2012: A Comic Odyssey

Arj Barker is sitting alone, distracted, in the brasserie of a South Yarra hotel peering intently at his phone and pondering his routine for an upcoming TV slot. The notable lack of a minder tells me Barker truly runs the show. He looks up, apologises, and by way of explanation says, “Y'know, I have to keep it together and remember where I'm s'posed to be.”

As a much travelled stand-up comic, Barker will readily admit that life on the road telling jokes is not always a laugh. “I mean, it's awesome because I have a lot of freedom but y'know, every time I go on I feel I have to outdo myself just in case there's that one fan out there who goes, 'I dunno about that guy.'”

Hence his continued focus on the phone as he searches out hang-gliding videos and takes calls. His date with The Project that night is strictly business; namely flogging his just released DVD, Joy Harvest. “I have to nail this,” he tells me.

Recorded at Sydney's State Theatre in late 2010, Joy Harvest is Barker at his sardonic best, veering from almost serious observational banter to outright silliness. However, despite the title (or perhaps because of it) the conversation turns to darker things. Like countless other comedians, Barker frequently extracts humour from misfortune. “It's almost like alchemy. You are taking dark things, negative things and turning them into things that people will laugh at. It's like a transmutation. Maybe that's kinda the comedian's job, to make shit funny.”

However, Barker is keen to point out that he is not a hotel-dwelling depressive. “I'm a pretty upbeat person. Not extremely; but certainly on good days.” On the evidence of Joy Harvest it would be hard to disagree. “There's a lot of positivity in my show even though I'm dealing with a lot of pretty heavy stuff. The DVD does culminate in the idea that we're all being oppressed; but at the end of it all even that stuff's good for a laugh.”

Ever since he burst out of the States, picking up the Best Newcomer gong at the Edinburgh Fringe and becoming a staple on the antipodean comedy circuit, Arj Barker has carved out a reputation for being both dry and absurd. His penchant for Pythonesque ideas, like the creation of a sarcastic font or Awesome Human Theory, underlines both sides of the Barker coin. “One of the things I'm excited about is the idea of adult films where the males are, like, of average size,” he elaborates. “That's ahead of its time, I know, but it might catch on. Y'know, it might seem funny now but in a few years someone will go, 'oh shit yeah.'”

For all the silliness it doesn't take long to get Barker onto more serious topics. One of his favourite targets is mainstream news media. “The news is basically scare-based propaganda. It's war and crime and shit like that and so people are so paranoid that there's no way I could just walk up to some lady in a park and say, 'Excuse me, but would you like it if I could make your vagina feel nice?'”

Such clever juxtaposing of progressive thinking and old school misogyny is, of course, deliberate. It's part of the joke that Barker plays on himself. “I don't think I'm a misogynist or an arsehole or anything, it's more that I like to make a joke out of the idea that I'm trying to be progressive but remaining an ignorant arsehole. As long as I put the blame on me, it's cool. I wouldn't like it if the victim was anyone else but me; except if it was some insane bureaucrat or arbitrary government drone.”

Barker's recent discovery of DJing is still a source of neophyte excitement. While prompt to confess that he's no turntablist yet, his eyes clearly light up at the prospect. “It's an exciting thing to be learning something different and being part of people dancing and having a good time. I'd be crazy not to explore i. And the beauty of it is that it wouldn't interfere with my comedy because I could play my show, go out to dinner and still be early for my 2am slot.”

In between practising on the decks and honing material for Project slots and future DVDs, Barker's comic ambitions are reassuring oblique. “I like the idea that someday my jokes will become irrelevant,” he chirps. “I wanna become the Arthur C Clarke of comedy.”

In the universe of Arj, the future is now.