‘Puffer pants’: Ryan Shelton reveals hilarious secret to WFH comfort, as he stars on ABC TV’s At Home Alone Together
Comedy star Ryan Shelton found his creative stride – and unlikely reality TV obsession – during lockdown, all while wearing a bizarre pair of trackies.
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From penning sketches for his new TV show to his guilty pleasure – The Real Housewives of New York – lockdown provided some unlikely creative inspo for Ryan Shelton.
The writer/producer and comedic actor stars in ABC TV’s lifestyle parody At Home Alone Together, which was born out of the quarantine era that kept Australians, as its title suggests, stuck at home with not much to do during the coronavirus crisis.
Sporting a pair of comfy “puffer jacket pants”, the affable Shelton found himself oddly inspired by not actually going out.
Enter his newest character, “Jason Shelton” – his fictional identical twin, who features on the Ray Martin-hosted spoof.
The premise is, as Shelton explains, that his sibling is a handyman and “because I am staying at his house out in the country, I am hoping that I can learn about DIY stuff from him”.
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“He is teaching me and the viewers some handy hints,” Shelton adds.
“When the show was commissioned at least, you weren’t allowed to have anyone over. So the premise is that I have been staying with Jason and his wife Sheredith, and we’re all quarantining together.
“I set up the tripod and do bits to camera, but then I’ll take the camera and I’ll film Jason doing his bit. We’re never on screen together but we’re always talking to each other.”
His segments so far have included “how to paint kitchen cabinets”, “how to hammer a nail”, as well as an unfortunate incident that led Shelton’s alter ego to conduct a special investigation titled “the truth about wombats”.
“Jason and I have got this pretty intense sibling rivalry that has existed for a very long time,” Shelton explains, about his brotherly nemesis.
“And while I am hoping to be a professional broadcaster and do a good job for Ray Martin, Jason’s main aim is to f*ck things up for me and embarrass me as much as possible.”
It has been a busy time for Shelton, a regular on Australia’s comedy scene and frequent collaborator of Hamish Blake and Andy Lee (Shelton is a co-founder of their production house Radio Karate, which produces Hamish & Andy’s Gap Year and True Story among a string of other hugely successful TV projects over the past decade).
Wearing his go-to pair of puffer pants (“they’re like puffer pants. Puffer jacket pants – I’m in them more often than not”), Shelton has also been working on his own creative projects, released via his website and social media channels on the 11th of each month (his latest instalment is out tomorrow).
“I’m happiest as a person when I’m making things and putting them out there, and people can watch them and hopefully, get some sort of joy out of it,” Shelton said.
“I started writing, pitching and developing shows and it just was really hard work trying to convince people to get things made.
“Why do I put the control of that into someone else’s hands? So I thought, well I will make some things and I know the only way I can get stuff done is if I have a deadline.
“I set my own deadlines and told the world – my Instagram followers – that I am going to do this thing.
“And I need to be held accountable every month. So on the 11th of every month, I put something out there and it has meant that I have had to keep going.
“It’s a great way for me to be able to play and experiment.”
One such video features Shelton in self-reflection mode, interviewing his 18-year-old self in Shelton’s signature self-deprecating form.
So what did the experience teach him about his younger – and in turn, adult – self? “When I was 18, I did have these grand ideas of what I thought was possible and the expectation on myself, and how easy I thought that would be, was a bit inaccurate,” Shelton said.
“When you’re 18 you’re not really, you haven’t gone through disappointments and you haven’t been let down, you haven’t gone through a lot of the stuff yet.
“I guess the idea of that video, of talking to my 18-year-old self, was … to give a comparison of where I was when I was 18 compared to where I am now, at 38.”
“The self-reflection side plays into a lot of the work I have done on myself to understand why I am the way I am.
“And then just to try to figure out how I can be happy and better.”
Isolation also meant indulging in some guilty viewing pleasures of his own, including the current series of The Real Housewives of New York (airing now on Foxtel).
“Do we like Leah (McSqweeney)? Do we miss Bethenny (Frankel)? Can Carole (Radziwill) come back now? There are so many questions,” Shelton tells this writer, a fellow RHONY viewer.
“That episode where Luann (de Lesseps) did the worst comedy night of all time with Jacques … her ex, who has now decided to do stand-up comedy,” Shelton explains.
“A friend said, you’ve just got to watch it like it’s a comedy. So when I was watching it through that lens, it’s all of a sudden like Arrested Development – the most insane group of characters doing the most bizarre things.”
At Home Alone Together airs at 9pm on Wednesdays via ABC TV, with episodes available on ABC iview. For Ryan Shelton’s latest sketches, click here. He co-hosts mental health podcast, The Imperfects.