Judith Lucy is coming to town with her new comedy show, her first solo show since 2012. The popular comedian is set to face a huge homecoming audience when she plays the Perth Concert Hall.
Your show is called “Ask No Questions Of The Moth”, is the moth a usual oracle for you to be consulting?
If only! If only I had some enormous dead moth that I kept somewhere and when I was experiencing doubt I could go to it. The bottom line is, underneath the many, many, cheap gags that are in the show, there is a kind of theme of change and impermanence so I thought let’s try and come up with a title that sort of captures that but is also a bit ridiculous.
So I just sort of said that into my little old computer, thinking that I’d wind up with some obscure Buddhist quote but instead I wound up with a quote from a 12th century Sufi mystic poem called “Conference of the Birds”, believe it or not! The whole quote is actually;
“I have no questions of my coming or passing away, the whole thing happened quicker than a breath, ask no questions of the moth.”
And look, as luck would have it – Sam Simmons and I have the same manager and Sam did a show for the ABC a few years ago which had a recurring sketch where Suzie Porter and Gary Sweet were dressed as moths, so my manager when he heard the title simply said “Hey, we’ve still got the moth outfits, do you want to whack one of those on for the poster?” so… that’s the story.
Twenty plus years into your career, is a moth the most ridiculous thing you’ve dressed as?
Jesus, I doubt it. I’ve dressed up as some pretty ridiculous things. I remember on The Late Show, Mick Molloy and I did a sketch where we dressed up as Christopher Atkins and Brooke Shields from Endless Love.
Left to my own devices, when I first started doing stand-up comedy, gosh, some of my early gigs were not only just bad but totally mystifying and for my first ever gig I twirled a large cabana sausage above my head and pretended it was a rattlesnake but I did once appear on stage wearing nothing but a green garbage bag and pointy rubber ears and I would so love to tell you that I was on drugs when I did that but I wasn’t. I can’t even explain it. The moth is just the tip of the iceberg, but at least it’s a decent costume.
You mentioned The Late Show… I’ve noticed you can almost divide people now into people who saw The Late Show and people who have no idea what it is., younger people.
Well what I find even more extraordinary is that sometimes young people will come up to me and say ‘I was a fan of The Late Show’ and I’ll go ‘Well, we’re you three when it was on?’ and they’ll say they wound up watching it later in life on DVD.
Jeez that was a good move, thank God I did that programme. I am still amazed and delighted that people remember it at all. I’m sure you’re right of course, if you’re above a certain age you’re more likely to remember it. In the days when people used to stay in to watch a television program, doesn’t that seem like a long time ago?
Catch Judith Lucy at the Perth Concert Hall on Thursday 9th and Friday 10th July.
Graeme Watson
We are giving away 2 double passes to see Judith at the Perth Concert Hall this weekend!
