Road Hog

Watch any of the plethora of reality shows clogging up your TV screens pretty much any night of the week and it seems the world and their pets all want to be TV stars. Dave Hughes sat behind the desk on Network Ten’s The Project for nearly five years – sitting pretty, so to speak – yet he left the role in 2013 and opted for the open stand-up comedy road instead.

“I love stand-up – I’ve always loved it,” an obviously enthusiastic Dave Hughes. “There’s nothing like the immediacy and the thrill you get from having a good gig or when you’re on a roll, you’re on a wave and you haven’t fallen off. I know that sounds corny but you’re riding those laughs; it’s a joy. Nothing beats it. I mean television and radio can be lucrative in this country and it raises people’s awareness of you, and I love the fact that that happened over the years. But given the choice of one job for the rest of my life, stand-up comedy would be it.

“I love stand-up – I’ve always loved it,”

“This is the most I’ve ever been on the road really and I love it. I love the freedom of just doing gigs all over the place and not having regular places that I am every day of the week,” a reference particularly to his decade-plus of pre-dawn preparations for his #1-rating Nova Melbourne breakfast shift. “So I’ve been travelling, obviously, a lot and really enjoying seeing parts of Australia I’ve not seen before and I was overseas for a couple of months as well and loved that too.”

Hughes is back in Australia fresh from stints at Montreal, Canada’s Just for Laughs Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and London’s West End.

“I haven’t been overseas practically ever,” he admits. “I’ve done a few days here and there over the years – but I had two months to sort of settle in to not speaking specifically to Australian audiences, which I really enjoyed. I did a gala in Montreal – felt good actually – loved LA and three weeks in London and such. You realise there’s a wide world that’s never heard of me or any of my jokes you could play to, so… gets me thinking. I loved walking into The Improv in LA, no Aussies in the room, and getting a good laugh. Initially they were looking at me thinking, ‘What the fuck’s he doing?’ Maybe I don’t look like the most polished performer when I first walk on stage but they were laughing pretty quickly, which was handy, obviously.”

“You really do get a lot of material – it’s easy. I was saying to my wife, I’ve been home a couple of weeks and haven’t written anything down for a few days, but when you’re travelling, I dunno, it just fires off your imagination for whatever reason, so I need to remember I can do that when I’m sitting at home as well. 

“I’ve never really had a theme but basically where I’m at in stand-up normally reflects where I’m at in my life – there’s no doubt about that.”