A Lot O'Loughlin

Fiona O'Loughlin wanted to change things up – and her new show, The Divine Miss O, provided the perfect opportunity. “I kind of wanted to take a sharp left,” she explains. “I've been doing a personal show for the last few years. I love it, but I thought, 'I really need to lighten up.'”

She stumbled across the perfect premise for The Divine Miss O while chatting to her housemate, fellow comedian Joel Creasey. “I was moaning to him one day, saying, 'Oh, I'm getting old, I'm getting so irrelevant.' So he said, 'Why don't you become a gay icon?' and I said, 'Well, make me one!'”

Creasey ended up directing the show, which is a very tongue-in-cheek look at the nature of celebrity, cataloguing O'Loughlin's fictional attempt to reinvent herself as a gay icon. “I'm kind of tongue-in-cheek marketing it to the gays and get the pink dollar,” she laughs. “It's very camp and fun. It's crazy.”

In particular, she's enjoying the thrill of doing something a bit different. Having built a reputation for her personal, self-exploratory brand of comedy, O'Loughlin is enjoying the thrill of song-and-dance numbers, crazy costumes and even putting together some film footage for use in the show. “It's so exciting, learning from young, talented comics,” she says, referring to Creasey's influence. “I think my style of stand-up is still what it has always been, but I think he's encouraged me to really have a laugh at myself, in a way that I never have before.”

Having performed the show at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, O'Loughlin is particularly excited about bringing it to Sydney, where she hopes the gay community will come and check it out. “Sydney, I think, I'm really going to have my debut – I'm really having a crack at entertaining a lot of gay men.”

Not that she's forsaking fans of her previous work – in fact, she's been amazed at some of the audience members who have enjoyed The Divine Miss O the most. For example, she says, there's one older couple that she sees year after year. “I don't really know them, except that I see them every year at the festival. They're well into their 60s, and the husband said, 'This is the best show ever! This is our favourite one to date!'”

Plus, O'Loughlin is thrilled that her show has become something of a family affair for a few punters. “I've had a lot of women from my generation bringing their gay sons. That's just heaven. There was a woman there the other night, about my age, and she said, 'My son really wanted to come and see you – would you mind having a photo with him? He's too shy to ask.' He was about 20. That was really sweet.”