FORMER Tathra resident Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall is making enthusiastic waves in the world of comedy.
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He is a member of Stupid Old Studios, has a web series on ABC iview called Australia Think Tank, writes material for Channel 10’s The Project and series 3 of Mad as Hell on ABC TV, and has performed in New York, Taiwan, and at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, and Adelaide Fringe Festival.
“It's one of the few things I care about,” he said ahead of a string of shows for this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival.
“I realised when I was finishing my engineering degree that I was avoiding doing my classwork by watching endless amounts of stand-up, and I just had the thought that I could probably do it if I tried.”
He’s been performing since late 2008 and it wasn’t an easy task taking a finely tuned sense of humour to a room full of critics ready to pounce on a stutter, or a bead of fear laced sweat from a performer’s brow.
“You just need to get on stage and die so that you can feel it and then not be so afraid of it.
“I haven’t entirely lost the fear, I hate the idea that people would pay to see me and that it would be bad…. and I don’t want to suck.”
The Melbourne based comic was born in Aberdeen, Scotland to a Canadian mother and Australian father before moving to Quebec and later to the Bega Valley at the age of 13 where he completed his schooling at Bega High School.
He takes from a wide range of influences for his sets, and is aware of his audience and what makes them laugh.
“Some people love to be offended, some people love to be enlightened by some political point, but mostly I reckon people just likes it cause of the lols.
“I talk about stuff from religion, to making a choice between coke and coke zero, to talking about how I think pigs have human eyes, to just something that happened to me on the street, and I have a 3 minute bit where I just describe having a gigantic urethra.”
His work with television means he’s paid to be funny every day, a dream of all hard working comics.
“It’s great, it's amazing to have any kind of paid work for a comedian, especially where I get to work with cool people and write jokes and it keeps me doing what I want to be doing,” he said.
His show for this year’s festival is titled Alasdair Tremblay-Birchall and his Amazing Disappearing Enthusiasm and will run from the March 26 to April 19 at the Forum Theatre: Ladies Lounge in Melbourne’s CBD.
