Smiling Assassin

Josh Thomas is a Douchebag. And that's straight from the horse's mouth. Not having put on a festival show last year, the Queensland-born comedian has had an extra-long time to think about the thrust of his new show, and the title. The crux of the show is that he's worried he's becoming a little bit of a douchebag – hence the title – which Thomas says raised surprisingly few eyebrows when he announced it to his producers.

“I kind of thought when I emailed the producers and said 'I want to call it Douchebag they might be worried, but they were like, 'This is okay',” Thomas says. “And I went on The Project not long ago, and I was not sure whether they'd be able to say the title of the show and they did this intro that was like, 'Douchebag. Douchebag means this. And douchebag douchebag douchebag douchebag'. And in the background they had a little diagram of a literal douchebag, which is not what I immediately think of when I hear the word douchebag. People don't imagine little bags you use to clean your orifices any more. That word has changed.”

The show, he says, is all about some of the immoral choices the young comedian feels he's made in the past couple of years and the worry that he's “going to become evil”.

“For example, right,” he says, “once, I was holding this one-day old chicken, her name was Melinda, and I was thinking how beautiful and fragile and perfect she is and I thought 'I could just crush you to death'. And I was worried that was the first step into me becoming a bit 'dungeony', you know?”

Thomas's recent absence from stand-up can be attributed mainly to the fact he was penning a six-episode sitcom for the ABC, Please Like Me, which he also stars in. It's due to premiere on ABC2 on February 28 at 9.30pm. Thomas plays an awkward, complex bundle of neuroses called Josh, who owns a cavoodle called John and shares a flat with his mate Tom Ward – an only slightly skewed version of himself.

“I'm just playing a more tired version of me, because I was tired the whole time we were shooting,” he says. “So, that sounds good, doesn't it? Put that in the article: 'While Josh was acting in this show he was very tired'. That'll boost the viewership. I'm in every scene almost; it's like a comedian-led show like Curb Your Enthusiasm. So it was a lot of long days. The cast is good; we have Caitlin Stasey in it, whom people seem to like. And my dog's in it. That's pretty exciting. I try and work him into everything – I'm like a little stage mum.”

As our interview's about to wrap up, Thomas says: “Can you just give me a second to reach over and grab my chinos?” – turns out he's been multitasking, ironing this whole time, and he's on a tight schedule to get to a function. “I'm ironing these chinos because the invitation I got said 'smart casual' but then in brackets it said 'most people will be in suits'. What's that? Just a passive-aggressive comment in parentheses. I could have organised a suit, no worries! But, they told me smart casual, so that's what they're getting – camel chinos with a button-up shirt.”