Heard The One About The Mum With A Pacemaker?

“I was lucky in that regard with my family,” Cody says of his upbringing. “Every time we’d get together at Christmas or Easter there was people telling jokes and messing around and playing pranks on each other.  Mum got a pacemaker put in maybe 18 months ago and stopped work for a bit, and that’s all she was doing – pulling pranks on people she loves.”

In this year’s show Beard Game Strong, Cody reveals a few of those legendary family pranks – but you won’t find any spoilers here. Cody’s strong suit is spinning personal yarns about his life, his girlfriend, his housemates, his flat, his family.

“It’s funny that I get nice words about that,” he says, “because in my mind, it’s just that I’m too lazy to sit down and write. I just go out and things happen to me and I go, ‘That’s awesome, I’ll be able to tell that on stage.’ If I sit at the desk too long I get bored.”

Cody is a comic on the rise, a charismatic guy with a real mastery of stand-up that’s seen him asked to be part of a small Aussie contingent at Montreal’s prestigious Just For Laughs. He’s gigged in New York City, opened for Aussie comedy powerhouse Jim Jefferies and been part of the cast of acclaimed TV shows Kinne (with a second season airing soon) and Please Like Me. But some of his most interesting stories revolve around performing for the troops in Afghanistan and the friendship he forged with several members of the SAS.

“I’ve become mates with a bunch of those guys, they’re good to hang out with. My girlfriend’s a super-greenie, left-wing chick and she doesn’t understand any form of violence, and gets upset by it – and I’m a big fan,” laughs Cody, who’s also a UFC devotee.  “So we clash on that stuff. But any time I’m over in WA [where the SAS are based] and I’m meeting up with the guys or they surprise me somewhere else in the country  – they’re pretty good at that, at turning up somewhere and you don’t know about it – they all tell me how they’re going to wind her up when they meet her.”

Cody describes his tough mates as inspirational, and it’s not hard to see why. He was telling one of them how he couldn’t be arsed going to the gym, and the soldier suggested just going for a run. “I was like, ‘I can’t be fucked even doing that,’” Cody says. “And he was like, ‘Well once I ran two kilometres carrying 70 kilos on my back and I’d been shot in the shoulder.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, fair enough, I’ll have a run.’ They’re the best personal trainers ever.”