Brits Flattered That We've Kept The Union Jack On Our Flag

The acclaimed stand-up comedian Jeff Green was a household name in the UK when he transplanted to Melbourne with his young family.

Today Green’s instantly recognisable across Australian media culture. But the Brit still feels like an outsider – and, ironically, that’s his greatest asset.

Green is touring Australia with two different shows – he’s taking the hit All Guns Blazing to Perth but staging the fresh Happy Hour everywhere else. The situation is “a bit unique”, he admits. “I haven’t played Perth Fringe [World], so I can run my old show there, but I think the reality will be half-and-half of the old show and then me trying material for the new show.”

As Brits, we don’t know why you still feel a fondness so many years later.

In All Guns Blazing Green targets (among other things) “Australian pollies”. As an Englishman, Green is bemused by Tony Abbott’s controversial (or, at least, “anachronistic”) decision to knight Prince Philip. “We’re flattered that you still have the Union Jack in the corner [of the Australian flag], I suppose. [But] as Brits, we don’t know why you still feel a fondness so many years later. Then, of course, we’re used to Australians surging towards republicanism and cronyism in equal measure, depending on who’s in power. So I don’t think anything fazes the Brits any more, except that it’s still a live issue – which is probably the weirdest thing for us to get our heads ‘round.” In contrast, Happy Hour is about Green’s “pursuit of happiness”.

The Northern lad from Chester studied Chemical Engineering at uni. He fell into comedy “purely by chance” after a mate took him to London’s Comedy Store to cheer him up (“I’d been dumped by a girl”). It was his vocational epiphany. “The minute I walked through the club and sat down and laughed heartily at the comedian, I went, ‘This is what I want to do.’” Green’s mum cried when he told her. “She didn’t even know what a stand-up comedian was. She thought they were drug-addicted self-loathers.” Green would appear on TV. He actually competed seriously in Celebrity MasterChef, which was “terrifying” yet “life-changing”: “I went from being a can-opener to a cook, not a chef – but I’m not a bad cook now.” Green is also a best-selling author, with his A–Z “survival guide” series (beginning with The A-Z Of Living Together).

"She thought [comedians] were drug-addicted self-loathers.”

Green first toured Australia in 1996 with pal Jo Brand – and loved it. He’d marry a Melbourne woman. They moved Down Under from London at the end of 2008. “I went, ‘Yeah, sod my career in England (laughs), I’ll start again!’” The experience could even inspire Green’s next tome, The A–Z Of Australia. “Those books work with me being an outsider – and often that’s where my comedy comes from, being an outsider looking in: you can see the jokes that people can’t ‘see’ because they’re habituated to them. I always find the best comedy for me is when I’m looking at subjects that I’m not a part of.”