long ago chased his dreams to the stand-up mecca of London, nor when having establishing himself there he relocated once again to the States – where his 2009 HBO special Swear To God had won him a substantial audience – to expand into the world of TV and film.

Jefferies quickly experienced some substantial wins and losses in this latter quest; his TV comedy series Legit earned a largely positive reception upon its 2013 release before being cancelled after two seasons, although it certainly didn’t hurt his profile in the American stand-up market. He now spends most of each year touring the States, only breaking this routine to hit the UK and Australia once a year. Nice job it you can get it.

"I’ve never been ‘too famous to walk the street’ famous, I’m just a fairly popular comedian."

“I’m just gigging as always mate, I’m on the road all year around,” the affable comic explains from a hotel room somewhere in Canada. “I do a few days on the road then four days home, then a few days on the road then four days home, and I do a month-long tour of Australia once a year and I do a couple of weeks in the UK once a year. All that’s going on is the same shit that’s always been going on.”

The grind of the road aside, Jefferies explains that not too much has changed in regards his stand-up profile even after having his own cable show for two seasons.

“It’s about the same,” he shrugs. “My profile around the world is basically the same – I do about 1500 seat theatres in every town I go to. I’ve never been ‘too famous to walk the street’ famous, I’m just a fairly popular comedian. I don’t know how you ascertain ‘profile’ as such anyway; I did a couple of movies this year and we’ll see how they go, and I’m trying to sell another TV show – it’s just like any other job. It’s like saying, ‘How’s your profile at work going?’ “Well, I haven’t been fired and I’ve moved up one floor, and I’m still not the manager.’ Nothing bad’s happened where I’ve been disgraced or anything, so it’s all going fine. Everything’s been so gradual that I’ll never be an overnight success, with people going, ‘Have you heard of this guy?’ I gain about five fans a day.”

It must be nice in a way though treading that fine line between making a decent career and not being hassled in the street?

“Yeah, I get stopped for about two or three photos a day, which is the same amount I get stopped for photos in Australia,” he explains. “I’m in a relationship so I’ve got a kid now – when you’re single and in a bar you want people to notice you, but when you’re in a relationship you don’t give a shit whether people are noticing. And sometimes when I’m out with my parents it’s nice if someone comes up and notices you, but for the most part I hardly ever get bothered. Hardly ever.”

Despite his protestations to the contrary, here in Australia things seem to be still blossoming career-wise for Jefferies – on this impending visit he’s close to selling out Sydney’s prestigious Enmore Theatre seven times over, and in Brisbane he’s gone from doing two shows at The Tivoli on last year’s run to the cavernous Brisbane Entertainment Centre this time around – quite a jump in stature by anybody’s reckoning.

“Yeah, the thing is that The Tivoli sold out so quickly we could have sold it a few more times – that’s the only difference, we could have done this last year,” Jefferies reasons. “With the way the tours happen some towns I spend a bit longer in because I’ve got family there, so I spend a little longer in Perth and a little longer in Sydney because all my family’s there and I bring my kid over. Then everywhere else I just do one night or two nights, and Brisbane’s such a good-selling place for me that we decided to do half the Entertainment Centre. If I sell it out – if I sell every ticket, which is like 7,000 tickets – it’ll be the biggest show of my career, on a Monday night in Brisbane! There’s been other towns where I’ve sold more tickets – like in Sydney I’ve nearly sold out seven shows, but each individual show isn’t that big – so it’s quite bizarre that Brisbane on a Monday will be my biggest show ever. It will be good, we’ll have big screens up and everything and I hear it’s quite a good venue.”

And despite never having lived in Queensland in the past he has a familial affiliation with the State, which naturally extends into the world of Rugby League.

“I spent all my childhood summers in Brisbane – my grandmother lived there,” he continues. “My father was born in Roma and went to school with [NRL legend] Arthur Beetson, and I follow Queensland in State Of Origin. Even though I was a Sydney boy I always followed Queensland in State Of Origin, because when I was four or five my dad would be following Queensland, so I supported along with him. Also I supported the North Sydney Bears and they always had Queensland players in them for some reason – there was that whole era of Gary Larson and Billy Moore who played in State Of Origin all the time, and Peter Jackson. A lot of the top players for Queensland were North Sydney Bears players, and New South Wales only ever had the occasional one like David Fairleigh or Greg Florimo or someone like that. Anything the Bears was up to was all that I cared about. My big dream in life is that I’ll make enough money that I’ll buy the Bears back into the NRL. I haven’t watched a game since [they merged with Manly]. I’ll do a Russell Crowe and bring them back, and none of this fucking bullshit like the Central Coast Bears which they suggested – none of that bullshit! They’ll be playing at North Sydney Oval – Bear Park – with the Moreton Bay fig trees, that’s what will be happening.

“I think I’m one of the only few people who are thinking this way – I know John Singleton was for a little while, but then he gave up, so I think I might be the richest person with the idea of bringing the Bears back. I think I’m the North Sydney Bears’ last chance. And it probably won’t happen – let me just say that I’m not looking at this as a plausible thing to do – but it might happen, you don’t need that much. You just need about 40 million in the bank, and as soon as I’ve got 40 I’m in – it’s going to take a lot more shows, and I’m going to have to sell this show out in Brisbane, but as soon as I can I’m bringing the Bears back. I’ll just get Greg Florimo in to coach them and Gary Larson will do fitness training and I’ll just hang out with them all day. And I’ll bring Matt Seers in to do all the drug tests.” 

"I’ll do a Russell Crowe and bring them back, and none of this fucking bullshit like the Central Coast Bears which they suggested – none of that bullshit!"

You can tell by the nature of these reminiscences that Jefferies still feels a close affinity with Australia and Australian culture despite being away from our shores for so long, and he attests that the country means far more to him than just another market for his comedy.

“Australia’s very important to me,” he admits. “I was doing good numbers in the UK and not selling anything in Australia and I used to get a little bit disgruntled about it, but three years ago I just started selling tickets in Australia and even if I didn’t have family there it’s a good enough market that I’d come back every year anyway. Initially I was only coming back because of my parents and to see the family once a year, but now a big part of my year is coming back to Australia and doing that big tour.

“I kinda dig that I got popular in Australia without any fucking TV. You know what – I used to beg ‘em. I used to beg TV and say, ‘Please, please put me on The Footy Show, I’ll be ever so good’. And it was the same with festivals; ‘Please can I play the Melbourne [Comedy] Festival, please, please, I’d love to play the Melbourne Festival’. Well you can put this in print – the Melbourne Festival can suck my fucking dick. I’m going to sell more tickets in Melbourne than any other person on their fucking festival book and they can fuck right off. I used to just beg and beg and beg, so it feels good that I did it without the television and I did it without the festival – there’s a sense of accomplishment there that I did it just through people digging what I did. That feels a lot better, it really does.”

It’s hard to pinpoint the exact reason for Jefferies’ sudden acceptance here; he himself believes it’s partly a by-product of the technological revolution.

“I think it was YouTube, which is weird because I’ve never used YouTube myself and I didn’t put any of the clips up,” he ponders. “And I tell you what, I’ve got a big Australian following in London – when I was in London I started doing these solo shows and it was all Australians in the audience. Everyone’s in London from 18-27 – they’re all there getting wasted and that’s when they can get their work permits – and eventually it all ends and they go back to Australia, they knock up some broad and have a family and get a normal job. But somewhere in those years between 18 and 27 we all go and get fucked up in London – which I think is a unique thing – but then they come back and I’m like a little unique piece of London that they remember; I think that had a bit to do with it.

“But I dunno, I couldn’t be happier with it anyway. I think one day when I’m an old fella that I’ll probably retire back there to Australia – I’ll be like an elephant. I think I’ll go back there to die. Elephants go back to where they were born to die – I don’t know why – but I think that’s what I’ll do, I’ll be like, ‘Alright, time to die, I’ll go back to Sydney’. I’ll go buy a place in Sydney and just sit around, and I’ll talk about my Hollywood career in a nursing home; (old man’s voice) ‘I was in Hollywood’. ‘Sure you were.’ ‘Agggh, you can fuck off!’ I can just see myself as a cantankerous old cunt going, ‘I once played Carnegie Hall!’ and everyone else going, ‘You’re full of shit!’ And I’ll be, like, ‘The only Australians who played Carnegie Hall in that 20 years was me and Peter Allen and if you people are calling me a liar you can fuck off!’ And they’ll be, ‘Who’s Peter Allen?’ That’s how it will end for me, I tell ya! My son is already an Australian citizen and he’ll probably spend his 20-27 period getting fucked up in Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane or something, and then he’ll come back and marry some American slapper and have kids with her, that’s how his life will be. And at some point he’ll go, ‘Okay, we’ll go visit dad in Sydney’, and he’ll come over here and I’ll just be a fucking mess, just shitting myself and telling everyone about how awesome I was. I’ll have dementia and I’ll be sitting in a corner just saying over and over again, ‘Melbourne Comedy Festival can suck my dick!’”

"Well you can put this in print – the Melbourne Festival can suck my fucking dick."

Jefferies’ rise to fame hasn’t come without its fair share of controversy. His aggressive style and faux-bogan demanour hides an intelligence which often contextualises seemingly grim or profane material, a point often missed by his many detractors. For example, his 2014 Australian tour contained some material that many deemed misogynistic, a fact that doesn’t faze the comic in the slightest.

“People were saying I’m a misogynist? Well this is my point – I feel like I’ve been misogynistic for years, and it’s taken this long for people to notice it onstage, which just proves that you really have to keep repeating yourself until women listen, hey?” he chuckles. “Nah, what it is is that they’re just jokes. Last year I was in a relationship – and I still am – and I’d just had a child, so of course the battle between males and females, or women and men, was what I was going through, and that was what I talked about.

“Also, I’m a person whose been dumped by every girl I’ve gone out with, I had a very, very difficult relationship with my mother – who I believe was too hard on me, and that shaped my whole life – and if you met a female comic who said that her father had been hard on her and she’d been fucked over by every man she’d ever dated, we’d go, ‘Ah, that’s gonna be some funny stuff!’ No one would go, ‘Agh, she’s a man hater!’ and then start calling the fucking police about it, we’d just go, ‘Ah, this is why she doesn’t like men’. I’m up there onstage going, ‘I’ve had my troubles with women and this is why’, and instead of saying, ‘I’m sorry you’ve had this life, I’m sorry people treated you that way’, people just go, ‘You’re a bastard for having feelings!’ Fuck them!

“You know what I’m saying, it’s just jokes! Not only jokes, but I give you a reason and I give you a whole cause and effect about why the joke was written. It’s not like I’m just a racist who’s standing up there going, ‘Fuck black people!’, I’m, like, ‘I had a problem with a woman and this is what happened’ and people still go ‘You can’t do that’. Why not? It’s my life, it’s what happened! I’m not taking random pot shots at people – the only people that I really get into are normally relatives of mine or girlfriends of mine, it’s their problem, not yours!”

A lot of Jefferies routines cover ‘taboo’ topics such as sex, drugs and religion, or even hot-button issues such as gun control in the US of A – does he enjoy pushing the boundaries with his material?

“I enjoy riling people up,” Jefferies admits. “I don’t push the boundaries for the sake of pushing the boundaries. I’ve never written a joke with the intent of, ‘Oh, this is going to upset people!’ I’ve never written a joke thinking, ‘Okay, what’s the edgy way of talking about this?’ I just do the jokes, but I do enjoy people who write in letters of hate or storm out of my shows – there’s something about me that thinks that that’s when I’m doing my job right.

“It’s very bizarre though – let’s say on this tour of Australia that 40 or 50 thousand people are going to come and see me for the whole tour – you think, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of people who like me in this world’. And there is, but the reality is that two million people in Australia have seen what I do – they’ve actually physically watched it on the internet or television, or someone’s showed them a recording or something – that means that at least a million people in Australia fucking hate me! It’s bizarre when you know that and you’re walking down the street. Most of the things that are written to me when people write me letters are about how much they fucking hate me and what a douchebag I am, but when I walk the street the only people who stop me are the ones saying how much they like me – so that means that wherever I walk, for every person who stops and tells me they love me there’s other people walking by thinking, ‘There’s that asshole!’ If you’re sitting in a restaurant you just can’t think about it – if you think about it you’ll just upset yourself – but sitting in a restaurant you can see people whispering to each other, ‘There’s that fuckwit!’ The fact is, when I die there will be people who think, ‘Good!’” he laughs uproariously. “They’ll think, ‘Good, he’s dead. Finally!’”

Jefferies has often name-checked the late, great comedian George Carlin as a big influence on his work – has he also been drawn to other comedians who push the envelope with their stand-up?

“I liked a lot of other stuff that didn’t [push the envelope] – one of my favourite comedians was a guy called Brian Regan and he doesn’t swear at all. George Carlin was the one for me who was a really big influence – a lot of people throw Bill Hicks around, but I was never really into Bill Hicks, I thought he was overrated. There we go, there’s another 500 people who hate me now,” he smiles. “I just didn’t like it when people talked as if he was a God or something. He is good, he’s alright, but I think once you watched Carlin it’s very hard to watch Hicks. But I used to go anytime that Anthony Morgan would tour – Anthony Morgan was a big deal to me. I don’t know what he does with his life now – I think he lives in Coffs Harbour or something like that – but I’s like to put a message out; ‘Anthony Morgan, if you’re reading this give me a call and you can do the support slot in Brisbane’. I would love to work with him once – that would be ace. I’m not going to give him the main spot – I don’t know how good he is anymore – but I loved Anthony Morgan as a kid.

"Most of the things that are written to me when people write me letters are about how much they fucking hate me and what a douchebag I am."

 

“But then also I used to watch a lot of [‘80s ABC live comedy show] The Big Gig, and to this day if someone brings a guitar onstage I’m, like, ‘Grrrr’. It’s just not for me, so I never really liked the Doug Anthony Allstars. I liked it when people do impersonations and characters and stuff, so I liked Glynn Nicholas – I thought Glynn Nicholas was very funny. Maybe I was just a young kid so him doing the cop character and Pate Biscuit maybe that just sang for me being a child, but I used to howl at that guy. Then like strangely enough the last thing I’m doing before I travel to Australia for this trip is I’m going to go and see Dame Edna Everage live in LA – it’s meant to be his/her last tour or something like that – but I’m actually going with Dr. Drew [Pinsky] who’s a very famous TV doctor over here, me and him are going. He’s the number one specialist doctor in the world on addiction, and he does Celebrity Rehab and all these TV shows, and strangely enough me – who’s openly talked about taking drugs onstage and all that kinda stuff – has become friends with this guy who’s this rehab doctor, and me and him are going to watch a drag queen in LA together. It’s a weird mix. And the thing is I don’t think Dr. Drew knows who it is, I just said, ‘I’m going to a comedy show, do you want to come with me? It’s this famous Australian dude’, and he goes, ‘What is it?’ and I said, ‘It’s this 80-year-old dude who dresses up as a woman and sings songs and stuff’ and he’s, like, ‘Alright, if you say so’. Arguably they say that on the world scene I’m the biggest selling Australian comedian – which sounds really arrogant – and I always have to say, ‘No, I’m not! There’s this 80-year-old guy who dresses like a woman who’s still more popular than me!’”

Each time Jefferies returns home he showcases all new material – obviously he can’t give away too much, but is there a theme or gist to the new show that he’s on the verge of bringing to Australia?

“I stopped naming the tours, because when I did the Bare tour last year – which I think was originally called Day Streaming or something like that – I did the routine and then 20 minutes of material that was just for Australia,” he recounts. “Every continent’s slightly different. All I can tell you is that you won’t be hearing any jokes that I did last year – it will all be new stuff. Obviously at the moment there will be a lot of talk about my kid, because I’ve got a two-year-old and that’s what you talk about. But then there will be some other stories; celebrity namedropping stories, and a little bit of social commentary on certain things, as always.

“And when I’m in Australia there’s certain jokes that I can only do once a year, and sometimes I do repeat some of the Australian jokes – I wrote a brilliant piece last year on show bags, and I might do that again because I can’t do it anywhere else. I did it for three weeks in Australia and I came back to America and no one knows what fucking show bags are! So when I get back to Australia I get excited and start talking about meat pies, Berocca and show bags all the time, I don’t know why. I become very Seinfeld-y when I get back to Australia, and start talking about little things that I notice – little observations that I don’t do in other countries very much.

“In saying that, I think there will be some other things come up Australia-wise; I’m doing a lot of dates on this tour, just because I decided I’d do shows in places I wanted to visit. I’m doing Cairns because I wanted to go to the Great Barrier Reef, I’m doing Alice Springs so I can see Uluru, I’m going to Darwin because I’ve never been to Darwin. It’s going to be fun, I want to take the kid to the Barrier Reef and show him the fish and all that type of stuff. Maybe get a helicopter ride over the big rock, I dunno. What I do know is that the Australian dollar is at a seven-year low or something, which does my fucking head in – I come back to do shows and the bloody dollar’s plummeted, that’s gonna screw me! But all I know is that I’m going to come back to Australia once a year until you guys stop wanting me to come. People might read this interview and go, ‘We don’t want him anymore, we’ll take the 80-year-old in the wig back’.”

Of the movies Jefferies mentioned earlier that are in various stages of production, purportedly one of them is a strangely-titled affair named Me And My Mates Vs The Zombie Apocalypse, alongside fellow Aussie funny man Greg Fleet.

“Yeah, me and Fleety did one,” he tells. “After Legit I had a couple of weeks off , so I went down and did this zombie flick in Canberra – I don’t know how that will go, I don’t even know if it will be released or what’s happening with it. It might be good, I dunno. It was fun to do – I had a lot of fun making it, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to turn out good. Probably the funnest movie ever was the making of Cannonball Run II – you can tell they were having a good time. I did another movie just recently with [NZ comic] Rhys Darby – me and Rhys have been mates for years – and we did this movie with David Hasselhoff. It was me and Rhys and Ken Jeong from The Hangover, we did this movie with the Hoff – it was about our three characters trying to kill David Hasselhoff. I won’t give away too much, but that was the whole premise. They asked if I wanted to do the movie and I said ‘Oh, alright’, and then they go, ‘Oh, and you’re doing an American accent’, and I said, ‘Why?’ and they go, ‘Well they just cast Rhys Darby and Rhys can’t do an American accent’. And I went, ‘Who said I could do one?’ So I did this whole movie with an American accent, so that’s the one I’m really curious to see because it might be horrible – I might do the worst American accent in the history of American accents. Or it might be really good, I have no idea. People might be, like, ‘Fuck, that guy’s amazing! He can do accents!’ But I don’t think I can. I feel less funny with an American accent, I’ll tell you that much. I was the straight man in that movie anyway so I didn’t have a lot of jokes – it was mainly Rhys and Ken doing all the funny stuff, and I was the straight guy. But it will be alright – I got to hang out with Hasselhoff and Justin Bieber was in a scene, that was interesting. Hulk Hogan does a cameo. It was a weird thing to do, but it might be good – I dunno.

"There’s not a single thing in the world that I’m qualified to do except for the job that I’ve got already."

“Since Legit happened – and I know Legit was good because I wrote it, I don’t wanna seem arrogant but at least I had more faith in it because I could see it all in my head because I was creating all of it – but sometimes with acting jobs you just rock up and it’s, like, ‘Alright, let’s do it!’ People show you where to stand and where to walk and you just do it – it’s a really bullshit job. It’s not boring, it’s really interesting. I love acting and I’d love to be a movie star, but I don’t know if I’m good at it or shit at it – all I know is that I don’t think there’s too many people who are really good at it. I just feel like everyone’s bluffing their way through, like they’re all frauds. There’s three guys in theatre who know how to cry on cue and the rest of us are all just bumping into each other and hoping for the best.”

Back in his younger days in Australia Jefferies studied Performing Arts before he moved onto stand-up – did he always felt destined to be entertaining people?

“I was just killing time before I became a stand-up,” he admits of his studies. “I always wanted to do comedy, but when I was 18 I couldn’t tell my parents, ‘Oh, I’m going to be a comedian’ – they wanted me to go to university or something. Even if it was just a fucking TAFE course my parents would have been happy, but I had to be doing some kind of course that furthered my existence, and me going down to comedy clubs didn’t sound like that type of thing. I didn’t really start until I was 22 or 23 and by then you’re your own person a bit more, but when you’re 18 and still living at home you have to go do something, so I went and studied musical theatre. It was pretty cool actually. I don’t regret any of it. I never finished – I had about three or four months left and I would have got my degree, and then I got a job to be Gary Who’s support act. I still love Gary for giving me my first gig. So I became Gary Who’s support act and I toured around all of the gold mining towns with him, and went, ‘Fuck it, I’ll just be a comedian! Fuck it!’ I told my parents that I didn’t finish school and they were all, ‘Noooo!’ It was a bloody degree in theatre – it wasn’t like there was a job waiting for me at the end, like I could just start working at the hospital.

“I tell you this, the people at WAAPA – the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, where Hugh Jackman went and Lisa McCune went and all these people – I just want to say this to them; ‘You didn’t check my high school certificate!’ I didn’t get good enough marks to get into university, there was an entry level mark and they just never checked! So even if I did graduate it would have been a sham. In fact I don’t know where one piece of educational diplomas or anything exist – I couldn’t find my high school certificate now. If I didn’t have this for a job I wouldn’t be qualified to do anything. There’s not a single thing in the world that I’m qualified to do except for the job that I’ve got already. I couldn’t work as a line cook or anything – I could work at McDonalds, and I was a fairly decent bartender, but that’s all I could do. I’m not trained to do anything else but stand-up comedy. And what I always found weird about standup comedy is that people seem to listen to us sometimes like we’re prophets or something, like we’re the ones speaking truth about society – we’re a bunch of fucking morons who didn’t go to university and have no real education giving half-baked ideas about news stories that we read on the internet. Comedians are really the last people you should listen to – listen to professors and people who’ve read up on things.”