# Tim Minchin - Lucky To Be Here

An episode of [The Imperfects](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1476501557), 8 Oct 2023, 1 h 44 min.

Audio: https://enrichment.soundstack.com/4vjqq8/episode.flightcast.com/zm664v1rxssaqv5pgrcm82lt.mp3

Tim Minchin is an Australian comedian, actor, writer, musician, poet, composer, and songwriter. He’s probably best known for his music, his comedy, and well… his ‘Matilda: The Musical’… but has it really all been “luck”? Tim talks with Hugh, Ryan and Josh about so many different things in this fascinating chat about art and creativity, family, free-will, success, failure and the importance of taking life one level at a time. For tickets to Tim's new show, An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and His Piano, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3ZxAGVs To watch Tim perform White Wine in The Sun, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3RzwORS To purchase The Resilience Project's journals, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3RUBke7 To listen to our episode with Dr James van Cuylenburg, mentioned in this episode, follow this link: https://bit.ly/3ZFS0YA

## Transcript

[0:01] We're all imperfect, and on this podcast, I'll be chatting with a variety of interesting people who are willing to make themselves vulnerable by sharing their own struggles and imperfections.
[0:10] I have emerged out of the universe just like you have, and I am a successful musician for the same reason a murderous psychopath is a murderous psychopath, because that's what the universe spat out.
[0:25] I'm Hugh Van Kylenberg from The Resilience Project.
[0:27] And I'm Ryan Shelton from My Mum.
[0:30] And I'm Josh from Hugh's Mum.
[0:32] And this is The Imperfects.
[0:36] Here we are again.
[0:37] We're back in the studio.
[0:38] We are back in the studio, as is always.
[0:41] I just... We haven't gone anywhere.
[0:45] It's just like, yeah, here we are.
[0:48] We are starting episodes, like, clumsily as possible.
[0:51] I, well, wait till you hear this.
[0:53] Oh, God.
[0:55] Wow.
[0:55] So I just walked past.
[0:56] I have had, you know how like people say, if there's an awkward thing between people, you should just get it out and talk about it and just say if there's like a... Yeah, just name it.
[1:05] Yeah, I have just got one of the most all-time awkward situations, which I've been putting off bringing up with one of my staff for...
[1:12] And this happened on June 17.
[1:14] So you thought now on a podcast is the best way to do it?
[1:16] Well, I just walked past it, so that's why I just thought of it.
[1:19] I just went, hello, and she goes, hi, and then I just felt so awkward.
[1:23] So you did just address it or no?
[1:25] No.
[1:25] No.
[1:25] God, no.
[1:26] No.
[1:26] God, no.
[1:27] This is the time.
[1:28] Do I?
[1:28] I mean, I'll tell you guys what happened and you guys can tell me how you deal with this because I don't know what to do with this.
[1:33] Okay.
[1:34] It's one of the most awkward things that's ever happened in my life.
[1:38] And for those who listen to the podcast a lot, that's high praise.
[1:44] We, middle of June in my neighborhood was hard rubbish.
[1:50] They put your hard rubbish out and they come collected.
[1:51] Yep.
[1:52] And around that time, so we put all our hard rubbish out there.
[1:55] And it was quite a big pile.
[1:57] And on the Sunday before it was collected, one of the women who work at the Resilience Project, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful person.
[2:08] Penny gets on with her incredibly well as well.
[2:10] So much so that they will sometimes go for a run together, do a park run on the road.
[2:13] She kept saying to Penny, you've got to do this park run with me.
[2:15] She said, I'll come pick you up on a Sunday morning.
[2:17] We'll go and do it.
[2:18] And she pulls up in her car to pick Penny up quite early on a Sunday morning.
[2:21] It would have been about 7.38.
[2:23] And I popped my head out to say hi because she was about to do a run.
[2:27] I wanted to say hello to her.
[2:28] And I noticed as she pulled up right out next to the hard rubbish, she was having a bit of a quick look as you often look at someone's hard rubbish because it's just interesting looking at people's hard rubbish.
[2:39] I was quite proud of my hard rubbish because I'd put a lot of stuff out there.
[2:44] And as I said hi to her, it seemed to be a bit awkward.
[2:47] I thought that's a bit strange why she's being really awkward.
[2:49] I'm not quite too sure.
[2:50] Maybe it's just early in the morning.
[2:51] And it's weird seeing a work person that early in the morning.
[2:53] I'm not sure.
[2:54] I went back inside and I was thinking, she really was a bit strange there.
[2:58] Anyway, Penny's gone to do park run with this wonderful person.
[3:01] And I... You are saying wonderful person a lot.
[3:04] I know.
[3:07] I'm guessing she's going to listen to this.
[3:10] And I then had to go and get something from the car.
[3:14] And because Patrick's only one and I didn't trust him just with his brother and sister, I took him outside with me.
[3:20] And I was walking out to the car and as I walked past the hard rubbish...
[3:24] sitting on top of the hard rubbish pile to be very clear i did not put this here okay you're bringing up a photo on you this is what was now i don't know how we do this with the audience i think ryan you might have to explain what it is okay possible this was sitting on top on top of the hard rubbish pile right on top right on top oh my god okay so i haven't seen it
[3:55] So it is a, I can't think of a better way to say this, but a pink dildo is what it is.
[4:05] Hot pink.
[4:06] I would also.
[4:07] But also extremely realistically shaped.
[4:10] So it's not like just a cylindrical abstract shape.
[4:14] It's like a mold.
[4:15] And can also add that it's ginormous.
[4:17] Yeah, you can't know that.
[4:19] I mean, it's hard to know the scale, but I guess that's a toilet seat that it's sitting on.
[4:22] Well, the funny thing is it's on top of a potty as well, which is just what we were throwing out a potty and someone thought, I'll put that there.
[4:28] Wow.
[4:28] Okay.
[4:29] So you didn't put that there.
[4:30] No, just to be very clear, I did not put that there.
[4:33] How did you observe the hard rubbish stack in the morning before Wonderful Person arrived?
[4:42] Had you seen it before She arrived?
[4:43] No.
[4:44] God, if I'd seen it, I would have got rid of it straight away.
[4:46] Because it's a Sunday and there's a market down the road from our place and everyone walks past our place.
[4:51] A lot of our neighbours have walked past our hard rubbish before I'd spotted that.
[4:56] Anyway.
[4:56] I mean, short of like, I mean, short of, I mean, because it looks so much like a mould, I'm tempted to have a look at yours and see if it is.
[5:05] But I know that's inappropriate in any place, let alone the workplace, so we can't do that.
[5:11] So, George, if you want to just go around to where Ryan is, just so I can show you the next bit.
[5:14] Okay.
[5:15] So, Penny and I are just thinking, so I was like, oh, my God.
[5:21] So, well, if you want to see what I did, I went inside and I was like, this is like how many people have walked past and seen this, did this wonderful person from work see it?
[5:29] Oh, my God, that's why she was awkward.
[5:31] So, people think I've literally just gone, oh, I'll just put that there.
[5:33] Yeah, and what is the true meaning of the Resilience Project?
[5:39] Because...
[5:40] It is a large one.
[5:41] I mean, that's objectively speaking.
[5:49] Anyway, so I was sitting there just scratching my head going, I'm so, like this is, anyway, hang on a minute.
[5:59] We've got security cameras out in the front.
[6:02] I can work out who put this there.
[6:04] Oh, yes.
[6:05] I know, I've never been so excited in my life.
[6:07] The investigation begins.
[6:08] Anyway, the first thing I wanna show you is just- Gareth Keenan investigates.
[6:14] The first thing I'd like to show you is the footage of me discovering it.
[6:18] So holding Patrick, here's me.
[6:19] Wow, this is incredible.
[6:21] You'll also see what I did with it.
[6:22] I actually went, I was like, I just panicked and grabbed it.
[6:25] I wish you thought more about it, but I just grabbed it just in my bare hands straight away because I was panicking about someone seeing it.
[6:29] And I went and put it in my car.
[6:31] I was like, I'll just hide it in my car for now.
[6:33] Okay.
[6:33] So here's this happening.
[6:34] You'll be able to see this.
[6:35] I don't know if we'll post this on Instagram or what, but.
[6:37] Can't see how we won't.
[6:39] So there I am just walking out.
[6:40] Yeah.
[6:41] Patrick, a bit of a double take as you're sitting there.
[6:43] What's that?
[6:44] Shielding Patrick's eyes.
[6:47] That's not normal, Patrick.
[6:49] That's not normal.
[6:52] Okay.
[6:52] So now you're behind the tree.
[6:53] It's sort of hard to see.
[6:54] No.
[6:56] Now you're over there.
[6:58] I think I grabbed it in my fingernails.
[6:59] You grabbed it and now you're looking around the neighbourhood to see if anyone's looking at you as you cross.
[7:05] It's so bright.
[7:05] Okay, so you're crossing the road to the car and then you put it in the car.
[7:08] Yeah.
[7:09] Anyway, so that's just in the car.
[7:10] That's the disposal.
[7:12] And then it was at 6.59 that morning, middle of winter, so it's still dark, but you'll see the footage of the old elderly woman who disposed of it there.
[7:28] Is it an elderly woman?
[7:29] I'm looking at everyone who's listening, which is all of you.
[7:31] I'm just watching Josh and Ryan's face as they look quite shocked to see an elderly woman.
[7:35] Is it an elderly woman?
[7:37] Yeah.
[7:37] She took it out of her jacket pocket and just left it on our hard rubbish for us.
[7:42] Oh, you know, these are the times you just really want higher definition cameras.
[7:48] Oh, my God.
[7:50] So, yeah, so it's like black and white, almost night vision, because it must have been pitch black.
[7:55] So she's obviously snuck out.
[7:56] Oh, yeah, Josh has zoomed.
[7:57] Clever.
[7:59] And she's approached – I mean, it could also be an elderly man.
[8:04] It could be a man.
[8:05] Oh, right.
[8:06] Okay.
[8:06] I haven't thought about that.
[8:07] Shame on you.
[8:08] It could be a man.
[8:08] My first thing is that it's an elderly man.
[8:10] It's excellent.
[8:11] But anyway.
[8:13] It looks like a man.
[8:14] I feel like the person carries themselves like a man for some reason it seems like that.
[8:18] Okay.
[8:20] And look, a very well-organised and knowledgeable man who knows when hard rubbish collection is due.
[8:25] Pardon the pun.
[8:26] Putting his hard rubbish there.
[8:32] Oh, God.
[8:33] He's taken it very literally.
[8:34] I mean, luckily this episode is about to be balanced perfectly with the intellectual gymnastics of Tim Minchin.
[8:42] But my question for that whole setup is, if this wonderful person didn't see it, I'm just going to make it so awkward by saying, did you see that?
[8:51] I didn't have to talk about that.
[8:53] Yeah, of course.
[8:55] This whole time, I can't believe I found out my boss has just...
[8:59] I don't think...
[9:00] I just don't think it would be believable that if that's your hard rubbish collection...
[9:05] It's never going to get old, but let's see if it does.
[9:08] Yeah, you put your hard rubbish, like the really hard rubbish, and you put that out there.
[9:13] Like if someone sees your hard rubbish...
[9:16] They're not going to assume that you would place it on there so delicately.
[9:20] You would hide it.
[9:21] I reckon there's a bit of doubt in their mind that they're like, did he put it there thinking, oh, to be gone first in the morning, no one will see it?
[9:28] What, that someone would take it?
[9:30] No.
[9:32] No, that the hard rubbish would be collected.
[9:33] I thought you meant that, you know how some people come and collect bits of hard rubbish that they like to look off?
[9:38] Yeah.
[9:39] I feel like if someone thought that, you'd be pretty stiff.
[9:46] Anyway.
[9:47] Anyway, there you go.
[9:49] Very good.
[9:51] Well, that is...
[9:52] I'm looking forward to hearing the next chapter of this story because I feel like you just now, obviously, you're hoping that wonderful staff member is going to hear this episode.
[10:00] Yeah.
[10:00] You can avoid the conversation.
[10:01] That's actually what... That's the whole point.
[10:03] Sometimes we use the podcast for our own games, and this is one of them.
[10:07] That's a big one.
[10:08] Well, no.
[10:11] Let's quickly get to Tim Minchin before all the people leave who came for Tim Minchin.
[10:17] Look, Tim Minchin is the guest and it is a real – he is a true marvel at what he does.
[10:24] And like I – as you'll hear – is that right to say?
[10:27] I just still can't believe that story.
[10:29] Oh, yeah.
[10:29] Sorry.
[10:30] Sorry.
[10:30] Go again.
[10:32] I mean, Tim Minchin is like – he is –
[10:35] undoubtedly at the top of his game and has done so many incredible things over the years like Matilda and so much music he's produced and so much stand up and worked and lived overseas, been successful overseas.
[10:50] As far as like Australian entertainers, he's up there.
[10:53] He could be our most awarded guest.
[10:55] Yeah, he could be.
[10:56] Yeah.
[10:56] He could be.
[10:57] And I think as you'll hear, like I really, like a lot of the stuff he's talking about really resonated with me.
[11:03] Just a lot of the stuff he's talking about, particularly around just creativity and just, you know, like viewing success and that's, you know, what success means and how to approach it and how to process it.
[11:18] I think I found it really fascinating.
[11:20] Yeah, the way he copes with challenging times, I was really interested in as well.
[11:23] He talks, he goes into depth, so he's had a couple of really rough years.
[11:27] Talked about that and the way he dealt with it.
[11:29] And yeah, so I just, I just have to be honest, I spent the first 15 minutes of the interview just like looking at him going, I can't believe Tim Minchin's here.
[11:37] Yeah, I was a bit starstruck.
[11:38] Yeah.
[11:39] Yeah, totally.
[11:40] Well, we'll get into it because it's a lengthier chat than some and we don't want to spend too much time here before we get to Tim Minchin.
[11:47] So here's Tim Minchin.
[11:55] Let us not tease our audience at all.
[11:57] We got Tim Minchin.
[11:59] Tim Minchin is with us.
[12:00] Well, they know already.
[12:01] Oh, yeah, they've read it.
[12:02] They've read it.
[12:02] We've spoken about it in the intro.
[12:04] They're well aware Tim's here.
[12:05] Yeah, but it's exciting.
[12:07] So let's tease them anyway.
[12:08] Let's tease them.
[12:09] Yeah, let's just in other ways.
[12:10] Because they want it.
[12:12] Just like, let's bully from afar.
[12:14] Let's tease them as best we can as a guest.
[12:17] You know how some people in the arts, rarely you'll come across like a triple threat.
[12:23] I think like Christy Willen-Brown, we had singing, dancing, acting, triple threat.
[12:27] I think Tim Minchin can be called maybe like a sex threat.
[12:31] Whoa.
[12:32] Okay.
[12:32] All right.
[12:33] Okay.
[12:36] I'm glad we got there straight away.
[12:39] You just mentioned my friend Christy Willen-Brown and then called me a sex threat.
[12:42] I knew this was a terrible idea.
[12:48] Wow.
[12:48] The meeting before, we're like, how can we cancel Tim as quickly as possible?
[12:52] I think that's amazing.
[12:53] I am a sex threat in that I'm so hot that everyone feels a bit, like, threatened by how hot I am.
[12:59] It's dangerous.
[13:00] You being out in public is dangerous for that reason, yeah.
[13:03] Well, maybe we could break down sex threat.
[13:04] I mean, not...
[13:06] Just stop saying sex threat.
[13:07] Why don't we just drop it?
[13:08] Yeah, guys.
[13:09] Let's all just say sex threat a couple more times and then don't say it anymore.
[13:15] Well, I say because a sextet is like a six... Yeah, anyway.
[13:18] Oh, don't worry.
[13:21] We know how you got to that terrible place.
[13:22] Okay, okay.
[13:23] So I will say the abbreviation and I reckon yours will work out.
[13:27] So Tim is a...
[13:28] The abbreviation would be he's a mad C-P-W.
[13:33] What?
[13:33] Oh, CPW.
[13:35] So MAD.
[13:38] Oh.
[13:38] Musician.
[13:39] Actor.
[13:40] Pianist.
[13:40] Actor.
[13:41] Director.
[13:42] Mm-ish.
[13:44] CPW?
[13:45] Yeah.
[13:45] Performer.
[13:45] Composer.
[13:46] Performer.
[13:47] Wanker.
[13:47] Wanker.
[13:48] Oh, wanker.
[13:53] I think so.
[13:53] He's lots of things.
[13:54] And he's so, and has been for a long time and has been internationally adored for your, well, I was saying to you on the phone yesterday, one of your songs, it goes through me like a fucking freight train every single time I hear it in White Wine and the Sun.
[14:12] and you've written many songs, but that one in particular, I feel like what you do is you make people feel things so deeply with your music.
[14:18] I put White Wine and the Sun in here about an hour ago just because I really wanted to hear it again before seeing you.
[14:24] And I was like, maybe it's linked to, I listened to it leading up to Christmas, I'm in an emotional state, and I was welling up in about a minute in.
[14:32] I'm like, no, it's anywhere I hear it.
[14:33] I just start to, yeah.
[14:34] Oh, good.
[14:34] It's a beautiful.
[14:34] Every time.
[14:35] Every time.
[14:35] I cry every single time without fail.
[14:37] Before I had kids, now I have kids.
[14:39] Yeah.
[14:39] Everything.
[14:40] To the test.
[14:40] Chuck it on.
[14:41] Everyone go, listen, it's only six minutes long.
[14:47] It's sort of a manipulative song and I use that word not negatively.
[14:53] I mean, art is meant to manipulate and the craft of songwriting or the craft of painting or whatever your medium is, is about fantastic.
[15:04] finding tools over time, getting good at something and learning how to use those tools to evoke the emotion that you want, whether it's laughter.
[15:13] And so in a way I can tell you a bit of stuff about that song.
[15:16] But what's interesting about it compared to a lot of my songs, some of which people find very, very emotional,
[15:22] is that the writing of that song was incredibly uncynical.
[15:25] My daughter was six weeks old and we were in London.
[15:27] We'd had our first child in a London winter.
[15:30] We'd only moved there two months earlier and we didn't have family around and I'm from Perth, so I had this sort of unbelievable urge to take her home.
[15:40] And I've never had an experience.
[15:42] I often make myself feel...
[15:44] I know I'm onto something if I'm writing a song and I'm experiencing the emotion in the writing of it that I want the audience to feel.
[15:51] But that one I kept having to go, I was writing in the attic of my little flat in London and I had to keep going down to the kitchen having cups of tea because I was just sobbing trying to write it.
[15:59] So it was quite an interesting, even though I can post hoc analyse the chord changes and stuff and go, yeah, well, that tends to make people feel like it was just a bleh.
[16:11] even though it starts intellectual and falls toward heart which a lot of my stuff does
[16:16] When you're writing and you're having that sort of reaction to what you're creating, how do you know where to take it and then how do you know once it's good?
[16:28] Do you know what I mean?
[16:29] If you're having this real visceral reaction to it and it's not like you can, I don't know, can you look at it objectively if you're feeling it so deeply?
[16:37] I think that's a good question.
[16:39] I think depending on what your goal is that you're,
[16:44] It doesn't matter too much to me because I have been writing songs for a very long time.
[16:49] I've made a good living and a name from them and yet I've been played on the radio.
[16:54] Have you ever heard me played on the radio?
[16:56] Apart from maybe White Wine in the Sun, they might play once on a couple of channels at Christmas time because it's way outside the length that you're allowed on commercial radio.
[17:07] Um, so I, I'm not, I have nothing restricting me.
[17:12] I, I, I go, this is my offer about this topic.
[17:15] And usually I have found to my enormous surprise that I'm sort of in a way mainstream.
[17:22] I mean, I'm not very mainstream, but I'm pretty, you know, Matilda's pretty mainstream and, um,
[17:29] I find that very interesting because I didn't aim to be.
[17:32] I mean, I wanted to make a living, but I'm very lucky.
[17:36] I have found that if I write from my heart or from my sense of humour or from my sense of rage, if I apply my craft differently,
[17:47] and sort of assume I am my audience, would I like it?
[17:52] Then I seem to, with varying degrees of success, find an audience.
[17:55] Was there ever like a fork in the road moment or moments where you had to make a decision whether or not, because I feel like that's quite rare to have the amount of success you've had, but also remain completely autonomous in what you make and like,
[18:12] You can make anything you want.
[18:14] You make a song that's 10 minutes long, which you do.
[18:16] But it doesn't...
[18:19] I feel like, was there a fork in the road where you go like, you know, I'm not going to take that offer because it will change my ability to have control over what I do?
[18:29] I don't think so.
[18:30] And that's really the defining thing in my career is I'm not quite...
[18:36] marketable.
[18:37] I mean, the thing I didn't do, which I'm very happy about is when I became known as a comedian quite quick, you know, as it turned out between 2005 and 2010, I went from tiny off, off Melbourne, um, Melbourne comedy festival, sort of up out of town, hundred cedar to, um, arenas in a five year period, um,
[19:00] What happens when you do that in England?
[19:02] They offer you shows.
[19:03] They go, what's your late night show?
[19:05] And, you know, you could host a thing.
[19:08] And I said no to that stuff.
[19:09] That was a really good choice.
[19:10] So you mentioned comedy just there.
[19:13] 2005, you win the Best – I know, I think it's Director's Award at the Melbourne Comedy Festival.
[19:18] Next year, you win – at Edinburgh, you win the Newcomers Award.
[19:21] Same year.
[19:22] Yeah.
[19:23] And now, 2023, your show that you're touring now, wildly successful in the UK, now here called An Unfunny – Asterix, Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and his piano.
[19:33] I'm so interested to know about... One of the great titles.
[19:36] It is.
[19:37] But also the asterisk is that I think the producer cannot guarantee he won't be funny.
[19:40] But I'm so interested to know that transition for you as far as starting off, you got your first break as a comedian and now you're doing a show where I'm sure you will be funny, but there's more to it than the comedy, obviously.
[19:53] I mean, there always has been with you, but there's a very deliberate push towards more of an intimate and serious evening.
[19:57] Is that right?
[19:58] Yeah.
[20:00] So this tour, which looks organised, I put it, I was going to England to get Groundhog Day back on its feet.
[20:08] And I had this weird thing we had planned for months and months.
[20:13] Sarah, my wife, had planned to have a family holiday in Europe.
[20:16] We've never done this before.
[20:17] We've never got on the plane and gone on a family holiday because when you live overseas, you just have to go home every time you get a break.
[20:23] So we've got on planes and gone to Perth many, many, many times, but we've never gone.
[20:26] Let's go.
[20:27] So we were going to Italy and that trip had been planned for months and I had this three-week period where I was going to be in London sort of not really doing much because once I've made all my tweaks on Groundhog Day, it's just about them rehearsing.
[20:39] So just Groundhog Day is the musical which you wrote.
[20:42] Yeah, sorry, yeah.
[20:44] And I do not do very well with, and I think you guys probably have this in common from listening to your podcast, but...
[20:52] Being alone, away from my family in London with not enough to do is a really bad idea for me.
[20:58] As in, I just wouldn't, I'd get unhappy.
[21:01] And if I get unhappy, I probably drink a bit much.
[21:03] And, you know, I just didn't want to do that.
[21:05] So I asked my agent over there, you know, maybe I could get a...
[21:09] West End theatre is usually dark on a Sunday night.
[21:11] There's no shows on, so you can often sleep in and do a, if you don't bring much set, you can do a show on a Sunday night.
[21:17] So I booked one and then two and then suddenly it was 18.
[21:20] And the distance between me suggesting maybe I could do this night, cabaret night, and doing my first one was something like two and a half weeks.
[21:29] Wow.
[21:30] And so I had absolutely no plan.
[21:32] No, no, no.
[21:32] So the point of this is I said I would like to sit down and just play whatever I feel like on the night.
[21:38] So I'm not a comedian anymore and I've done this amazing bait and switch where, but it's not a bait and switch.
[21:47] I've been really, really clear about it that I'm trying to just be known as...
[21:53] my name and that the adjectives won't work for me.
[21:57] And if you try and give me, if you try and say comedian Tim Minchin, it won't really capture it.
[22:01] And because I think comedy is zeitgeist and I think I never want to outstay my welcome anywhere, I don't think I want to keep writing comedy as a main thing.
[22:12] My songs always have satire and stuff, but the punchline-y stuff, I've just stopped.
[22:17] So The Unfunny Evening has none of the punchline-y songs.
[22:20] because it's all about me trying to be as authentic as possible in the moment.
[22:23] But I say this on stage.
[22:27] and I say it in an unplanned way, but every night I try to explain to the audience how I'm going to try and make this as much like they've just crashed my house when I'm mucking around in my lounge room.
[22:38] And I'm going to try and drop as much artifice as possible because when I can get in that moment, in that moment of what we now call flow, which is annoying but it's quite an accurate reflection of what it feels like to be...
[22:51] just in it.
[22:53] You know, you're finding the singing easy, you're making great choices because I never play the piano, I never play the same song the same way twice because I can't read or anything.
[23:03] It's just like I'm always interpreting my own work.
[23:07] And when I'm in that space, it's good and the audience is usually not there because I'm usually not in that space with people looking at me and I'm trying to be in that moment on stage.
[23:18] That was way too long.
[23:19] No, but it feels very important to you to, particularly for this tour it feels like, to set the expectation for the audience so they know what they're walking into.
[23:30] Yeah, I hate people.
[23:31] The idea that someone goes home...
[23:32] I hate people.
[23:33] I hate people.
[23:34] I hate people.
[23:35] No, I just, it's the opposite.
[23:37] I really, really care that my audience have a good night.
[23:40] Like I think if anyone's ever seen my shows, whether or not you particularly like what I do, I don't think anyone could say I went on stage and phoned it in.
[23:47] I mean, I work really hard to make sure it's one of the best things they've done, they've gone to that year or whatever.
[23:54] I do everything I can to make that happen.
[23:57] I mean, it takes a huge leap of self-belief, which one doesn't just carry around with one.
[24:04] You have to kind of just take it to say, me at my most me is worth watching.
[24:10] I mean, that is a huge thing to...
[24:15] as a hypothesis, it's a crazy thing to test.
[24:18] It's, it's, you don't believe it every morning when you wake up.
[24:21] No, but it's, it's, it's, I mean, I would say it's, it is brave, but I think also, I guess you get to a point where you have the confidence that you're, you can carry that show.
[24:31] Yeah.
[24:32] Yeah.
[24:32] Well, I mean,
[24:35] I'm doing what I said to you I try not to do, which is just answer really long all the time.
[24:40] I do that all the time.
[24:42] Self-belief is this, you know, like when people write articles about me or whatever, they talk about that I, they hypothesize I must have great self-belief.
[24:51] And I'm like, oh no, it's just absolutely evidence-based.
[24:55] Like I had no self-belief and someone said, that's good.
[24:57] And I went,
[24:58] Oh, okay.
[24:59] You know, chalk that up in the column of positives as opposed to all the rejections and stuff.
[25:04] Okay, I've got one.
[25:05] You know, they're like that.
[25:06] Okay.
[25:07] And you believe that.
[25:08] I believed it.
[25:09] And you can tell when something you do hits, you know.
[25:12] And so I've just, yeah, you're absolutely right.
[25:15] It's not brave.
[25:16] It's just that I've gone...
[25:19] I'm very, very lucky.
[25:20] I've had this amazing last 18 years where I've just gone from having all the doors closed to this one door opened and I sort of kicked my way through it and put my head down, to be honest, in a slightly unhealthy way.
[25:36] Like as in I've still not figured out how to like take the foot off the gas, but what that's allowed.
[25:43] through pure luck, but it's allowed me this very unusual career where I just get to go what appears to be the most interesting and most challenging thing now.
[25:55] I'll try that.
[25:56] Do you mind if I take you back to then before you kicked the door down?
[26:00] And your, because it was, I mean, late in inverted commas, but it was quite late when that happened.
[26:09] What was your self-belief like before that?
[26:12] Because it was about, were you about 28 or 29?
[26:14] Yeah, well, 2005, I turned 30 that year.
[26:18] Okay, so 30.
[26:19] So that's a long time to be honing your craft before you start chocking up the ticks in the positive column, so to speak.
[26:26] Yeah, whenever you go from, you know, having a little career to having a big career, people make the little career zero because it's a more interesting story.
[26:39] I had my...
[26:41] ticks from quite young.
[26:43] When I was 17, 18, first year out of school, a theatre maker, my friend Jenny Davis in Perth, wrote me this letter that said, you know, would you write some new songs for this youth theatre version of Love's Labour's Lost that we're doing?
[26:56] We have $500 in the budget.
[26:59] and I said to Mark, because I was still living at home, I said, mum, look what Jenny wrote me.
[27:04] And she's like, but you don't know how to write music.
[27:06] You know, so that's one in the, oh, someone believes in me.
[27:09] And, and then when I wrote that show, people just, you know, it was on for three nights and the first night, a few people, second night, you know, and by the end, it was only 200 seats in the theater, but I was hanging off the rafters and, and,
[27:22] So I played piano for Eddie Perfect and cabaret artists and I played in wedding bands and cover bands and piano bars and I acted in Shakespeare in the Park where I was usually the guy sitting by the tree playing the flute with a couple of lines and I just...
[27:37] chipped away and chipped away and I was not earning much money.
[27:41] Um, I think the year before my big year, I cleared $14,000, um, some cashies in there, but, um, it's about what expectations is all this mythology around, around self-belief and it's very Americanized and it's, uh, not tethered to reality, which is that you need a dream and the bigger your dream is the better.
[28:08] that doesn't correlate to anything I observe.
[28:11] Like I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't get an agent.
[28:14] I'm definitely frustrated, but I didn't think I...
[28:18] I was playing in a cover band when I first moved to Melbourne in 2002, already married, you know, in my late 20s.
[28:23] I'd already written 10 scores for theatre and they weren't much better than subsequently I wrote Matilda in terms of...
[28:29] I already had...
[28:31] I didn't know those chops were...
[28:33] I thought there were a million people who could do that job, but I was playing keyboards in a cover band at the Elephant and Wheelbarrow on Saturday nights until 2am, getting paid $150 a gig, carting my 45kg P150 to the car and driving home.
[28:47] And I thought I could probably do better than that, but I wasn't thinking...
[28:52] how dare I be here?
[28:54] Yeah, what a failure.
[28:55] Well, I didn't feel great about myself because I had a lot of peers who already had a yacht, you know.
[29:00] Well, not really, but those people who weren't very smart at high school go and become stockbrokers.
[29:04] I was like, argh!
[29:07] But I didn't think...
[29:10] I deserved to be somewhere else.
[29:12] I thought maybe I had the potential with the right work and the right break to get somewhere else, but I didn't have, I didn't think I'd go to Broadway.
[29:20] But your self-worth wasn't?
[29:22] No, but I'm very, very logical.
[29:25] It's not like I thought I was a loser.
[29:27] I knew I wasn't good looking enough to do what all my friends had done.
[29:30] I knew there was limits so that my self-esteem was
[29:35] And because I couldn't read, I thought there'd be limits.
[29:38] You know, I never went to the Melbourne Theatre Company and said, could I write you a score?
[29:42] I just thought they're going to laugh me out of the room.
[29:45] But I auditioned for Pumbaa, you know, like I was trying.
[29:47] You know?
[29:50] I know every agent in Australia knows that they rejected me back in the day and I quite like seeing them now.
[29:57] But you just work really hard at what you're doing and if you do better than people expected, then maybe you take the next thing.
[30:04] What's the thing?
[30:05] You rise to the point of your own incompetence, someone's law?
[30:09] I mean, you rise up past a level because you've beaten that level.
[30:17] And you shouldn't rise up before that.
[30:19] And you shouldn't think you're going to get to the end until you've worked out level one and level two and level three.
[30:22] So I wasn't outraged, but I was burning.
[30:26] That's a good analogy.
[30:26] I like that.
[30:29] I'm so interested by your...
[30:32] I think maybe out of anyone we've had on this podcast, you're the sexiest man.
[30:39] What's that like?
[30:41] It's really weird to be this sexy in this face.
[30:46] But the amount of sort of, when I say success, I mean like awards.
[30:51] And, you know, the amount of awards and financial success and like critical success you've had is really up there with anyone in Australian entertainment, I would say.
[31:04] And the only reason I say that, other than the fact to get you on my good side, is to ask you like about the feeling of,
[31:14] of success and how what have you learned about success from objectively getting it like you have no doubt got success and you've reached the top you would you could say is it is it what you expected um more than yeah uh
[31:40] I think there's so many things to say about that.
[31:44] I'm trying to not say all the boring ones.
[31:46] Firstly, the goalposts keep receding.
[31:48] I think everyone knows that.
[31:49] A lot of people you've had on this podcast that I've heard understand that.
[31:52] I just read Minnie Driver, who's a sort of friend, has written a book.
[31:59] It's beautifully written.
[32:00] She says, learning that there's no there there.
[32:03] I don't know if that's a common phrase, but I've heard it before.
[32:06] But you don't get...
[32:09] somewhere.
[32:09] There's no touchdown.
[32:11] Um, I think there's been plenty of touchdowns, plenty of moments where I've felt like, Oh my God, how lucky am I?
[32:17] This is amazing.
[32:18] But I probably given my time again, would allow myself to celebrate that more, to punch the air a little bit, even just in my own head or in my own bedroom or just with my family to go, um,
[32:31] Oh my God, we did it.
[32:32] You know, I, um, cause I'm deeply, I just am not wired like that.
[32:39] I, I just, I have failed to smell the roses on the way because I, I think I was wired, you know, you get wired by the time you're 30, you're kind of wired.
[32:50] And I think I was wired in rejection a bit.
[32:53] So which roses retrospectively would you like to go back and smell properly?
[32:57] Well, um, the, I don't know, all of it, like, you know, there was a, in, in late 2010, I, I opened my orchestra tour with a symphony orchestra.
[33:10] It was touring just for me in two buses.
[33:13] I was touring with my own symphony orchestra.
[33:16] I opened at Birmingham Marina to 9,000 people.
[33:19] That is mad.
[33:21] That was mad.
[33:22] And the next day I woke up, bought a pair of shoes, got on the train and went to Stratford-upon-Avon to see the opening night of Matilda the Musical.
[33:28] And I was like, that's why I didn't smell roses.
[33:31] Because I was just, I felt fine.
[33:35] I felt nervous, but fine.
[33:38] I was just surviving the building I'd built.
[33:45] I was just standing on top of all this scaffold and going, it's all right, just keep laying bricks.
[33:52] It would have been inappropriate.
[33:53] That night when the reviews came out for Matilda, though, I remember thinking, oh, my God, this is going to the worst end.
[34:00] There's been plenty of joy.
[34:02] Maybe it's good.
[34:03] Maybe punching the air is not helpful.
[34:05] So when you have that thought of like, this is going to the West End, Matilda's a hit.
[34:09] Like it's going to like... We never dreamed it would do what it did.
[34:12] But yeah, we thought it would get to the West End.
[34:14] But you sort of know in the back of your mind, if you write a good musical, you're going to do well for a while.
[34:20] Like, you know, like that's a cool achievement.
[34:22] Yeah.
[34:23] What is coming into your brain in that moment when you know that it's been received well?
[34:31] I think when you make art the way I make art and Matthew, the director, and Dennis who wrote that with me and all that, we just wanted to make something beautiful for the Royal Shakespeare Company for Christmas 2010.
[34:45] And when you make something like that, just with your heart, and you don't think, you don't do Broadway bollocks and go, so where's the hit and what's going to get on the radio and how are we going to win a Tony?
[34:56] And you don't do any of that, you just make art and it lands.
[35:00] That's very, very, it's deeply gratifying, as in you're sort of seen and what they, if you tell your truth and people like your truth, that is much more profound.
[35:12] That's success, right?
[35:13] Yeah.
[35:14] As an artist, that's success better than finding a format that people like.
[35:18] It's why I feel sorry for all these Insta people, because with exceptions, but a lot of the sort of content, you're like, oh my God, I know you're hating doing this.
[35:28] You've just cracked a formula, and now you're doing these dances in your lounge room with your kids.
[35:33] Like, this is...
[35:35] this is awful for you, but you're sort of, this is now, you've monetized your children.
[35:38] Sorry, I'm, that sounds very judgmental.
[35:41] I am a bit judgmental about that stuff.
[35:42] But, but that is, that is beautiful what you said about like when you, I mean, that is very inspiring to me.
[35:48] Like when you tell your truth and it's received well, I can, I think that's what happened to you in the last few years, right?
[35:53] Meeting this punk.
[35:54] It really is.
[35:55] It really is.
[35:56] And it has completely changed the way I work.
[35:59] But it's just so nice hearing you say that because I know that feeling now, but I never used to probably believe that that was the case.
[36:07] You felt you had to crack a formula.
[36:09] I mean, I've heard you talk about this stuff.
[36:11] Yeah, I think...
[36:14] If authentic you correlates with success, which for me, it was in a really dramatic way.
[36:18] Like the moment I went, because back when I started doing comic cabaret, sort of dark cabaret stuff, when Eddie and I were kind of making this stuff and I went and did my own thing.
[36:29] I thought I had cut my hair and tried to get an agent and done open auditions for the Malthouse because I wanted to be an actor.
[36:36] I thought, as an actor, I'll try and be this.
[36:38] And as a musician, I had an originals band.
[36:41] I was like, what sort of stuff would people like?
[36:43] And I was like splitting myself to try and fill a hole in the market.
[36:47] And when I went, you know what?
[36:49] I'm sick of this.
[36:50] There's all these people not...
[36:51] without as many skills as me doing really well, I'm going to stick all my skills together and basically show off for an hour at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2004.
[37:00] And that.
[37:01] So when I first went, I just got, I let my freak fly.
[37:04] I just went, I'll just do what I think is funny and I'll show off, I'll show how I can play, I'll show how I can sing, I'll show how I can do a weird monologue about working in a waxing salon or whatever I was doing at the time.
[37:15] And that, and people laughed all night and I just went, oh, shit.
[37:19] There's so many ways in which my career is a gift.
[37:21] And I struggle to explain the extent to which I believe everything is luck.
[37:26] Like it's like profound, like I don't believe in free will, deterministic universe, like everything is luck.
[37:31] So I feel...
[37:33] So lucky.
[37:35] But the thing I feel most lucky about is that the more me I am, the better it goes, which is just luck.
[37:41] It's not necessarily the case.
[37:42] A lot of artists, the more they they am, the worse it goes.
[37:47] So they have to find a format, you know.
[37:49] Can you just talk more about you don't believe in free will.
[37:53] And I don't mean to go down this rabbit hole.
[37:55] This is a podcast.
[37:56] Now we're in.
[37:57] No, no, no.
[37:58] I'm interested to know what you mean by that in terms of your work and in terms of what you make.
[38:06] What do you mean as far as luck?
[38:09] Because you are, and this is not to say I disagree with you at all, but I'm just interested to hear your take on it.
[38:16] As far as you choose what you write, you make the choice to be truthful and honest.
[38:23] How do you mean?
[38:25] Well, I mean it in a genuine way that everything that's happening, my fingers on this table and you touching your neck are all the end of an unbroken causal chain that started with the Big Bang.
[38:36] Nothing has happened.
[38:37] You are only you because of a bunch of stuff that happened before.
[38:40] So that's...
[38:42] by which I mean everything is determined but not fated, right?
[38:48] You guys had this discussion already on this podcast.
[38:50] We could do a whole episode on it.
[38:51] We could.
[38:52] Very well.
[38:52] We could do a whole podcast.
[38:54] So what I mean is,
[38:57] I have the capacity to write songs, to put words together in a way that most people either don't have the capacity or don't want to do.
[39:05] My fingers just go fast.
[39:07] I just learnt piano.
[39:08] I don't remember really ever practising.
[39:10] I just fiddled around.
[39:11] I'm physically well.
[39:13] I'm unbelievably good looking.
[39:16] I can sing in tune-ish.
[39:17] I know how to articulate things.
[39:19] Something about the shape of my mouth means I can speak fast.
[39:21] I can speak in full sentences and articulate ideas without pausing.
[39:25] I can work really, really hard.
[39:28] I was born in a wealthy country at a wealthy time to parents who love each other and love me.
[39:34] All of that I inherited.
[39:36] It's just, people go, but you worked hard.
[39:38] I'm like, yeah, but I can't help being someone who wants to work hard.
[39:42] I want to work, I'm driven, or maybe it's self-loathing, but whatever drives me to work hard, I didn't make it up.
[39:47] I love it.
[39:48] Like I am, I have emerged out of the universe, just like you have, and I am a successful musician for the same reason a murderous psychopath is a murderous psychopath.
[39:59] Because that's what the universe spat out.
[40:02] It's almost like liberating, I think, because it's like you actually, if you lean into it, you can't help but be yourself.
[40:08] And that seems like kind of like the best path to go down in anything you do.
[40:15] But to sort of accept that is so liberating.
[40:18] A couple of people I've spoken to about you, there's a couple of things that came through very strongly.
[40:23] The first thing was, I can't believe I mentioned that with you, when something goes wrong for someone else, you are so incredibly good at stepping up for them and helping them get through offering practical solutions, love, support, and you're just there.
[40:38] You're a good person to be around when things go wrong because you're so supportive.
[40:43] I'm so interested to know who does that for you because you've been through a lot.
[40:47] And that's well documented whether it's in 2017, you commit two or three years of your life to your – to Larrikins, that's right.
[40:57] And then all of a sudden through bureaucracy, that show after – three calls away through the show is – I don't know the word.
[41:05] It's just shut down.
[41:06] Yeah, shut down.
[41:08] Who do you turn to or what do you do in really tough times?
[41:12] Just for some context on that, Larrikins was like a massive Dreamworks production.
[41:15] Yeah, it was a big movie musical, yeah.
[41:19] Well, it's, I mean, it's Sarah, really.
[41:22] So I've been with my partner for 30 years.
[41:25] It's family.
[41:27] I've got...
[41:28] I've got great friends, but we've moved a lot.
[41:31] So that continuity of friendships is a bit of a...
[41:34] It's been a thing for me.
[41:36] Like, definitely, I've gone a lot of my people.
[41:40] But whenever I think, I don't have a group of old mates like my siblings and, like, I think you guys do, like, I sort of...
[41:50] I've got beautiful friends from uni, but we're all scattered to the wind.
[41:54] And, you know, I live in Sydney where I never lived until five years ago.
[41:58] So you're sort of starting again.
[42:00] And so I've worked on it and I've got really beautiful.
[42:05] And for the first time in my life, I've got male friends.
[42:07] I've never been amazing with boys.
[42:09] I think my...
[42:10] private boy school youth has sort of made me go, I'm not sure if I like groups of boys very much, but I think men are really much better than I realised or maybe they mature into being better.
[42:25] I reckon that might be it.
[42:27] Yeah, I think so.
[42:28] I mean, I was a hockey player and stuff, so I had club, whoa, you know, and I really loved that.
[42:33] That was convincing.
[42:34] I was like, yeah, we won the InterVarsity Hockey in Darwin in 1990.
[42:39] Anyway, I have this family, my family, my brother and sisters and my gran and my mum, you know, the white one and the sun mob.
[42:51] I think that's what I have and it's kind of why I...
[42:54] have always been okay.
[42:56] I don't...
[42:58] I'm not...
[42:59] I've always thought of myself, and this is part of what I'm talking about, unfunny evening, and I don't want to put people off because I promise it will be entertaining, but I have been reflecting on how I've always thought I'm a really emotionally available and open person.
[43:11] And...
[43:15] Uh, and I've thought my art reflects that, but then I've, on putting this tour together at the very last minute, I went, okay, what have I written in the last 25 years?
[43:23] And I went, oh my God, all my, with the exception of white wine in the sun, all my songs written from other people's point of view are much more emotionally truthful than the ones written about my own life, which are just covered in irony and self-deprecation.
[43:36] And then I thought about my relationship with my wife, which is really close, but we kind of let each other get on with it.
[43:42] And we're not hugely sort of like...
[43:47] Oh, sweetheart, let's have a big old cut.
[43:48] It's just like, you all right?
[43:49] Yep.
[43:49] You know, like we're very, very, very close, but we're not super unpacky.
[43:54] We let each other, um, kind of because I'm away a lot and she's such an amazing independent woman.
[44:01] She has her stuff and I have my stuff and I don't come home every night and unpack what is going on for me.
[44:07] And I...
[44:08] I don't always have room to hear what is going on for her.
[44:11] And I think we could get back to that because I think it's fine and functional and we have an amazing relationship, but it's, I do, I do protect Sarah from my stuff a lot.
[44:23] Sorry, how do you mean?
[44:24] I just don't tell her stuff.
[44:26] She knows sometimes when I'm really stressed and goes, what's going on is something going on online or whatever.
[44:30] But if I'm getting attacked or I've got a bad review, or even if someone says, I think the show is going to close or, or,
[44:38] I'll hold off.
[44:39] I won't go home every night and give her an update on what's stressing me because she's got her own stuff, you know.
[44:45] Can I, if this is too personal of a question, just we'll gloss over it.
[44:49] But it was, did she, did you ever have a conversation about like that, about not...
[44:57] telling each other those things to kind of help each other.
[45:00] No, and we're not withholding anything.
[45:01] And I, she should be here for this conversation.
[45:03] Cause I, I sometimes think I don't say it right or I don't see it right.
[45:08] And I also think being my partner is very different from being her partner.
[45:12] And I've,
[45:14] So part of what I sort of was starting to say there, I think I might not be as emotionally clear as I thought I was, apart from anything else.
[45:24] Like my autism spectrum daughter is the person in the world that I'm like, oh,
[45:28] You're like me.
[45:29] Like, I'm so, I'm just like, I've never, I mean, my son and I are very, very close in a sort of mirror each other as well.
[45:37] But Violet, I'm like, oh, her brain's like my brain.
[45:40] Oh, what does that mean?
[45:41] Because she's actually autistic.
[45:44] So, and then I looked at all my material.
[45:47] I'm like, oh, holy crap.
[45:50] I might not read the way I think I read.
[45:52] I think I read like open arms and like just available to everyone, but I'm not sure I am.
[45:58] And I think that might be reflected in the fact that although I've got many, many people I love and who love me around the world, friends, and of course an audience of many people who care very much about my work,
[46:11] I don't get, I'm not like, I think people are just sick of me being in there.
[46:17] Like my friends don't go, well done on this latest thing.
[46:19] They're all just like, oh, Tim's doing his stuff.
[46:21] Like I don't.
[46:23] I don't have loads of people who check in or anything, but I don't need them because I've got my little gang and we move around.
[46:29] So we've always had to be our own independent little unit.
[46:34] And how about your mum and dad?
[46:36] Are you close?
[46:38] When I think of you, I think of very loving family man.
[46:41] I guess that comes through your parents.
[46:43] Yeah, we're very close.
[46:47] But I don't know if it's the same sort of close as everyone has.
[46:50] Like, there's not language.
[46:51] We don't do I Love Yous and all that.
[46:52] It's a bit old school.
[46:54] And my mum's very crook and I've just been back to see her because, you know, got to get a few visits in because, you know, it could be soon.
[47:01] And I, you know, I don't know if there's a big chat to have or something.
[47:08] Like, it's not...
[47:10] We are so sure that we are the Minchians, that my folks and my siblings and my little mob, there's no question that we all would die for each other.
[47:25] But as things get towards the end for my mum, if that's what's happening, that is what's happening, you do wonder if there needs to be more language, but that doesn't...
[47:36] It's like, what, are we going to introduce a new game here?
[47:38] Start talking like we've never spoken.
[47:40] Yeah, and I'm aware that if I introduce... Like Lucky, my character from Upright, he talks like...
[47:48] He can say all that and my songs can say all that, but if I say it, it'll sound like I'm doing a bit from one of my shows.
[47:55] Is that hard being away from home with your mum like that?
[48:00] Is that something that you sort of think about or is it just that's the way your life has been for the last 20 years so it doesn't feel?
[48:06] I'm really happy that mum's got my other three siblings.
[48:09] I had two, my two sisters lived in Sydney too before COVID and then mum got sick and they went home indefinitely and then did that thing.
[48:16] They're COVID returnees.
[48:17] So they stayed and my brother's there.
[48:21] I, yeah, I, again, it's, it's, um, I think I'm quite logic-y.
[48:26] I think it's fine.
[48:28] Um, we've been away for a long time, been away for 20 years.
[48:31] Um, I'm getting across plenty.
[48:35] I'm very, very lucky cause I can fly back when I need to.
[48:38] I'm, you know, um, financially and, and, um, calendar wise, I can make it work mostly.
[48:44] I don't know.
[48:46] I think you'd have to ask me in six months and see whether I thought,
[48:49] Because people go, you'll regret it if you don't do X, Y, Z.
[48:52] And I'm like, I don't know.
[48:53] I don't know if I'm wired like that.
[48:54] I don't really understand what regret means.
[48:56] I'm doing my version of this.
[48:59] And I'm not sure this is very helpful to listeners.
[49:02] But I think I'm all right.
[49:03] Do you?
[49:04] Yeah.
[49:04] I think it's...
[49:05] I think she wants us there.
[49:07] She wants us there, which is hard.
[49:09] But she also doesn't...
[49:10] There's no guilt there.
[49:10] She's like, I understand you can't be here, but I wish I could see your kids more.
[49:12] Are they immensely proud of you?
[49:15] I mean, I'm sure they are.
[49:16] You wouldn't hear them say it, but yeah.
[49:17] Yeah.
[49:18] Oh, yeah.
[49:19] And I know.
[49:19] Yeah, absolutely.
[49:21] Have they said anything to you where you go, oh, that kind of caught me off guard, but you really are proud?
[49:26] Or you catch them saying something to someone else sometimes.
[49:29] I mean, I know if you ask anyone who knows my mum, they're like, oh, my God, she's so proud of you guys.
[49:33] But they're very, very – they're amazing people, so they're very, very clear.
[49:37] Whenever they talk to anyone, they'll talk as much about Dan and Katie and Nell, who are all amazing, gorgeous people.
[49:43] And in many ways –
[49:45] It's easy being me.
[49:46] I get like all the accolades and clapping and shit.
[49:49] Whereas my siblings who work just as hard and are just as fantastic people, they don't get so much.
[49:54] So my family doesn't revolve around me, you know, and it would devastate me if it did.
[50:01] I think...
[50:03] I think my dad's an amazing guy because he's a surgeon and his dad was a surgeon and he had four kids and we are not surgeons and he's so proud of us.
[50:09] He's never, never for one moment sort of expressed any sense that he wished we'd followed in the family business or anything.
[50:18] Yeah.
[50:18] I mean, is it actually, because I think...
[50:22] people who become really famous and really successful, with that comes a lot of shit as well.
[50:31] So you say like it's easy being me and I know what you mean.
[50:34] I absolutely know what you mean.
[50:35] But is it always easy being you?
[50:37] Oh, no, it's definitely not.
[50:38] But I mean it's easy being me as a family member.
[50:41] Like I don't need them to buoy me up or tell them they're proud of me.
[50:45] I know they're proud of me.
[50:47] And we all in my family are like, what?
[50:49] How did he do that?
[50:50] He was a weird kid.
[50:54] It's been a bit of a surprise that things have gone well.
[50:57] Not so much that things have gone well.
[50:58] It's been a surprise that I ended up being quite good at something.
[51:01] Really?
[51:02] Well, I was always fine at things.
[51:03] It's just it wasn't tracking.
[51:05] I wasn't the lead in the school plays or I got kicked out of the music school.
[51:08] It's not like it wasn't tracking.
[51:13] Yeah.
[51:13] I don't know.
[51:15] The problems I have are different from the problems most punters have.
[51:20] And I think I'd mostly take mine.
[51:22] I always would love to be able to put out in the world like, hey, guys, you know how you think being wealthy and famous is going to solve all your problems?
[51:31] I just want you to know from over here, I did it and it doesn't.
[51:35] Okay, carry on.
[51:36] Like, I think it's good wisdom.
[51:38] To say, people always go, oh, you know, celebrities whinging.
[51:42] I wish they'd listen.
[51:43] I wish people who think that that celebrity is to be aspired to would listen because the data shows that they're miserable.
[51:52] Famous people are not happy people.
[51:55] I've stopped in a really good place.
[51:57] I'm not, you know me.
[51:58] I mean, I'm not, I can get about.
[52:00] Yeah.
[52:02] I don't love being piled on But if I didn't like being piled on I wouldn't have written Cardinal Pell I don't like it But it's not like I'm hiding from it So I kind of think fair's fair I mean I hate it But I think fair's fair Yeah
[52:18] If you wouldn't mind, I wouldn't mind hearing about, I totally appreciate that you, the celebrities whinging is not a thing, but that you want to do, but that sounds like it would have been a pretty significant time, the LA experience.
[52:33] So, I mean, if you want to tell people what actually happened, but also what I'm really interested in is like.
[52:41] the quote unquote failure of that.
[52:44] Not that it was a failure, but you know.
[52:46] Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, this podcast I should be talking about where I'm shit and there's a lot of that bump.
[52:54] But it's not, and I don't say failure as in I believe that.
[52:57] No, no, no, that's right.
[53:01] So I had this weird period between about 2005 and 2000 and, you know, like 10 years really where just everything I touched seemed to work, you know, like my comedy shows and, and Matilda.
[53:15] And even if I, I went and did a little role in an ABC drama and won best supporting actor at the Logies and like every, like I voiced a little short animated film and it won the Oscar.
[53:24] And it was like, Oh my God, like I'm just, I can't go wrong here.
[53:27] Um, uh,
[53:29] And then we moved to LA because I won't do the whole life story, but I ended up co-directing and co-writing and this huge, you know, what would have been a $90 million animated feature, Aussie Outback musical.
[53:46] and we spent four years there working on this project.
[53:49] And I did some other stuff at the same time, luckily, because it turned out to be a wash.
[53:53] I'm interested in when you find out you're doing that, the feeling, what does that mean to you?
[54:01] Well, it wasn't like, yeah, I'm going to break America because I've never given a damn about that weird old place.
[54:07] No, I love you, America.
[54:08] But no, I didn't grow up thinking if you don't make it there, you don't make it anywhere.
[54:12] I was just like...
[54:13] What side's New York on?
[54:16] I just wasn't.
[54:17] But I, I mean, I loved it.
[54:19] You know, I'd done Californication, which was like this amazing thing that came out of nowhere.
[54:23] Unbelievable.
[54:24] It had brought me a lot of joy.
[54:26] And we thought, let's just do it.
[54:27] We want to get back to Australia.
[54:28] So let's just, it was really about tearing the Band-Aid off of London.
[54:31] So we went there.
[54:32] But 2017 was...
[54:35] I was in Budapest and Paris and I was basically going LA, directing my movie, New York, putting Groundhog Day after the producer had bailed at the last minute and taken his $5 million worth of investors and deliberately tried to, anyway, no, I'm not allowed to say that.
[54:51] Keep going if you want that.
[54:54] And then I was flying to Budapest.
[54:56] uh, Budapest and, and Paris and stuff to be Friar Tuck in a big Robin Hood reboot.
[55:02] And then back to New York to, you know, do, you know, kind of cuddle up to Tony voters and then back to LA.
[55:09] And it was an insane time and Groundhog Day closed and lost millions of dollars.
[55:16] My movie shut down.
[55:17] And as it turned out, Robin Hood was one of the great flops of the era.
[55:21] And, um,
[55:23] And so this 10 years of everything I touched turned to go, I was like, oh, I'm cursed.
[55:28] But I don't think like that.
[55:29] And that was all in the one year, wasn't it?
[55:30] Yeah, that was all in the one year.
[55:31] I mean, the Robin Hood movie, I was just a role, and I feel very sad for the filmmaker, but that wasn't a personal affront.
[55:38] But Groundhog Day closing on New York actually hurt me more than, well, as much as Larrikins.
[55:43] They were huge...
[55:46] set huge, um, humans hate their expectations thwarted.
[55:51] They were huge thwartings of hopes.
[55:54] Um, and what I cope with perhaps least well in the world is not, I don't think I don't cope with setbacks.
[56:03] I don't cope with injustice.
[56:04] I don't cope with people disrespecting or
[56:10] I don't like being treated in a way I wouldn't treat others.
[56:12] I'm a bit chippy.
[56:14] Maybe that's a toxic masculine trait to be like, I have a big how dare you module.
[56:20] And I don't know where that comes from, second child stuff or, you know.
[56:23] But I just, I find it hard to let go of the...
[56:30] How could you do that?
[56:31] Like, that's not right.
[56:33] It's the Matilda, that's not right.
[56:34] It's sort of injustice.
[56:36] I have an injustice problem.
[56:39] Because at its worst, it's like self-righteousness.
[56:42] It's righteousness, which is not a beautiful thing.
[56:45] thing anyway.
[56:46] It's always either side of righteousness is something good and something a bit grotty.
[56:51] And the grotty side includes self-righteousness.
[56:53] And I can definitely, at my worst, be a bit self-righteous.
[56:59] It's a big part of that how dare you thing.
[57:03] The larrikins thing is just commercial stuff.
[57:06] But
[57:08] I can't really quantify how much it set me back.
[57:12] I just, but I was very unhappy for a year, but we moved to Sydney and we... As a result of... No, no, we were always, we moved to Sydney on exactly the date we were always going to.
[57:23] In fact, up until the movie shut down, I was like, I'm afraid I'm going to have to do the last year of directing this remotely.
[57:29] I'll have to commute because we're moving back for Violet to go into year six or seven, whatever, six.
[57:34] Um, it ruined it.
[57:36] It broke something in me that I think it's taken to almost now to get back, which is I got chippy.
[57:44] I got like defensive.
[57:47] In a situation like that, where you go from success to success for 10 years, and then all of a sudden these things happen to you, what happens to your mental health in that
[57:57] in that situation.
[57:58] How are you from a mental health point of view?
[57:59] Yeah, I don't know.
[58:01] And this is the bit about where I thought I was really metacognitive and on top of stuff.
[58:09] And I just don't know, really.
[58:10] I sort of, you'd have to ask Sarah, I was pretty...
[58:15] I wasn't great, but I wouldn't say I was depressed.
[58:18] I think I was just reeling and, um, you know, but also, I mean, I, I don't really have a handle on how I've handled my life.
[58:28] Do you guys have a sense of, you know, I look back to that two nights where I opened on an arena and then went to, and then, and then like in 2020.
[58:39] Like my daughter gets really, really unwell.
[58:43] You know, gets unwell because she's, we've now, you know, she's autism spectrum, but we didn't know that.
[58:49] And that's what happens to ASD girls when they hit their teens.
[58:52] They're so good at being autistic.
[58:53] You don't know they're autistic and then they just go...
[58:56] And then my mum got sick and Andre, my business partner and Groundhog Day producer, died very suddenly and very young.
[59:04] And then my tour manager dropped dead and my tours got shut down and that's before you even get to lockdowns and what the implications on my industry.
[59:17] And I sort of, I think I was fine.
[59:22] I think I was mostly fine.
[59:25] But I don't know.
[59:25] I don't think I'm very good at quantifying.
[59:27] I know I've struggled a bit in the last few years, but I can't really...
[59:29] I was sad.
[59:31] I was appropriately sad about my friends dying.
[59:33] Well, it kind of sounds like the logic in you is going, well, this is an appropriate amount of sadness for the stimulus and the inputs going in.
[59:41] I think that's right.
[59:42] I think I'm...
[59:46] functional in the way I unpack stuff.
[59:51] I understand people die and the way people die is distributed across a curve.
[59:56] You know, so some people die at 50 and some people die at 60 and some people die at five.
[1:00:00] I get that.
[1:00:02] I'm incredibly blessed not to have lost anyone too close to, too, too young.
[1:00:08] So I, all this is always in my head.
[1:00:11] I'm not,
[1:00:13] I don't, I haven't pre, I'm not inclined to pre-grieve my mum.
[1:00:18] I will be very, very sad.
[1:00:21] I tried going to a psych, you guys talk a bit about psychs, and everyone tells me that, you know, I've got people on the line who go, if you're not in therapy, I don't know what you're even doing.
[1:00:30] Like I would never date a guy who's not in therapy.
[1:00:32] And I'm like, oh, my God.
[1:00:34] So we're all doing therapy now.
[1:00:35] So I thought it would be weird to be me and having gone through this extraordinary change in my life and to never have therapy.
[1:00:41] I should try therapy.
[1:00:42] So I did seven sessions.
[1:00:43] I went, we're just trying to sort of perform each other's intelligence to each other.
[1:00:47] This is absurd.
[1:00:50] So I bailed out of that.
[1:00:53] I reckon he's going to go here next and he'll go there.
[1:00:55] And eventually he's like, let's talk about your mum.
[1:00:56] And I'm like, no, my mum would hate me talking about her.
[1:00:58] Bye.
[1:01:00] But I...
[1:01:01] Such a cliched question to ask about my mum.
[1:01:04] I mean, he held off, bless him.
[1:01:06] He was a really lovely, smart guy, a bit Freudian for me.
[1:01:09] But I...
[1:01:13] I don't know, man.
[1:01:13] I don't quite know how to unpack it.
[1:01:16] And I'm very present focused.
[1:01:18] So like today I feel great.
[1:01:20] If you had got me like yesterday evening when I was feeling really down about something, we would have had different conversations.
[1:01:26] No, I'm fine.
[1:01:27] I'm a bit, I think I'm a bit robot-y.
[1:01:31] Oh, it's a uniquely logical approach to your own psyche.
[1:01:38] It's kind of, I've never really heard it.
[1:01:40] It's fascinating to hear you talk about it.
[1:01:42] I think, is there anything that you do logically when you ask, say, a couple of nights ago when you're feeling down, do you just wait for that to change or is there actions you take?
[1:01:51] Do you get busy?
[1:01:52] Do you like with work?
[1:01:53] Drink wine.
[1:01:56] I've heard that word.
[1:01:58] No, like I, Sarah and I, I've got this, you know, having a good partner, it's not the only way to go through life, but geez, I'm just so lucky I've got this.
[1:02:09] You know, Sarah listened to your mental load thing.
[1:02:13] Oh, yeah.
[1:02:13] That elicited a conversation.
[1:02:16] Sorry.
[1:02:16] I'm you!
[1:02:19] No, I mean, it's amazing.
[1:02:20] But Sarah and I have this incredibly what you'd call traditional relationship.
[1:02:24] She does.
[1:02:25] She's the stay-at-home.
[1:02:27] But we need new language for those people.
[1:02:29] In many ways, we devalue women who make that choice.
[1:02:33] But she has a very complicated life because saying she's a stay-at-home mum is an absurd under-explanation of what she does.
[1:02:41] But I'm very, very lucky to have Sarah.
[1:02:44] I run.
[1:02:45] I'm very, very lucky to love exercise because I don't know what I'd do without that.
[1:02:50] I do drink a bit, but I'm not a binge drinker.
[1:02:52] I literally one or two glasses of wine, which I don't think is ideal.
[1:02:55] But I mostly have always felt blessed with my mental health.
[1:03:02] But sometimes when I talk to people who define themselves as not blessed, I go, oh, you know, that's right.
[1:03:06] That's right.
[1:03:07] That sounds, that's me.
[1:03:09] So I think it's a bit interpretive.
[1:03:11] It's a bit about the expectations.
[1:03:13] I deeply don't believe that happiness should be, constant happiness is a logical absurdity.
[1:03:22] It's a relative state.
[1:03:24] I think life's meant to involve grief and struggle.
[1:03:28] I mean, I'm a bit of a fan of the Stoics,
[1:03:32] you know, Dave Doggins or whatever his name is.
[1:03:36] I don't know who that is.
[1:03:37] Dave Doggins.
[1:03:37] I actually don't know who that is.
[1:03:39] It's Dave Goggins, this guy who runs everywhere and then yells at people.
[1:03:43] I'm not Ned Brockman.
[1:03:44] I don't think you should push yourself against your own limits all the time.
[1:03:47] But my, so my challenge is an attempt to not be unbelievably boring about this.
[1:03:54] My challenges are.
[1:03:56] I don't know how to switch off the I'll show them module.
[1:04:03] Very connected to my injustice module.
[1:04:06] Somewhere around my 20s, I was like, I'll show them.
[1:04:08] And I'm like, who am I showing?
[1:04:10] Who's them?
[1:04:10] And what have I got left to show them?
[1:04:12] I'm fine.
[1:04:13] To prove yourself.
[1:04:14] Yeah, yeah.
[1:04:15] And when do I stop showing this?
[1:04:16] Yeah, like where's the off button?
[1:04:18] Yeah.
[1:04:20] But...
[1:04:21] But I don't know if I want to go and see a psych or take mushrooms to make that go away because, my God, I get to contribute these beautiful things.
[1:04:29] It's worked pretty well.
[1:04:30] And the other thing is one thing I would like help with if there's any psychs out there who think they could handle how much I talk is that when I think someone's hurting someone that I love or hurting someone that I just know or hurting me or has done the wrong thing by me or...
[1:04:52] has misinterpreted deliberately what I've said and misrepresented me in the public domain, which is where the injustice module crosses over with the celebrity thing.
[1:05:04] I find the letting go of the – and it is because I don't – it's when people treat me in a way that I don't think I treat anyone –
[1:05:16] But especially when someone's hurting someone that I care about, I just want to... And it's not like toxic masks.
[1:05:28] I'm going to fucking kill them.
[1:05:29] It's that I think, how will I...
[1:05:32] Fix this.
[1:05:33] I must be able to use my various powers, you know, I must be able to fix this.
[1:05:41] How can I not?
[1:05:42] I must.
[1:05:43] And it often is like, well, I can ruin them.
[1:05:46] And I can.
[1:05:48] And I actually can.
[1:05:49] I could destroy this person.
[1:05:52] Wow.
[1:05:52] It sounds like in this exact scenario you've just painted for a second,
[1:05:57] that's a very hard thing to fix.
[1:05:59] And I mentioned before, people have said to me that you're so good at trying to help people fix their problems.
[1:06:04] That sounds like a really hard one to fix.
[1:06:06] You can ruin the person, but.
[1:06:08] No, but you can't do that.
[1:06:10] I mean, I don't want to be the person who does that.
[1:06:12] And also it would have ramifications, but that's kind of what I mean.
[1:06:15] Yeah.
[1:06:16] Yeah.
[1:06:17] But also I'm,
[1:06:19] I'm an ethical, I'm an amateur ethical philosopher.
[1:06:22] I mean, I, when I have those thoughts, I'm also having the next bunch of thoughts, which is what are the ethics of that?
[1:06:28] And, you know, am I that sort of person?
[1:06:31] And is that moral, you know, in a sort of overarching sense, is that a moral act?
[1:06:36] And, and my question I ask myself all the time is what if everyone did this, you know, so we can't have that.
[1:06:43] But, yeah, so that's my mental health issue is intrusive thoughts about undoing people who have done me wrong.
[1:06:50] I know everything.
[1:06:51] Is that normal, right?
[1:06:52] Yeah.
[1:06:52] No, my wife would attest to the fact that I ruminate on stuff like this.
[1:06:58] And, yeah, I've been guilty of it in the past of ruminating on, like,
[1:07:03] Just fantasizing about what could happen to these people that I feel have done bad by other people.
[1:07:08] You should see my file of angry unsent letters.
[1:07:10] That's a book.
[1:07:13] I've only got one at the moment, but I've got an unsent email that I need to delete.
[1:07:17] Yeah, before you accidentally leave.
[1:07:18] Oh, no!
[1:07:19] I make sure I just have it.
[1:07:20] It cannot.
[1:07:20] It has to be a blank email.
[1:07:21] I'll copy it into a new one, write it, and then that seems to purge some of those feelings.
[1:07:26] I'm like, okay, I've got out what I would like to say.
[1:07:28] Best it never goes past this.
[1:07:30] And Bridget the producer has said, please don't send that on our behalf.
[1:07:32] Yeah, this email cannot be seen by anyone.
[1:07:38] I think like to be an injustice warrior of sorts, it's like you have to be comfortable with conflict, which I am not.
[1:07:47] Oh, I cannot stand it.
[1:07:49] You cannot stand conflict.
[1:07:50] I'm just...
[1:07:51] I mean, it makes my whole...
[1:07:53] When someone comes at me on the internet, my whole body...
[1:07:57] sweats and prickles and I cannot be in a room with people arguing.
[1:08:02] If someone's arguing outside a cafe, I just have to leave the cafe.
[1:08:05] I can't be near it.
[1:08:07] I don't have it in my life.
[1:08:09] We don't – my wife and I don't fight because we can't handle it.
[1:08:13] I mean that is –
[1:08:14] It's surprising to me because, not because I think you're someone who like seeks conflict, but because by virtue of being an activist or someone who like fights for justice.
[1:08:25] Or just pans people's religion all the time.
[1:08:28] Like, I mean, I've upset a lot of people.
[1:08:30] Yeah.
[1:08:31] Like what's the decision making process in your head before you say something like that to someone or publicly or like, do you think about or worry about the conflict?
[1:08:41] I think it's part of why I've pulled back and gone, let's write children's musicals.
[1:08:46] I didn't know when I wrote the peace anthem for Palestine that I was going to end up playing it in arenas.
[1:08:53] I was playing it in a 30-seat cabaret venue in Melbourne.
[1:08:56] I didn't know it was going to get out there and get me death threats, you know.
[1:09:00] It stands up, by the way.
[1:09:01] Evergreen, the peace anthem for Palestine.
[1:09:03] It's weird.
[1:09:04] Never dates.
[1:09:04] Yeah.
[1:09:06] Yay.
[1:09:08] Good for you.
[1:09:08] Yeah.
[1:09:09] Still getting my royalties for that.
[1:09:12] Wow.
[1:09:15] I know we've been going for a while, but this is just so fascinating.
[1:09:18] But there's one thing you said before, which I'd be interested to find out more and I might have interpreted it wrong.
[1:09:23] But you said something and I interpreted it as that you, this could be wrong, that you
[1:09:29] that you struggle with like the amount of work that you do and within your personal life and like sort of essentially work-life balance is what I'm really getting at.
[1:09:43] What is your relationship with like work and your ability to walk away from work?
[1:09:51] when you need to.
[1:09:51] I don't know.
[1:09:53] And this is another thing I find hard to quantify and get a clear view on because people say, well, you, you work a lot.
[1:10:01] And my manager, I was saying to Michael, my manager, I feel a bit funny at the moment because I'm sort of not working very hard.
[1:10:07] And he's like, what?
[1:10:09] You, you, you know, but I've just flown down to Melbourne to do a podcast.
[1:10:12] I can't be that busy, you know?
[1:10:14] He's like, no, but this is, this is part of your job.
[1:10:17] And I'm like, oh yeah, I suppose.
[1:10:18] That's just a jolly.
[1:10:21] i think i work i don't think i work as hard as a doctor i think i think the trouble is people think artists kind of and artists think artists and maybe because of many artists and neurodivergent and stuff maybe they can't work long stretches of focus but i'm like if you just work eight hours a day you get a lot done even if you piss around a bit you know like i
[1:10:45] I think artists just let themselves off the hook all the time because so many artists think they have a God-given right to be an artist.
[1:10:50] I do not think that at all.
[1:10:53] I never thought that.
[1:10:55] And so I'm like, well, it's just my job.
[1:10:58] And if I've not got enough work, I'll sit down and write something, you know, or just, I don't know, get on with something.
[1:11:07] I'm very lucky.
[1:11:08] I...
[1:11:09] I...
[1:11:11] When I'm away, I'm away and, and I'm away probably, uh, up to a third of every year of my kids' lives and I've missed nearly all their birthdays and stuff, but I just don't put much stock in that stuff.
[1:11:22] I'm like my, my relationship with my kids transcends whether or not I'm at their birthday, but maybe they won't think about that when they grow up.
[1:11:30] I think Violet will be fine with it, but Caspar might have a different view, but.
[1:11:35] When I'm home, I'm, I can just sort of make it work a bit.
[1:11:39] Um, I don't know what's appropriate.
[1:11:41] My dad's a surgeon, so he was a fantastic dad and he like coached my hockey team and stuff, but he was working a lot.
[1:11:48] And you know, he'd come home at 11 o'clock with his mask marks on his face, looking very tired and be like, oh, dad's had to do his work.
[1:11:54] It seems all right.
[1:11:55] So I think I love it.
[1:11:58] I'm very lucky to have a partner who's full time doing everything else.
[1:12:03] I think I would like very much, and this is what I have to work on, I know some world, like I've met some amazing people, including people who are the greatest in the world at what they do, artists who I won't name, and in their 70s and 80s are still chippy.
[1:12:23] about where they weren't recognised or when their film got shut down or when they didn't win an award and stuff I'm chippy about in a way, but I'm working really hard.
[1:12:33] I would hate to be 70 and chippy.
[1:12:35] It is not the right look.
[1:12:39] I want to start figuring out how to...
[1:12:42] And I do, but I want to facilitate other people's stuff.
[1:12:48] I want to be that guy.
[1:12:49] I want to be the avuncular, not power hungry, like encouraging other people.
[1:12:56] I want to, I know who I want to be and I'm not sure I've got the right raw materials, but I'm going to, I'm going to work really hard at that.
[1:13:04] Because do you get like what sort of, what's the comparison of satisfaction between like achieving something that is like Tim mentioned versus you facilitating someone else to achieve something?
[1:13:15] I mean, I think I've still got, I mean, people like me don't end up where they end up without really liking everyone leaping to their feet and applauding them.
[1:13:22] I mean, it's hard.
[1:13:24] That's like an addiction that.
[1:13:26] So applause addiction is a real thing, like a genuine addiction.
[1:13:30] There's nothing like a bunch of people saying you're amazing.
[1:13:33] And that's one of the great troubles with celebrity and fame and success is that not only do the goalposts keep receding, but you just get your zero level changes and what you expect.
[1:13:46] Yeah.
[1:13:46] You know, I've talked to people who, one really amazing British artist who was huge in the 80s and 90s who spoke really honestly about like, I used to, when I used to walk in a room, everyone would just turn around and look at me and now it doesn't, it's really hard.
[1:14:02] You know, like, I just, I don't want any of that.
[1:14:07] But I'm not.
[1:14:09] I'm, of course we're susceptible to that, aren't we?
[1:14:12] I mean, any, when your zero point shifts, coming back off it is, is, is clunky, right?
[1:14:19] So I want to, I don't know, any advice?
[1:14:23] I want to, I want to, I want to.
[1:14:25] I totally know what you mean.
[1:14:28] It's like, it's the applause addiction.
[1:14:29] I mean, obviously I've never received it to your level, but it's sort of relative, I guess.
[1:14:34] It's just like you want to be loved.
[1:14:39] Why that is, is different for everyone, I guess.
[1:14:42] But like the want to be loved is even when it becomes something that you can sort of step back from yourself and look at it from a
[1:14:51] as a third person and go like oh ryan really wants to be loved that's not good even when you know that it's still very hard to shake yeah and and succeeding is like you know you really want to play the slot machines and then you get three wins in the first 10 you're screwed then yeah you know so succeeding at being loved and not only having people applaud but
[1:15:14] I value very, very highly the fact that I don't think you'd find a backstage person or a sound monitor guy or a rigger or a truck driver.
[1:15:27] I hope you would find no one that has ever been treated poorly by me.
[1:15:34] I hope you'd find the opposite.
[1:15:35] In fact, it's something we talk about with my team, with my management and my promoters.
[1:15:39] I'm like, my job is to go in and when we walk out, those people who work at that theatre should go, they were fantastic.
[1:15:45] That was a great experience, as well as the audience.
[1:15:49] I value that.
[1:15:52] I mean, I value that a lot.
[1:15:55] Like, why?
[1:15:56] Why do I need every single person to really have a positive experience?
[1:16:01] Like, what is that about?
[1:16:03] I think it's a really nice, whatever it comes from, it's a lovely thing.
[1:16:06] I have Beck Sutherland, who you know, Ryan's manager, my manager, and your, what is Beck to you, friend?
[1:16:12] Oh, she's just trash.
[1:16:18] She would accept no lesson but answer.
[1:16:21] Beck is my promoter.
[1:16:23] Promoter, okay.
[1:16:23] So Beck sent me this impassioned voice note before.
[1:16:26] It went for about three minutes and it was really just about how you treat other people and how incredible it is.
[1:16:31] I didn't have to say that myself.
[1:16:33] Can you cut out me?
[1:16:36] That's a good endorsement of it.
[1:16:38] I was trying to be sort of self-critical, but it did come across as me going, I'm really nice.
[1:16:42] No, no, no.
[1:16:42] But I was, I actually asked you a question about that.
[1:16:44] So you, yeah, sorry.
[1:16:46] I should have got in earlier, but it was so impassioned.
[1:16:48] It was so emotional talking about it.
[1:16:51] That's not normal in the industry.
[1:16:52] And she's been in the industry for a long time.
[1:16:54] So I think that- It's not normal for Beck to have emotions either.
[1:17:03] And so there's no point of this other than to say that that is very true.
[1:17:08] The way you treat people has been seen and noticed and people would love that.
[1:17:12] And it feels to me like it's not zero sum, you know.
[1:17:16] It's not like I have, for me anyway, it's not like I have X amount of energy to be kind to people.
[1:17:22] And once I'm done, I'm out of that.
[1:17:24] And so everyone else, I'm going to just shrug off whatever.
[1:17:27] It's iterative, right?
[1:17:29] If you're kind to people, it comes back and you have more energy to be kind to people.
[1:17:34] Yeah, yeah.
[1:17:35] I think if you never beep your horn or yell at anyone, you're just going to live a happier life.
[1:17:41] And if, in contrast, you let a lot of people in and just continue the traffic metaphor, if you're really generous on the road, you get everywhere two minutes later feeling twice as good.
[1:17:52] And we should just do that.
[1:17:54] But that, again, is privilege, the privilege of...
[1:17:58] I happen to neurologically be fine with giving people I see on the street time and I don't find it draining and I know some people find it impossible and the main reason people are awful to people is...
[1:18:13] is anxiety.
[1:18:15] And so although Beck, I'm very glad she said that and I'm glad I'm not deluded because I care very, very much about, especially the only people who will say I've been rude to them are big people.
[1:18:27] So the head of DreamWorks will say I was not respectful.
[1:18:33] Mm-hmm.
[1:18:34] because I have an injustice module and I'm defending people who I do care about.
[1:18:38] So I think I punch up if I ever punch, but I'm not punchy.
[1:18:44] But anxiety and low self-esteem is why people are awful.
[1:18:51] And so if you ask my band about how I am at Soundcheck most nights, they'll go,
[1:18:57] yeah, he sometimes needs to have a muesli bar and just have his own space.
[1:19:03] I'm not rude to anyone, but I'm just like, because I'm just anxious.
[1:19:08] And that's what the iterative thing doesn't work.
[1:19:15] If you are anxious, if you have fear, if you're in fight or flight mode, it's very, very hard to give energy to other people.
[1:19:20] So I try to be very empathic to the tutti horny people as well.
[1:19:24] but I would like to say to them, just try not tootiehorning and then you might feel better.
[1:19:28] It was a while ago when you were speaking about not wanting to be a chippy 70-year-old.
[1:19:36] The first thing that came into my mind is, and it was sort of bringing it all the way back to the start of the chat, is that when I think of the white wine in the sun and the imagery that comes to me is of a lovely man and woman, like an elderly couple in a chair that is the complete opposite of that.
[1:19:53] And there's a sense of beauty in that song and the imagery that comes to mind is the opposite of that.
[1:19:59] And so for me, it feels like you've written a character that... To aspire to.
[1:20:05] Something like that.
[1:20:05] I don't know.
[1:20:06] That was the first thing that came to mind and I don't know what to do with that.
[1:20:10] Yeah.
[1:20:10] I do...
[1:20:14] Do you guys have that sort of...
[1:20:17] I find it sort of helpful and sort of difficult to have a picture of the sort of person you want to be.
[1:20:22] But the trouble with that is you... What you mean is, I want to be seen like this.
[1:20:27] Because the sort of person you are is the sort of person you are.
[1:20:31] But I think what...
[1:20:33] I'm saying when I say that stuff is I want to sufficiently edit myself to make sure I am, I function in society like this.
[1:20:44] I mean, this sounds super weird, but I'm being hyper analytical.
[1:20:48] This is not what I think all day or anything, but, but just to analyze that aspiration to being a certain type of man.
[1:20:54] I think you, you, when you talk on the podcast is real sense that you're like, I know what sort of man I want to be.
[1:20:59] And I, I stumble on the way.
[1:21:02] I think it's sort of,
[1:21:04] I think that's good, isn't it?
[1:21:06] To sort of, to model yourself on a version of yourself that you'd like to get to knowing that
[1:21:14] I think so, but I think I am such a bad judgment.
[1:21:18] Yeah.
[1:21:20] You do know me.
[1:21:21] No, I'm such a bad judge of what I am though.
[1:21:26] Like I think I'm the worst person to ask what I'm like to be around or what I am to.
[1:21:32] I think that's right and I think the data shows that, that people are way off in their self-analysis.
[1:21:37] With the story that you tell about yourself.
[1:21:39] Yeah.
[1:21:39] Yeah.
[1:21:40] Yeah, I think like it's sort of,
[1:21:45] I really struggle with that.
[1:21:46] I agree with you when you say that you have the vision of the person you want to be, but how much of that is worthwhile if no one knows about it?
[1:21:57] So it's like it's the perception of how you're seen.
[1:22:00] Is it your brand you're trying to adjust to make sure you're...
[1:22:02] Exactly.
[1:22:03] It's like if a...
[1:22:06] If you help a woman across a road in the middle of the woods and no one's there to see it.
[1:22:10] Yeah, totally.
[1:22:11] Does the tree fall?
[1:22:12] Yeah.
[1:22:14] I think that's right.
[1:22:15] And actually, I think I'm not talking about my brand.
[1:22:22] I think I want the people I rub up against.
[1:22:25] Back to...
[1:22:27] The sex group.
[1:22:30] I think the people I want to be, I want, I aspire to be someone that people, it's not even...
[1:22:43] So the negative way of looking at that is I want people to, I want everyone to love me and I want to be loved and I want people to admire me and I want my brand to look like this and I want to polish that and make sure no one misrepresents me because I've worked really hard to have this brand and, you know, it doesn't matter what I do or think in the privacy of my home, but this is how I want to be perceived.
[1:23:05] And when you're being observed as much as someone super famous is or someone at my level is, that...
[1:23:13] can concern you and I think does concern me, but I don't, to be kind on myself, I think it's not that cynical.
[1:23:22] I think I genuinely, don't you just think, God, I want to be one of those good people.
[1:23:27] Absolutely.
[1:23:27] I want to be one of those people that helps other people.
[1:23:30] And like, of course you want to be that.
[1:23:31] I want to give more away and I want to, and sometimes it's hard because I also want to renovate my house and I live in Coogee.
[1:23:37] It's like really expensive.
[1:23:39] But I, you know, I, I do think it's,
[1:23:43] It's not that wanky.
[1:23:44] I think I just, like, why would you be one of the dicks?
[1:23:47] I know.
[1:23:47] Exactly.
[1:23:48] And that is my aspiration.
[1:23:50] It's funny because I mean, this ego discussion is so interesting to me because it just makes me think of, you know, when you donate money on a website and it's maybe to someone, it's maybe to someone like raising money for something.
[1:24:01] You can check anonymous.
[1:24:03] You can check anonymous.
[1:24:04] It's like to check anonymous is admirable.
[1:24:08] because otherwise it's like you go like, you forego the opportunity for people to go, oh, that's so nice.
[1:24:14] You gave $100?
[1:24:16] Wow.
[1:24:16] What a lovely, generous person that is.
[1:24:18] Or if I give $100, they're like, that guy could have done better than that.
[1:24:22] I think...
[1:24:24] Yeah, well, there's lots of studies on that, about whether we're moral because we're observed.
[1:24:30] And it's sort of, the jury's still kind of out about human nature.
[1:24:34] There are examples where we do incredible things for one another, for strangers and stuff.
[1:24:40] When the rubber hits the road, when something's going down, people will do extraordinary things for one another.
[1:24:46] So adrenaline seems altruistic.
[1:24:48] I don't.
[1:24:50] I think altruism is often about reward.
[1:24:54] And that's fine.
[1:24:55] I'm happy to clap anyone who gives their stuff away.
[1:24:58] I'm happy to hold them up.
[1:24:59] That's a good thing to reward people for.
[1:25:02] Yeah, it's like the idea of legacy.
[1:25:05] People talk so much about legacy, but is legacy really...
[1:25:10] Can legacy be a private thing?
[1:25:12] Like even in the theory of legacy has to be something that is observed really, isn't it?
[1:25:18] Yeah, I suppose.
[1:25:19] I feel like with aspiring to be something, I know it is not quite the same, but I feel like I know it when it happens on a daily basis.
[1:25:26] Like there's a feeling that just feels so good.
[1:25:29] when something, an interaction with someone or the way I've behaved in a certain situation speaks to the person that I want to be and it sort of clicks and it works.
[1:25:39] And I walk away from that and I feel it's just a feeling that is almost impossible to describe and the opposite as well.
[1:25:45] I was going to say.
[1:25:46] Yeah, and just something feels off.
[1:25:48] And even if I'm like, I said all the right things, the interaction was fine, but it didn't feel there was something off there.
[1:25:55] And I feel like, and I don't know if that's like,
[1:25:57] It could be called like cognitive cohesion and dissonance.
[1:26:00] But for me, as opposed to having a goal that is like, I want to be like that person, I feel like I used to have that and I'm trying less and less to be like that and just like follow that feeling of those interactions and trying to, if I have one of those ones, I'm like, well, that felt a bit icky.
[1:26:19] Try and avoid that next time.
[1:26:20] I think that's really interesting.
[1:26:21] And I think just to take that macro, I think,
[1:26:26] I have come to believe passionately that your moral, you have to define your moral circle.
[1:26:31] So what you do every day with just all your interactions with your family and friends and stuff, that should very much be your concern, which, by the way, means putting your phone away.
[1:26:42] Because when you're, your phone is not just a screen, it's a door to, to infinite circles of, of moral need.
[1:26:53] And, um, and, and I have got myself in a situation where I am not serving my local circle because I'm on my phone worrying about whether or not I've said the right thing about
[1:27:08] You know, Black Lives Matter or something, right?
[1:27:11] And social media does that to us.
[1:27:13] It opens a porthole to things that we used to read on page seven of the newspaper in international news.
[1:27:20] Now we're not just morally compelled, but externally compelled.
[1:27:26] compelled by others to perform our moral concern for stuff that you can't possibly affect or change.
[1:27:36] I mean, there's an argument there about mass social justice movements and stuff, but it's incredibly draining and this huge spike in depression and anxiety is to do with people not quite understanding where their own capacity, I think, is something to do with
[1:27:53] We have a finite capacity to be good and kind and authentic and generous and stuff.
[1:28:01] And if we spread it super thinly across every issue that pops up on our telephones, we won't necessarily be effective.
[1:28:07] If everyone is just kind to the hundred people around them and looks after the charities in their, you know, this, again, I keep wanting to do addendums about effective altruism and stuff, but...
[1:28:20] I have tried now that I'm getting off social media and stuff to go, I can do good.
[1:28:25] I can do more good if I limit the number of things I'm getting agitated about.
[1:28:32] Yeah.
[1:28:34] That's such a practical way to look at the shitness of social media because I think like we all know it's, I mean, when I say we know it's shit, it's like for all the shitness that it brings, it's damaging exactly.
[1:28:47] But I think that's so well put that, yeah, the actual practical damage it does and the restrictions it puts in as far as being able to actually influence the people that are most important to you and the change you can actually bring, which is micro as opposed to the macro things that you get compelled to speak on.
[1:29:09] And we're being nice to a person on the street or a person in traffic.
[1:29:14] or a person backstage at your show or at work, I do think is iterative if I'm using the right word.
[1:29:19] I do think it's not a zero game.
[1:29:22] You can do that all day because being kind makes you feel good and so it's easy to be kind.
[1:29:27] I don't think that's the case with ever-expanding circles of moral concern.
[1:29:32] I think you do have a limited capacity to care and I think it affects your ability to treat people around you kindly if your heart and mind are...
[1:29:42] at a university in Georgia.
[1:29:45] I love that.
[1:29:46] It's so interesting.
[1:29:48] If it was a bit more succinct, we could put it on one of our T-shirts.
[1:29:50] Just get a long bumper sticker for Hummers only.
[1:29:58] Tim, I feel like this has been incredible.
[1:30:00] I think we have to let you go.
[1:30:01] This has been a long conversation.
[1:30:03] Have we started?
[1:30:03] We should start recording.
[1:30:05] Press record.
[1:30:06] We're missing something.
[1:30:07] I'm primed.
[1:30:09] That was just really so much to think about.
[1:30:12] I just, yeah, I want you to know that I was, I feel like throughout my life, one thing I have managed to do is to stop and smell the roses and I was smelling you the whole time.
[1:30:22] I was really smelling you the whole time.
[1:30:24] Thanks.
[1:30:25] We've got a new sex threat.
[1:30:30] You can smell my rose anytime.
[1:30:32] Oh, wow.
[1:30:33] Wow.
[1:30:34] Really?
[1:30:34] You have a rose?
[1:30:35] I've never heard that before.
[1:30:36] I have rose and rose of them.
[1:30:39] Yeah, I was punching the air just quietly.
[1:30:41] Chatting to you feels like just such a special moment in my life.
[1:30:45] speak on behalf of the podcast as well.
[1:30:46] It's very special for us to have you in it, really.
[1:30:48] If someone had said just a few years ago we chanted Tim Minchin, I would not believe them.
[1:30:52] It's been so special.
[1:30:54] You're an incredible meat computer.
[1:30:57] And we love you and thank you so much for joining us today.
[1:30:59] This podcast is great.
[1:31:00] You should keep doing it.
[1:31:02] We hope to.
[1:31:02] I'll come back when I've had a big fall.
[1:31:05] Thank you.
[1:31:07] And we'll be there.
[1:31:08] When I've been found out.
[1:31:09] Next time you're a bit damaged, please come back.
[1:31:11] Yeah, that's right.
[1:31:12] I have bad days all the time.
[1:31:14] Thanks, Tim.
[1:31:15] Thank you, Tim.
[1:31:24] Well, I liked the guy before just from his work and just spending time with him, I just, I've got, like I said in the episode, I feel like we've got a lot to think about.
[1:31:32] Like he sort of like prompted me to think about a lot of things slightly differently.
[1:31:37] How often in that interview did he say things that you didn't understand but you went, oh, yeah, yeah.
[1:31:42] Well, yes, there's a few times, definitely, but then having now listened back to it again, I was like, oh, I got it.
[1:31:48] I got it like a second time because he talks quite quickly and moves through.
[1:31:52] Moves so quick.
[1:31:53] Yeah.
[1:31:54] And moves past pretty big concepts quite quickly.
[1:31:57] I think because he's so used to it.
[1:31:58] He's so used to thinking about it.
[1:31:59] Yeah.
[1:32:00] Do you remember, did you see, so when, I don't know if you know this, Josh, but when Tim was leaving, so...
[1:32:05] It's often a weird dance when we finish interviews of like who walks the person out.
[1:32:09] We all say goodbye to them and then it's like who walks them all the way to the end of the studio here.
[1:32:14] And it was sort of like both Ryan and I did it with Tim.
[1:32:17] And then you went to like about five minutes away from the door and I went all the way to the door.
[1:32:22] I followed him home.
[1:32:24] And so Ryan could see me.
[1:32:27] So Tim was out the front, out on the street.
[1:32:29] Yep.
[1:32:29] And we were still talking as he was sort of- Because there's a little corridor at the start of the building, yeah.
[1:32:33] So I was standing in the doorway saying bye to him, and he was about five metres away, so Ryan could only see me.
[1:32:38] Yeah.
[1:32:39] And I went, anyway, nice to see you, Tim.
[1:32:40] Goodbye.
[1:32:41] And then the way I said goodbye to him, I've never done this to anyone ever for some reason, but him, I went-
[1:32:46] I did this like- Like praying, praying hands and a bow.
[1:32:50] Yes, I bowed and put my hands together like I was praying like this zen- I've never seen you do that ever.
[1:32:54] Farewell, I felt like that's the appropriate way to farewell Tim Minchin with the amount of wisdom he just gave us.
[1:32:58] And how did he react to that?
[1:33:00] He was okay, he was fine with it.
[1:33:02] He doesn't know I don't usually do it, but then I was like really conscious that Ryan was watching me going, what did you just do that?
[1:33:08] I remember that.
[1:33:09] It was great.
[1:33:10] I love it.
[1:33:10] I feel like I do that stuff all the time with people as well.
[1:33:13] Trying to like do things that you think they want you to do.
[1:33:15] Yeah, exactly.
[1:33:15] Yeah, which is so nice.
[1:33:16] I've never bowed with my hands in a praying position ever before to someone, but I did it to Tim.
[1:33:20] It's the new you maybe.
[1:33:21] Yeah.
[1:33:22] That's the new you.
[1:33:23] Possibly.
[1:33:23] It felt good, but I felt very self-conscious with you watching me and not being able to see him.
[1:33:26] Yeah.
[1:33:27] It's like if you buy a pair of sunglasses that are a little bit outlandish, the one you normally wear.
[1:33:32] I did it last night.
[1:33:33] Did you?
[1:33:33] Yeah.
[1:33:33] Sunglasses?
[1:33:34] Yeah.
[1:33:34] Outlandish sunnies.
[1:33:35] What did you get?
[1:33:36] I feel like they're going to look so... You guys will laugh.
[1:33:40] I'll never laugh at you.
[1:33:44] They're Oakleys, which is... Yeah, but they're the wraparound ones that you usually wear for running and stuff.
[1:33:50] No, they're not.
[1:33:50] They're like casual wear.
[1:33:51] Blue, blue lenses.
[1:33:53] Oh, you're like frog skins?
[1:33:54] Frog skins.
[1:33:56] No.
[1:33:56] No.
[1:33:59] Yes.
[1:33:59] Not literal frog skin.
[1:34:02] Made of frog skin.
[1:34:03] No, it's not made of frog skin.
[1:34:04] Come on.
[1:34:04] The sunglasses.
[1:34:05] They're crazy.
[1:34:06] Okay, yeah, frog skins, yeah.
[1:34:07] Anyway.
[1:34:07] Okay.
[1:34:08] Right.
[1:34:09] Back on what Tim Minchin.
[1:34:10] Yeah.
[1:34:11] So one of the things that stood out to me, as he was saying it, the thing I thought about a lot.
[1:34:15] Well, first of all, I didn't really know what he meant when he said, I get a bit chippy.
[1:34:19] And I was thinking, I think he means like a bit pissed off and a bit angry about stuff and a bit like, is that what it means?
[1:34:23] Yeah.
[1:34:23] Yeah.
[1:34:24] Okay, good.
[1:34:24] Like chip on your shoulder.
[1:34:25] Yeah.
[1:34:25] Oh, right.
[1:34:26] Okay.
[1:34:29] Anyway, when he was talking about that and he was saying, then he said he likes having this image of him being in his 70s or whatever and not being chippy at all.
[1:34:37] And I was thinking, yeah, I think that's how we would all love to be.
[1:34:42] But I think we'd all like to be like that now, like to be able to –
[1:34:45] And I've certainly done a lot of work on that in the last sort of few years on the challenges of parenting and some of the things that have happened to us recently.
[1:34:56] If it happened five years ago, I would not have coped, but I'm so much better at letting stuff go now.
[1:35:02] Little things that at the time you're like, oh, this is the worst, but I just, especially with three young kids, you just have to move past stuff pretty quickly.
[1:35:10] And so I just wanted to – one of the exercises that I –
[1:35:15] have done myself, but also we put in our, I promise this is not an ad, but it's the only way I can think to reference it, but in our Resilience Project journals that Dr. M helped us with, the new journals are out now.
[1:35:25] I guess there's a link to the imperfect.
[1:35:29] Pretty well done, actually.
[1:35:32] But one of the activities there is just
[1:35:36] You know how sometimes if you're feeling extra stressed or a bit anxious about a whole lot of stuff and you don't even really think, why am I feeling that way at the moment?
[1:35:43] I think actually writing a list of all the stuff that is causing you to worry or to feel stressed, like actually writing them all down and you can end up with two or three, you could end up with nine, ten of these things and then write them down and come back to them later in the day.
[1:35:59] It's a bit of a cliched exercise, but I know the Stoics do this and in the Stoics journal they do this as well.
[1:36:06] you just circle the stuff that is out of your control.
[1:36:09] Like circle the stuff that you actually – like no matter what you do or how hard you try, you have no control over that.
[1:36:15] And then it's on you to let that stuff go.
[1:36:19] Like to just to go like I cannot do anything about this.
[1:36:22] This is not – that's not serving me to worry about this right now.
[1:36:26] And then look at the stuff that remains and –
[1:36:28] And often it can be – so often you have a list of five and it's only like one or two things you can actually control.
[1:36:33] It's quite a frustrating thing to go, well, I need to let go because I can't control that.
[1:36:37] And then with the things that are left that you can control, then it's like the new write down, what are the things I can do to help alleviate the stress and the anxiety I'm feeling around these two things.
[1:36:45] It's like creating an action plan.
[1:36:48] And it does feel like, I mean, it's not as simple as just going, right, I'm not going to worry about that because I can't control it.
[1:36:52] But at least it sets you on the right path and it gives you the right mindset of like I need at some point to divorce myself from the worry that this is causing because I actually cannot do anything about this right now.
[1:37:03] It's such a good idea.
[1:37:04] Yeah.
[1:37:05] It's a really good – we did it with the Queensland State of Origin guys leading up to Origin 1 this year.
[1:37:11] It was like not all of them but I said if anyone wants to do it, it was an activity that I'd done for them.
[1:37:14] And it was amazing the amount of stuff that they had there.
[1:37:18] that they realize like I cannot control this right now.
[1:37:21] So one of these guys had eliminated what the commentators say about me, not in my control.
[1:37:26] What position I play in, it's not in my control.
[1:37:29] What are the spectators yell out to me, not in my control.
[1:37:31] Will I get injured, not in my control.
[1:37:33] And all that was left was my effort, so how hard I try on the night, my preparation, so what I do to get ready for the game, and then my attitude of, because we had this thing around Ubuntu, which I'll go into another episode, but just I am because we are, was like our mantra for the whole thing.
[1:37:50] So the way I treat other people, the way I focus on other people and not so much myself on the night.
[1:37:55] And we just ruled out everything else.
[1:37:57] And for him, it was immediately very freeing.
[1:38:00] For some people it might take a bit longer, but it's really nice to just – it's almost like a to-do list.
[1:38:04] You're just ruling stuff out and then just going, well, what is left for me to deal with?
[1:38:08] And I'm going to put my effort into those three things or whatever it is.
[1:38:11] And so that's not something we discussed specifically with Tim, but I do think it was a nice thing to kind of think about.
[1:38:17] Awesome.
[1:38:18] Love it.
[1:38:19] There was one other thing that he said that came up in the discussion.
[1:38:23] I realised it was a fault of mine.
[1:38:25] Well, it wasn't really a fault of mine.
[1:38:26] It was just it really revealed my default thinking, which he corrected pretty quickly in his own story, which is when I was talking about the...
[1:38:37] doing something for a long time and not being recognised for being good at it in the public sphere.
[1:38:41] And then it took till he was 30 and he, and I was like, did you have, because I just assumed he would have, because I was projecting my own in a narrative, that there would be self-doubt and a lack of self-belief that for like a long period of time until he made it.
[1:38:58] You assumed that from him.
[1:39:00] I assumed the opposite.
[1:39:02] Well, yeah, I know.
[1:39:03] I think it's just a lack of imagination from me that I could only see that myself, I would have felt like a failure.
[1:39:11] Whereas he was pretty quick to correct the fact that he had so many little wins and he's like, there's this narrative that we like to talk about where you, if you're not famous or you're not, then you're not succeeding.
[1:39:24] And I thought it was such a beautiful reframing of him talking about the little ticks of sort of recognition that he got along the way.
[1:39:30] That's so true, yeah.
[1:39:31] And that it didn't really matter for him whether he was like famous or monetarily successful because he was enjoying the work that he was doing regardless of what the reaction was or how big it was or how big the stage was.
[1:39:48] And I thought that was such a great reminder of what's really important when you're doing creative work.
[1:39:52] Yeah, he was, I mean, as he put it, like getting through like level one, two, three.
[1:39:55] Yeah.
[1:39:56] He was in like level one and two.
[1:39:57] But enjoyed the levels.
[1:40:01] Yeah.
[1:40:01] Yeah.
[1:40:01] Yeah.
[1:40:02] And yeah, exactly.
[1:40:02] Wasn't in a rush to get to level four or five as we often are now.
[1:40:06] We're like, oh, I just want to be at level six or ten because they are...
[1:40:10] I also love that thing you said that was in Minnie Driver's book was There's No There There.
[1:40:14] Yeah, yeah.
[1:40:15] It's a really good quote.
[1:40:16] I had a lovely picture of him wheeling his synthesizer piano along whatever street at two in the morning having played Orphan and Wheelbarrow and being really happy with it.
[1:40:25] Yeah, yeah.
[1:40:25] That was good.
[1:40:26] That was a good gig.
[1:40:26] Yeah.
[1:40:28] And it also made me think that I think James, I think he did this in the app.
[1:40:32] We might have to cut this out if he didn't, but I think Cousin James in his app, Wonky Bricks, talked a bit about just how much we see on the, like growing up or just living, but I feel like it would be harder growing up in this environment and being younger.
[1:40:48] You see so many accomplished people on YouTube and Instagram who are so good at something that,
[1:40:54] And it feels really frustrating to not be as good as them and how you go from level one, level two, level three to get better at something.
[1:41:01] We see so many people spat out as what seemingly is you just arrive as the finished product.
[1:41:07] And I thought it was so beautifully articulated and proof that you just enjoy each step.
[1:41:14] Like you have to enjoy every step to get better at something.
[1:41:18] One of my favourite things about watching shows like Australian Story is you see...
[1:41:22] like footage of the people on the way up like when they're playing to small like if it's a musician playing to a really small room or something and i love seeing that because it's just a reminder that they didn't just go i think i'm actually going to be one of the most famous musicians ever in australia it's like there's a lot of so much hard work that gets into going there it gets into arriving there
[1:41:41] Yeah, and I guess to take it a step further to look directly at us, this show's got quite a big audience now, but we never set out to have a big audience.
[1:41:50] Like we only ever did it because it was fun to do it, chat in a room.
[1:41:54] And I feel like I've enjoyed every step of this so much with no expectation of it going anywhere.
[1:42:01] And now it's become quite big and I think we're making quite a good show.
[1:42:05] But this wasn't the end goal.
[1:42:08] No.
[1:42:09] Yeah.
[1:42:09] I mean, it's sort of like he says, it's like he never, he thought it was wild to be on Broadway.
[1:42:15] Like he never expected to be on Broadway because yeah, when you're young and just trying to do something, it does seem like whenever I hear people say like, I always saw myself on the big stage.
[1:42:27] I'm just like, how?
[1:42:28] How could you even possibly think that?
[1:42:30] It seems bizarre.
[1:42:33] But I guess everyone's built differently.
[1:42:34] But I related to Tim when he said that.
[1:42:37] Because it seems impossible.
[1:42:40] Yeah, absolutely.
[1:42:41] And it's a nice reminder of the way to go about living a creative life, I think.
[1:42:47] Totally.
[1:42:48] Yes.
[1:42:49] Very well said, Josh.
[1:42:51] Very well said.
[1:42:52] Nice wrap up.
[1:42:53] Nice wrap up.
[1:42:55] I will continue the wrap up now and wrap up the episode.
[1:42:58] Hugh, Josh, so good to see you as always.
[1:43:01] Big thank you to Tim Minchin.
[1:43:03] What a fascinating person and chat.
[1:43:06] And, of course, his live show, which he can get tickets for, is An Unfunny Evening with Tim Minchin and his piano.
[1:43:11] And I suspect it might be funny.
[1:43:14] Well, the asterisk is the producers cannot guarantee that it won't be funny.
[1:43:18] Yeah, yeah.
[1:43:20] Look, it's like he said, he promises it's going to be entertaining.
[1:43:23] He guarantees it's going to be entertaining.
[1:43:25] And I think that's a pretty safe guarantee he can make at this point in his life.
[1:43:29] That was certainly entertaining for us having him here.
[1:43:33] Until next time, good night, Australia.
[1:43:37] And happy birthday to you, Ryan.
[1:43:38] Oh, it is, yeah.
[1:43:39] Today is my birthday as we are recording.
[1:43:41] Yeah.
[1:43:41] Thanks.
[1:43:58] I'm leaving the garden.

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