I hope you're having an excellent new year. I just wanted to do a bit of a status update and response to an enquiry I've had many, many times since publishing The Self Made Stand Up. That question is "Do you have an audiobook version? When will you do the audiobook version?" I get it, trust me. I'm also an audiobook guy.

I’m going to warn you now before I start writing that this blog is going to have questions, not answers. I’m just exploring an idea, wondering out loud. I don’t have any practical…

I'm going to warn you now before I start writing that this blog is going to have questions, not answers. I'm just exploring an idea, wondering out loud. I don't have any practical tips or life advice today. Sorry! Still here? Hi. What I've been wondering about is the level of predictability in live comedy performance. As I've mentioned here…

As 2025 draws to a close, and I can't believe how quickly that is happening, I'd just like to make a recommendation for what I consider to be the best comedy special of the year. Well... two, actually. I'll only ever recommend stuff you can see for free, so I won't be plugging anything locked behind a Netflix or Disney paywall.

What could stand-up comedy possibly have to learn from the world of architecture? On the surface, I think we'd all agree that the answer is "not much." But when performing comedy becomes addictive and you become obsessed with learning the craft, you find inspiration coming from interesting and unlikely sources. Let's look at a 1896 quote from Louis Sullivan, the "father of skyscrapers" and mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright :

When I discussed the topic of Clean Comedy in that book of mine it was in the context of the choices a fledgling comic will make in deciding what kind of comedian they plan to be. I discussed the divide between "clean" and "dirty" comedy, with the implication being that working clean is a pragmatic choice that allows appeal to the greatest possible market, but having a NSFW act might be a truer unfiltered approach to the rock'n'roll of contemporary comedy.

Lately there's been a lot of discussion here about the writing and creative process, but today I'd like to focus on the stagecraft element of stand up comedy. In particular I'd like to share an easy tip that can turbocharge your performance and set your set up for the best possible results. In the world of competitive Chess there's a lot of emphasis on opening moves.

Plotter or Pantser? These are the main types of people who write literature. Some meticulously plan their novels (Plotters) while others like Steven King talk about the magic of writing as they go, just as delighted to see where the characters and circumstances take their stories to as the readers will be. These writers call themselves Pantsers because their process is "flying by the seat of their pants."

Earlier this week I discussed the value of ideas and how to balance originality with tropes and concepts we find relatable. The question I've heard most often since - and this is probably the most asked of all questions related to comedy - is where we can look to generate these ideas. Today I'd like to list a few ways we can get started with joke ideas.

There's a notion that pervades so much of society that it seems banal. Under scrutiny, though, it feels crazy just how integral it is to every single aspect of modern life. I'm talking about the belief that an idea has the most potential value of anything in the galaxy. The widespread suspicion is that for everyone in society, one good idea is the only thing standing between them and unlimited success.

I'd like to discuss another way in which stand up comedy is different from other art forms. Let's start with a statement from respected art critic Clive Bell, who said this just over a hundred years ago: The representative element in a work of artmay or may not be harmful; always it is irrelevant. For, to appreciate a work of art we need bring with us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with its emotions."

One of my favourite comedians, Anthony Jeselnik, made some observations in a podcast I heard that got me thinking. The podcast is Gettin' Better, hosted by another awesome comedian - Ron Funches. The conversation from five years ago had me thinking about how we deliberately narrow the scope of our freedom with our project to define our identities.

One of the aspects of live comedy that surprised me the most when I started was it's flexibility of format. I'd generally regarded comedy performances as a stripped-down and straightforward minimalist process in which a performer talks while we listen and laugh. Of course I was aware of skits and sketches, comedians who present in a musical format, and the "panel show" structure adapted from TV game shows, so I have to attribute my format assumptions as a personal bias because traditional stand-up performances is what I prefer.

Just as psychologists argue about whether nature (the way we are) or nurture (the effect our environment and experiences have on us) contribute more to our character, comedians have discussions about whether our comedic prowess is based more on how inherently funny we are or whether it comes from experience and learning. I've touched on this matter previously but it cannot possibly be the whole picture.

AI. You're sick of it. I'm sick of it. We're all sick of it. When it's not being wedged into parts of our life we never needed it it in, we're being asked to get excited about it by a bunch of crypto-slinging tech-bro billionaire grifters. Either that or hearing the militant grievances from artists and other workers who's role and income it's busy stealing from.

Many of my discussions with fellow comics are, like the bulk of the email I get through this site, around the actual practice of writing jokes and generating material. It seems to be the trickiest part of what we do. I rarely struggle with it but when writer's block does hit, it hits hard. I'm sharing a video that guarantees to help you with this, a YouTube video from a Channel I follow called…

August 19 is my comedy birthday, the anniversary of the first time I nervously stepped up on stage and took the mic with an intent to make people smile and laugh. In 2025 that means I've hit the 6 year milestone as a comedian. Interestingly the most recent gig I did was at the Cen Ten where I did my first set.

Talking shop with colleagues after a recent show, the topic of writing arose again. We discussed who we come up with premises, how we develop our ideas, how we find punchlines and what we do about writer's block. Writer's block. Is it a real thing? I'm not sure, but it always looms and strikes fear in our hearts. I suspect the fear and other negative symptoms that hitting a speed bump or road block induces come from a couple of different ideas, and I feel that these ideas are objectively wrong.

Once upon a time in a job I hated (and wasn't good at) my supervisor taught what he said was a brilliant strategy for delivering criticism, something he called the Feedback Sandwich. It was a strategy to deliver criticism in a way that would be received positively. "Sandwich" your negative feedback between two compliments, and your response won't be as aggressive or defensive as it could be.

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.” People debate who said it first but the quote is generally attributed to Faulkner, who was telling us that our material gets more powerful when we approach it without sentimentality and get ruthless about whether anything in it is earning it's keep. We comics like to think of ourselves as ruthless. After a night spent slaughtering sacred cows and roasting our interlocutors we might be tempted to view ourselves as savage comedy beasts.

In my debating days, using Analogies to make our points was maybe the most popular technique. This is the technique of comparing something to something else in the hopes that you'll see the similarities and accept that what's true of our compared example is also a truth about the thing we were originally talking about. It's an inductive form of reasoning.

Back in the early eighties there were a few trends that the entire world seemed to be obsessed with, and seem to have a lasting fascination today. The Rubik's Cube was one of these, and so was the book Body Language by Allan Pease. I'm not sure whether it was the first acknowledgement of communication that's not verbal, but it sure felt like it.

Whatever you do, from vocation to lifestyle choice, there's probably some kind of underlying philosophy or point of view that informs it. This can encompass processes and approaches to problem solving as well as a general attitude. I've been fortunate enough to learn and understand many of these, and it's occurred to me that they all have something to learn from that can be applied in other disciplines and areas of life.

NOTE: This is a chapter from my exciting new book The Self Made Stand-Up, which you can purchase in Australia at Amazon or through Amazon in the US, or from Barnes and Noble, or Books.By – or lots of other places that I can’t keep track of. It’s a whopping book with 68 Chapters so I don’t feel bad about previewing one of them here.

NOTE: This is a chapter from my exciting new book The Self Made Stand-Up, which you can purchase in Australia at Amazon or through Amazon in the US, or from Barnes and Noble, or Books.By - or lots of other places that I can't keep track of. It's a whopping book with 68 Chapters so I don't feel bad about previewing one of them here.