'I'll Still Be Laughing At Fart Jokes On My Death Bed': What Gives Anne Edmonds The Lols

Battling a cold in Brisbane, comedian Anne Edmonds sums up her sense of humour simply. “I'd say [my sense of humour is] fairly dark and I'm constantly looking for what's going on underneath the surface of things that look good,” Edmonds says. 

“I think it comes from a healthy bit of cynicism when I was growing up, in my family, and just like a storytelling kind of background. It was always in my family if you had a tantrum, that was fine, but you would have to be aware that it would be retold as a funny story by someone in your family in a public environment.” 

She was drawn to pursuing comedy as a career because it’s long been part of how she relates to other people, whether family or friends. 

“I guess it was a skill that I needed in my family – how we interact with each other is trying to get a laugh. Then through school, I noticed that it was something I could do and that people liked. I love being liked, so I kept doing it. It probably stems from wanting approval probably – [making people laugh] is my way of getting it.” 

Edmonds is perhaps most widely recognised as Helen Bidou in Get Krack!n’, the erratic host of Shopper’s Korner. But she’s also an acclaimed stand-up, who has been nominated for the MICF Award for the last four years, and won Best Of The Fest at Sydney Comedy Festival last year. She also co-hosts weekly sketch comedy podcast, The Grub, with Greg Larsen and Ben Russell. 

The Grub consistently makes Edmonds laugh – she goes so far as to say it’s an almost “therapeutic” act to be in a room with Larsen and Russell for hours at a time, trying to make each other crack up. 

“Whenever I'm in that room with those two guys and we're improvising, that's probably the most I've laughed in a long time. Because all sorts of stuff comes up that you don't expect. It’s a good three hours of laughter once a week, which is really refreshing.

“I think the absurdity of every day, and especially at the moment, the world is not a great place, so I think having that little bit of like-minded time with two other comedians just laughing about it all or getting angry or whatever we want to do is therapeutic.”

Comedy has also been a way through which Edmonds has processed difficult experiences, like break-ups, channelling that pain into her storytelling.

“I guess I've gotten through most break-ups in my life by eventually turning them into stories on stage, and that seems to be my way of dealing with loss or something,” Edmonds says. “[I’d] be upset about it for a while and then objectively look at it and think, 'What's funny here? What might other people have felt that have also been through this kind of thing?'

“I think often my characters as well will manifest some sort of pain that I maybe can't talk about myself or sense of isolation or frustration – they play that out on my behalf.”

Edmonds lands on this throughline between the things that make her laugh – from Julia Davis’ black comedy Nighty Night to fellow Australian stand-ups Danielle Walker and Becky Lucas. “Any personal stories of humiliation I always find funny. I've never not found that funny, so that's probably where I head towards and what I do myself as well.”

But working as a comedian for the last ten years, including on her 2017 ABC series, The Edge Of The Bush, means that it takes being pushed further and further to make Edmonds laugh. 

"For me, in comedy, it sort of needs to be really dark or edgy often for me to laugh at it."

“I think being involved in comedy and having to watch comedy, you know, sometimes three or four nights a week, you get a bit tired of hearing the same thing,” Edmonds says. “So, as a comedian, I've been feeling that I need to be pushed to the brink to laugh, whereas a normal person in the community probably just has a nice time laughing at lots of different things. For me, in comedy, it sort of needs to be really dark or edgy often for me to laugh at it. So that's kind of a bit sickly and unhealthy.”

That doesn’t mean there aren’t still childish things that make Edmonds laugh.

“Farts and poo are still — I know I'm an adult now, but it's like, even on our podcast, The Grub, we were doing it two or three days ago, and we were making fart noises and I was still laughing. I feel like I'll be on my deathbed and I'll still be laughing at that. I just can't move on from it. It's really pathetic – I wish I could, but I can't.”

After touring to MICF and Brisbane Festival, Edmonds is scheduled to bring this year’s show, What’s Wrong With You?, to the Sydney Opera House next month. Her Sydney dates arrive just a week after the premiere of The Real Dirty Dancing on Channel 7 – a reality show where Edmonds, Jessica Rowe, Hugh Sheridan and more learn the film’s dance routines in the exact locations from the 1987 rom-com. 

What’s Wrong With You?, she says, speaks to “the world we're living in, the way that people think they're right on all sides of politics, the lack of nuance that's around at the moment”. 

There’s no way for a stand-up to avoid, in some way, using their comedy to respond to the fractured world we live in now. “You live in the world, so it naturally feeds into everything you do.

“Whether you address it directly or whether you're doing a character or whatever, that person lives in the world we're in, so it comes out, for sure.”

The Real Dirty Dancing airs from 30 Sep on Channel 7.