‘You couldn’t ask for a better job’: Paul Paddick on almost 30 years playing Captain Feathersword

He’s a world-famous performer, but the man behind Captain Feathersword manages to fly under the radar when he’s out of costume. Meet the man behind the eye-patch.

He wears a small silver hoop earring in one ear. For a bloke in his 50s who loves pub rock and singing John Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane at karaoke, it’s subtle. Yet it is the biggest clue giving away the otherlife of Paul Paddick.

The one where he’s no longer a suburban Brisbane father of two, to Connor, 18, and Felix, 9, husband of 19 years to Charmaine, or making school lunches. He’s not just Paul, or Paddy to his mates, but one of the world’s most-loved performers and star of the stage and screen.

“That is probably the only giveaway,” Paddick laughs, twirling the earring with his fingers. “Quite often people come up to me and they will say …” he lowers to a whisper, “‘It’s the earring’,” he says mimicking fans as they uncover who he is.

For 29 years, Paddick, 56, has been the man behind Captain Feathersword, a character within Australian children’s group The Wiggles. He remains one of only two original members of the group, alongside Anthony Field.

Paul Paddick has been the original Captain Feathersword from The Wiggles for almost three decades. Picture: Tara Croser.

Over the decades he’s performed between 350 and 500 shows a year, which is more than 11,000 shows in total, and amassed millions of adoring fans around the world.

He’s the bumbling, silly, friendly pirate who tickles with his colourful, feathered sword, captains the S.S. Feathersword and wears his pirate-best, including the one thing Paddick never takes off, the single hoop earring.

In a child’s world, Captain Feathersword is of rock star status. They live for his gags, especially when he falls over (and over and over again) in the song Blow Me Down and is always a crowd favourite.

Paddick is so ingrained in the make-up of the group he was often referred to as “the fifth Wiggle” in the early days of the group featuring the four original Wiggles: Anthony Field, Murray Cook, Greg Page and Jeff Fatt.

He’s become much more than a pirate. Over the years, he’s played everything from a scuba diver to a dog catcher and, remarkably, performed and voiced all the group’s main characters including Dorothy the Dinosaur, Wags the Dog, Henry the Octopus and Shirley Shawn the Unicorn.

In 2005, the group was named the richest Australian entertainer by Business Review Weekly, which estimated their earnings over the previous year at $45m.

They’ve cultivated an incredible fan base in every corner of the globe and remain among the busiest touring acts in the country. In their peak, they performed 500 shows in a year and as live music still bounces back from Covid, last year they performed 350 shows.

As the band evolves, line-ups change and grow and new characters are introduced, Paddick has been there for it all. His longevity is related to how much fun he’s having.

As he tells stories of the band, his rock-star moments, the naughty fan mail (”I once got a Frederick’s of Hollywood G-string with two little featherswords sewn into it”), it’s non-stop laughs and smiles. But, he says, that longevity is also possible because he leads a double life.

Brisbane-based Paul Paddick is the character behind Captain Feathersword from The Wiggles. Picture: Tara Croser.

Paddick is waiting in our office reception.He’s sitting on the couch in jeans, a navy T-shirt and boots. He’s alone, unbothered and unnoticed.

Unlike the members in the coloured skivvies, Paddick flies under the radar.

“I am very lucky … I can just enjoy my life. It has helped me stay in it for longer,” he says.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s the best thing ever to have somebody say, ‘Oh my god, you’re Captain Feathersword, my kids love you!’ but it’s also really nice not to have to be on all the time.

“Everybody is hyper aware, of course. Like Anthony, for instance, can’t go anywhere – he has people following him, whereas I get none of that, it’s all just lovely, I get the nice side.

“It’s amazing the anonymity an eye patch and a hat can give you,” he laughs.

And watching this transformation unfold is quite something. Paddick does a quick change into character for our photo shoot and the unrecognisable or unbothered man in our reception is no longer. Now he may as well be Harry Styles.

He’s met with gasps, gushes, excitement and adoration as the parents across the newsroom get a glimpse of their child’s hero. It’s an insight into decades of Paddick being one of the most famous yet unrecognised celebrities. And, he says, it’s happened at his own shows.

“When we did shows in Madison Square Garden (in New York) many years ago now, there was the most enormous crowd every night. We were at the stage door waiting to get out and it got to the point where it was taking almost an hour to get through everyone.

“It’s lovely, of course, they all wanted to say hi but one day, I just went, ‘I’ve got to get to another meeting’ and I jumped off the stage and walked out with everybody who had just been watching me.

“I was listening to them talking saying, ‘Oh my god, my favourite character is Dorothy’ and they had no idea that I was walking with them. It was so great.”

Even his sons have cashed in on their famous dad and asked him to sign posters for their friends to up their cred at school.

The original Wiggles featuring Paul Paddick as Captain Feathersword.

“His (Connor’s) mates would give him a free fidget spinner or something like that if he got them a signed poster of Captain Feathersword,” he says of when his son was younger. “I don’t even know why they wanted it, they were teenagers, why do they want a signed poster of me?”

The shock of it all still washes over him.

He can barely believe the highs he’s experienced.

Among them, Paddick once got so excited and shocked seeing Robert De Niro in the crowd at a New York show, he tripped on stage.

He’s also had Hollywood stars like Brendan Fraser and Chris Rock being in awe meeting him and the band.

Then there’s the truly unbelievable, like in 2003, when The Wiggles played to 250,000 fans over 12 consecutive sold-out shows at Madison Square Garden and their popularity was so immense that November 1 was declared Wiggles Day in 2003 in the US.

Yet Paddick laughs at how ordinary everything seemed, and still remains, for a bunch of musicians from Australia.

“All our riders basically say water and sandwiches, it’s not even soft drinks on there,” he says laughing. “We are probably the most mild of rock stars, ever.”

He’s as down to earth as they come, always laughing or making you laugh and lives to entertain.

Anyone who knew a young Paddick would have picked it early. The choir boy, drama-obsessed music student who loved the stage. He was a born star.

Paddick grew up in Adelaide with siblings Mark, 58, and Ann, 53, in anything but an artsy household. His father, 77, who still lives in the South Australian capital, was a teacher librarian and his mother (who passed away from breast cancer when she was 54) worked as a geriatric nurse.

“I think my grandmother played piano when she was little but I never saw her play myself,” he muses, scanning for early influences. He can’t pinpoint how he started singing just that he always loved it.

Paddick signed on to the choir in primary school, then musicals before he joined the South Australian Youth Opera. As a boy, he had dreams of being in the opera. “I was right into it,” Paddick beams proudly. “I hosted high school music nights or drama nights and got into a Year 12 play because somebody dropped out, I was only in Grade 10, so I got into acting quite early.”

He went on to a Bachelor of Music in opera at Adelaide University before studying drama at WAAPA (West Australian Academy of Performing Arts), at the same time as Hugh Jackman. The two were competing for the same roles.

“We saw Hugh in Melbourne one time years later and I joked, ‘You got every role that I wanted’ and he just turned around and said, ‘Yeah, but you’re a Wiggle, mate!’

“That was pretty cool, that was back when his kids were really young.”

Paddick now prefers to be “the second guy”. “There’s not as much pressure, there’s more chance to muck around and I’m just that person, I prefer to have a laugh with everything and not be the serious one,” he says. “I just liked being a show off. I was always up for anything.”

Paul Paddick (aka Captain Feathersword) early head shot from his acting career. Picture: Instagram

This is precisely how Paddick fell into what would become one of the greatest children’s groups of all time. Straight from WAAPA he made his professional stage debut in the musical West Side Story. When the production toured to Sydney, Paddick’s girlfriend at the time, who was also in the cast, rented a room from a musician named Anthony Field. Paddick lived down the road from them and was over all the time. Initially, he was clueless as to what his new friend did. “I thought it was some type of religious band,” he laughs. But it didn’t take long before Anthony asked him to step in while he was out of action temporarily. He had no idea it would be the beginning of performing in one of the world’s most successful bands.

“One day, out of the blue, Anthony said to me, ‘I’ve got to have a hernia operation, do you want to fill in for me?’” Paddick says.

“I had never met any of the other guys, I’d seen one show but I just went, ‘Yeah, OK’,” he says with childish excitement.

Back then, Anthony played the characters of Captain Feathersword, Wags and Dorothy. “Anthony had written down basically what he said and did and I’d read through it and learnt the songs but I went on stage without having any rehearsals. We did three shows that day.

“And that was it, I literally fell into it.

“I thought, I’ll see this through for maybe one, four, five years, there was no commitment, no contract or anything. Then it just kept going, and kept going, and kept going.”

Life is never serious and the perpetual joker’s mind runs at turbo speed.

“I literally can’t sit still,” he says.

“I was quite mental early on, I was hyperactive so this character just took on a life of its own.”

It made him perfect for the job, he jokes, and plays to his strengths which translate on stage, allowing him to swap between characters on any given performance.

During their current live shows, Paddick, while on stage dressed as Captain Feathersword, will do the voices for Wags and Henry the Octopus.

“You would be surprised how you can manage to do this,” he laughs. “It’s quite amazing how good the sword is to cover my mouth, I often do that as well when I don’t remember the words for songs.”

As he spills his character secrets, he lets us in on another.

He tweaked his eye-patch to be able to see through it after too many tumbles on stage and now, he says, makes his own feathered sword.

As much as he knows where Feathersword ends and Paul begins, the two have been known to merge.

“It’s not so much the voice but it’s the facial tics and movements I do as Captain Feathersword,” he explains. “I can’t take a normal photo anymore.

“As soon as somebody pulls out a camera, I’m doing this,” his face breaking out into a cheesy grin and his hands start doing the signature Wiggle finger-move. “Then you have to go, ‘Oh, that’s right, we’re family, sorry about that,’” he laughs. It’s hardly surprising when this is the world he lives and breathes.

The gruelling touring schedule has meant up to nine months of the year on the road, which can take its toll. “The only downside is being away from my family for large chunks,” he says. “I’ve missed lots of things, dance competitions for my son, birthdays, lots.

“This year my wife turns 50 and I don’t even know if I’ll be in the country. But that’s the way it goes.”

Paul Paddick with his family, wife Charmaine and children Felix and Connor. Picture: Supplied.

Paddick’s wife Charmaine, 49, is his greatest support and knows the game well. The pair met on set when Charmaine filled in for Wiggles characters in the early days.

She now runs a dance school in Brisbane, Kick Dance, which is what brought the couple to live in Hawthorne in inner-eastern Brisbane 23 years ago. When he’s home, Paddick is on school lunches, drop offs and taking the boys to dance or soccer. He’ll walk their dog, a cavoodle cross golden retriever, Georgie, up to 8km a day, every day. He goes to the gym three times a week and does it all to keep as fit as possible to keep up the pace. “Backstage, Anthony and I now joke about how tired we are, what pills we’re taking for this and that and how sore our knees are,” he laughs.

But Paddick can’t imagine himself ever doing anything else. He’s watched the band evolve to eight members, acknowledging the energy they’ve injected into the group.

Paddick’s embracing the renaissance for The Wiggles following a run of 18+ shows with the original members, festival slots, Triple J Hottest 100 No 1 and collaborations with acts like Kid Laroi.

For Paddick, the best part is making a difference to little lives everywhere.

“We’ve been told from different families how we’ve managed to help their child through a hospital visit or have made the last few months of their child’s life more of a joy,” he says. “That’s the most humbling and incredible part of it all.”

As he slips in and out of character, twirling the silver hoop earring between his fingers, he knows exactly what he does it all for. To make people laugh, allow imaginations to run wild and, above all, to be the reminder to enjoy the silly in life.

“You couldn’t ask for a better job, it’s just brilliant,” he says. ■

The Wiggles Wiggly Big Day Out Tour! is coming to Queensland Dec 5-9, thewiggles.com/live and Hot Potato: The Story of The Wiggles will premiere on Prime Video on October 24.