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Carl Barron.
 Chances are you've heard of Carl Barron. If not from The Footy Show in 1997 or from several appearances at the Melbourne Comedy Gala, then you're probably one of the 12,000 people that bought his debut DVD, 'Carl Barron'. No? Well, here's your second chance to find out what all the yakking has been about. Barron's new DVD, 'Whatever Comes Next', promises to bring you more laid back observations of Australian culture and human behaviour in general. "The style is slightly different; the second is probably a bit more polished and a bit more fluid," Barron says of his new DVD. "I've developed some of the characters that I tried out in some of the extras last time a bit more and I think I'm just a bit more confident on stage. But it's still just me and the kind of ideas that I think about; it's not a radically different show."
Barron has, erroneously or not, been labeled as a 'fart joke' comedian, but he claims that the new DVD will have significantly less fart jokes than his previous show. "I think there was three or four minutes of talking about it [farts] in the first show, but people see it and go, 'Half of it's fart jokes;' but it's four minutes!" A closer examination of the show revealed that indeed, there were only 4 minutes 20 seconds of pure fart jokes in the first 20 minutes of the 70 minute show. [That's over 20% fart jokes. Jokes referring to farts, 'nuggets' and the scratching of bums extended this time to 6 minutes 52 seconds, or 34%: now who don't like dem odds?]
But it's not all bodily functions. In fact, Barron dabbles in a bit of piano playing on 'Whatever Comes Next'. "I'm definitely not a maestro, I just muck around with it. Sometimes I imagine not being a comedian, just being some guy playing a piano at some art gallery; you know, not having to talk to anyone. People would be casually walking by saying, 'That sounds nice, shall we try the chardonnay?' I'd love to be able to do comedy the way Keith Jarrett plays piano. He just has this confidence where he just makes the whole lot up and creates a song along the way. At shows I try to improvise a bit between the routine. I like to improvise when the time feels right. I wish I could go out every night and improvise for and hour and a half and get away with it, but I can't do that. I wish I could."
As a child Barron didn't idolise stand up comedians but the passion to become a comedian was already there as, despite his love of tennis, it was obvious from a young age that sport would not be his forte. "I grew up watching Benny Hill and Jerry Lewis; I was obsessed with those guys, but they weren't really stand ups. I like Billy Connolly and Bill Cosby, but I wasn't really into stand up. I enjoy watching comedians and always wanted to be one, I just love funny weird guys on TV. I was okay at sport but not really good, so I thought maybe I'd be good at being strange."
I suggest that a combination of the two may have broadened his career options. "Maybe I could be a strange hurdling star," Barron suggests, but one look at his spindly legs dismisses this option; perhaps they are more suited to long distance running? "It wasn't the fact that I didn't have the stamina or the fitness [for long distance running], I just didn't have the patience. I thought, 'What? I have to run around this four more times? What am I going to think about? I just want to stop and have a lemonade.'"
As for viewing sports, it seems Barron's penchant for cricket has been revitalised after a brief 'serious' stint in his mid 20s. "I've been watching The Ashes. I used to watch cricket and footy when I was 19-21, and now I've started watching it again and enjoying it. Because you know, you get all serious for a while thinking, 'Oh yeah, I'll change the world' but you know what? Now I just want to watch the cricket."
Cassie Hilditch
 | 'Whatever Comes Next' is out now through Acme. |
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