Comedian Jez Watts returns to Perth for massive three-show Fringe season
Comedian Jez Watts returns to Fringe World this summer with three different shows featuring his newest and best work to date—along with enough ‘lowest common denominator filth’ to get audiences laughing against their will or walking out in protest. It all kicks off with the choose-your-own-adventure comedy show The Smoking Bun: A Live/Animated Comedy Musical, followed by As Seen Nowhere, a work-in-progress hour consisting of all-new content; and Jokes About Sex & Death (And No Other Topics), a best-of-hour built from material performed in eight different touring festival shows. BRAYDEN EDWARDS caught up with Jez Watts to find out more.
It’s great to have you at Fringe this summer! As someone from Perth who is now based in Melbourne, how does it feel to come back to visit?
The crowds are always fun, and I love the festival, but the heat, the heat, why did all those crypto bros manufacture so much more heat?
While you have performed at Fringe before, your new show, As Seen Nowhere, consists of all new content. How would you say your new stuff is different from your old stuff?
Only come if you want to see me actively checking notes, doing crowd work to pad it and trying to find punchlines that are only halfway there. It’s all new, so you will definitely not have seen these jokes before, and I bet I’ll never do some of them again.
And where do you get your ideas for new material? Are you inspired by other comedians or draw from your own experiences?
I once had sudden diarrhoea while walking through a suburb with no toilets around, at night. I ended up squatting under a tree in someone’s front yard, desperately hoping they wouldn’t turn on their porch lights, and when I was finished, I realised I had no tissues or paper—just flyers for my show. So now there’s a shallow grave under that tree, filled with my own flyers, with my own face covered in my own liquid waste.
I don’t know if this answers the question, but that story immediately went into a show.
Meanwhile, your other show, Jokes About Sex & Death (And No Other Topics), is a ‘best-of-hour’ of eight different shows. I guess that’s like a musician playing a set of their greatest hits?
I’m recording my first special in June, so I’m doing the hour all over Australia and New Zealand to get it ready. There’s bits and pieces from all the best stuff I’ve done onstage and new things too, but it’s all been rewritten or refined. I’ve been working on some of these jokes for 10 years.
The Australian/UK system of a new festival show every year is great for generating material, but really getting the punchlines and bits honed and developed to the point you can be proud of them takes longer than that.
Perth audiences often get cheated by Australian performers. Fringe is at the start of the year, so comics do their work-in-progress show in WA, or Adelaide, to get it good before Melbourne International Comedy Festival or an international tour. By the next year, they’ve retired it and are on to a new hour, so Perth never gets to see the finished product.
Jokes About Sex & Death is the first time I’ve hit the quality level I’ve been aiming for at every one of those festival hours.
You have performed at over 40 festivals across Australia and the world. What have been some of the most memorable moments during this time?
In 2018 I paid Steve Bennett from Chortle UK $500 to review my first Edinburgh Fringe show, and he absolutely wrecked me. Two and a half stars that read like one. There was a very strong undercurrent of “this guy should quit comedy.” So that’s memorable in the sense that I still think about it once a week, and some of those times I have literally cried.
He was mean AF, but he made some great points that I worked on, and it made me a better comic. So I am glad it happened—now, but not then.
I was tour support for Sam Tallent on his debut Australian tour last August. He’s one of my favourite comics in the world because he does this mix of filth, darkness, and light that’s a real similar vibe to my own comedy, but he’s further along, being 15 years in while I’ve just hit 10. Getting to open for him all over the country and watching his hour every night really grew me as a comic. Watch his new special, The Toad’s Morale, on YouTube.
And what’s the most interesting way you’ve heard someone describe your show?
I did a festival show years ago where a very old man came with his wife, but they bought last-minute tickets and didn’t read the show description. He was really mad about how dirty it was. Twenty minutes in, he stands up in the middle of the crowd and shouts, “THIS IS DISGUSTING. THIS IS HORRIBLE, LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR FILTH.”He then turned to the audience, who were having a great time, and yelled “AND YOU’RE ALL PART OF IT” and stormed out. His wife stayed and laughed and laughed, and after the show, I saw them having a fight in the parking lot.
This was pre-COVID, so he’s dead now, I hope.
Apart from the comedy shows, you also co-host the Tiny Vet podcast. What is the podcast about, and what kind of topics do you discuss?
We stopped making episodes a few months ago, but I co-hosted it with my fiancée, Nicole. She’s one of the top exotics veterinarians in the southern hemisphere, and I was the idiot she explained pet care topics to. It’s still up everywhere, and the feedback was really good, but we just got too busy. Maybe we’ll start it up again if suddenly a bunch of people sign up for the Patreon?
What’s next for the rest of the year? Can we look forward to another visit from you sometime soon?
Riding that late-stage capitalism, baby!
After this, it’s the New Zealand Fringe, Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Brisbane Comedy Festival, and a bunch of other places. I always love coming back to the Perth crowds, but I have no idea when that will be next.
I’m recording my special in Adelaide in June, so I’m very excited to spend 10 grand I currently do not have. Please buy tickets.