Glaswegian laugh merchant Larry Dean is currently enjoying his third visit Down Under — although he's been taking the country in increments, having only visited Adelaide and Perth on his first two forays — and after two weeks immersed in Melbourne for MICF he's gleaned enough about our audiences to know he should bring something extra in his comedic kitbag.
"I can't go up to Sydney and go, 'God, I had such a great time in Melbourne and this happened to me in Melbourne and this happened as well,' I won't get walk-outs I'll get chucked out myself, chased with pitchforks."
"I know when I come here I always think that I need to have something that's specifically about Australia so they know that I actually care that I'm here," he smiles. "Because if you ever go on stage and go, 'This is all about me now,' then people kind of look at you and think, 'I can't believe they've flown this guy out just to massage his ego for a bit.' I've got a story from here about getting caught out on the tram not having a ticket, so that's been working really well, but now I'm thinking, 'Well, that's a six- or seven-minute story, I hope I don't go back to the UK and can't use that story anymore because I enjoy doing it now.' So if it doesn't work in the UK I'll have to write it down and try and remember it for next year.
"I know I'll have to change it for Sydney too because they don't have trams there plus I'm aware of the Melbourne-Sydney rivalry — I can't go up to Sydney and go, 'God, I had such a great time in Melbourne and this happened to me in Melbourne and this happened as well,' I won't get walk-outs I'll get chucked out myself, chased with pitchforks."
His current show Out Now is a veritable laugh riot, despite dealing with some intimately personal subject matter.
"I'll have bits in the show that have not been seen before, but it's not 'new material' it's just stories that have happened since [I first wrote the show]," Dean explains, "because at the beginning of the Edinburgh Fringe I was talking about the Scottish referendum, and if I go on now in Australia talking about the Scottish referendum it would just be [adopts Aussie drawl], 'Mate, we don't give a shit!'
"The show's mainly about coming out as a homosexual, but the thing that's weird about it though is that there's loads of different characters in the show, it's not really camp — I wouldn't call it a 'gay show', unless I'm on the phone to a gay magazine then obviously I will," he laughs. "But it's not really a gay show, it's basically about me coming out and having to tell all my family and my mates, and how I don't really fit the stereotype of the 'normal homosexual' — well, not the normal homosexual man, but just the image of what people usually think when they think about what a gay man looks like. I don't talk too graphically about things because I don't want to freak people out, or maybe freak myself out — I don't have the self-esteem to know when I'm even being me, so I just try to not think about what I'm doing at any time."
